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A recent study has revealed that regional cities in Victoria have been ranked as some of the best locations to start a business.
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Victorian cities rank highest as best location for start-ups
09 April 2024
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10 minute read
A recent study of Australia’s best and worst cities for starting a business by software firm Reckon has revealed that Geelong is the best city to start a business. This was followed by Ballarat and Melbourne.
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As part of its study, Reckon analysed the 50 largest cities in Australia across 18 data points including factors such as weekly incomes, living costs, business survival rates, young workers, education levels and growth in businesses.
Victorian cities took out six of the top 10 spots as cities ranked best for start-ups, the study found.
Geelong scored highly for its talent pool and also has higher internet speeds compared with cities in other states.
While Sydney scored highest out of all cities in NSW, ahead of Dubbo and Wagga Wagga, it was only ranked 21st on the overall list.
Sydney scored highly for its talent pool but scored poorly for cost of living, bringing its rank among the capital cities down to sixth.
Melbourne and Brisbane were the only capital cities to make the top 10 list.
Canberra was ranked as the worst capital city for starting a business due to its extremely low score for cost of living.
Reckon chief executive Sam Allert said with regional cities like Geelong beating out capitals like Sydney, the study highlights that while capitals are attractive, a “higher cost of living could create barriers to profits and growth.”
“Starting a business anywhere in Australia is a serious undertaking, but certainly an achievable one in such a prosperous country with excellent infrastructure. It’s when a confluence of negative factors overlap that you find a taller barrier to entry,” Allert said.
“What startups need to look for is a perfect storm of positive business conditions to give them a running start. Startups can be fragile and it’s best not to make that hill steeper than it needs to be to get off the ground. Choosing the wrong location could create unnecessary friction.”
Nowra, NSW ranked as the worst city among the 50 largest cities to start a business.
“Although Nowra doesn't hold the lowest score overall for any of the 18 factors, all its scores are low in comparison to the majority of the other cities in the study,” said Reckon.
“Nowra's talent pool score is extremely low, which is likely due to only 14.1 per cent of the city's population holding a bachelor's degree or above qualification and only 52.6 per cent of the population being in the labour force.”
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