getting off the ground

Dallas gets the job done as one of the country's best cities to start a business

Startups fare well in Dallas, a new study finds.

Photo by Joe Daniel Price

Ten percent of the United States workforce — 15.3 million people — work for themselves, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In honor of National Small Business Week, a recent study sought out the best cities for starting a business, and Dallas came in at No. 15.

WalletHub, a personal financial website, used 19 key metrics — such as five-year business-survival rate and office-space affordability — to compare 100 cities in the U.S.

Dallas ranked highest in the business environment category, at No. 11. This ranking considered startups per capita, average growth of business revenue, length of an average work week, and more.

The other two rankings were access to resources and business costs. For those, Dallas ranked No. 33 and No. 70, respectively.

There were 114,273 firms in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area in 2016, according to the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs released by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2018. Of those, almost 50,000 had been in business for 11 years or longer.

As one of the nation's most diverse metros, the survey recorded 29,216 DFW firms owned by minorities. Meanwhile, women owned 22,199 firms in the Metroplex, and men owned 68,957, according to the survey. More than 7,000 were owned by veterans.

Texas, which was recently named the top state for female entrepreneurs, fared well overall in the WalletHub study, with seven cities in the top 20. Here's how the rest of the state ranked:

Austin, No. 4
Fort Worth, No. 11
Houston, No. 13
San Antonio, No. 16
Irving, No. 17
Laredo, No. 18
Lubbock, No. 23

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A version of this story originally appeared on CultureMap's sister site, InnovationMap.

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Coworking News

New coworking space to open in Dallas' Oak Lawn neighborhood

Office Evolution

A coworking space is opening in Dallas in a central location: Office Evolution, a Louisville-based coworking chain, will open what a release says is a "state-of-the-art coworking space" at 3500 Oak Lawn Ave. #360 in Dallas at the southeast corner of Lemmon Avenue.

No details on what makes it state-of-the-art, but construction is ongoing and an opening is anticipated in mid-October.

Office Evolution was founded in 2003 as a shared workspace-coworking environment, cultivated on the principles of "Ohana," the Hawaiian tradition that references family working toward a common goal. (The founder was from Hawaii.)

The company started out in Boulder, Colorado, then relocated its headquarters to Louisville. It's an affiliated brand of United Franchise Group, and is part of The Vast Coworking Group, which specializes in franchising within the coworking industry. All of their locations are franchised.

The Dallas location is owned by franchisee Michael Pickering, a Dallas native who runs a family-owned indoor soccer facility in Dallas. (There are two other Office Evolution locations in the DFW area in McKinney and Southlake, owned by different franchisees.)

They're describing the Dallas location at 3500 Oak Lawn Ave. as "Turtle Creek," although its location at Oak Lawn and Lemmon really puts it at the epicenter of Oak Lawn. (To further complicate matters, the building previously and incorrectly described its address as "Uptown.")

It's a seven-story building in which the majority of tenants are doctor and medical offices.

Office Evolution rates include a coworking day pass for $25, plus "flex" office options starting at $200 a month for 20 hours, up to $550 a month for 80 hours.

Amenities of the building that are also accessible to Office Evolution customers include a front desk; a 1,000-square-foot fitness center; covered parking; and on-site security six days a week.

According to a spokesperson, Pickering and his team put $1.2 million into the renovation to transform the space, which occupies most of the fourth floor where it will span 9,240 square feet of space with 41 total offices — one of which is earmarked as an "on-demand office" for the professional on the go.

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