Cary Ranks High As New Company Destination
Cary, NC – It’s no secret to local residents that Cary is a fast-growing town. And for good reason: a new study shows Cary as one of the top 20 cities and towns in the country for tech start-ups to locate.
Start Up In Cary
The study, from HighSpeedInternet.com, ranked towns using three primary factors to determine what constitutes a good location for a start-up to operate. These factors were cost of living, Internet speed and the ratio of developers looking for work to the population.
“That last one is very important. If you’re going to have overflow, it’s great for someone starting their business,” said HighSpeedInternet.com Community Manager Cosette Jarrett.
Cary ranked 11th in the country in the report, with a medium concentration of developers, a reasonable cost of living and an average Internet speed of 37 Mbps.
One of the other attractive aspects of Cary is its proximity to the Research Triangle Park, which means there are many people working in science and technology already living in the area.
“You’re looking for a number of different resumes and having a big tech center attracts those types of people,” Jarrett said.
There were also secondary factors such as crime rate and percentage of residents with college degrees, both of which Cary scored well in.
How To Improve
The report also noted areas where Cary could improve when it came to hosting start-up companies. For one, our Internet speed was relatively slow compared to the other cities and towns in the study’s top 10.
But another factor the report pointed out was Cary’s lack of mass transit and public transportation infrastructure.
“A lot of start-up owners we talked to noted having mass transit was nice,” Jarrett said.
Jarrett noted that healthy public transportation can attract more people to a community, resulting in a larger pool of employees for start-ups to draw from. Cary and Wake County in general are currently at work on bringing mass transit to the area so Cary may see a change in coming years.
One final interesting note: the town directly ahead of Cary in the study’s rankings was Elgin, Illinois. This was the previous home of our current town manager, Sean Stegall.
Story by Michael Papich. Photos by Laura Bittner, the Town of Cary and Hal Goodtree.
