Business savvy

Hardworking Dallas suburb clocks in among America's 10 most ambitious cities

Work hard, play hard.

Photo by Roger Robinson/Visit Frisco

Frisco has landed some sweet recognition for its business-friendly atmosphere. A new ranking puts Frisco eighth among what it calls "the most business-savvy cities in America."

The Go.Verizon.com study, titled "The 15 Most Ambitious U.S. Cities," looked only at cities with at least 100,000 residents and used data from the 2019 U.S. Census.

Six factors went into the ranking the list:

Average household income.
Unemployment rate.
Percentage of people with at least a bachelor's degree.
Number of applications to start a business.
Percentage of population that starts a business.
Homeownership rate.

"Frisco residents can spend confidently: The mean household income is $153,704," Go.Verizon.com says. "Business owners in the city provide plenty of places for citizens to spend all that cash — Frisco has video game museums, vintage automobile collections, and outdoor concert venues."

The booming suburb north of Dallas — one of America's fastest-growing cities — consistently ranks high as a place to live, work, and play. One recent national survey named it the No. 6 hot spot for young professionals age 25 to 39; another found it to be a top city for women working in STEM fields; another, among the best places to buy a house (although neighbor Celina is now outpacing it for new home builds).

The city even appeared atop a ranking of the country’s best places to be stuck at home during the pandemic.

Frisco continues to attract the interest of major employers like Keurig Dr Pepper, PGA of America, and the Dallas Cowboys.

One other Texas city actually tops the Go.Verizon.com list: Sugar Land, a suburb of Houston, comes in at No. 1.

"Landing the coveted top position on our list, business owners in this suburb outside of Houston know a thing or two about doing it bigger," Go.Verizon.com says. "With a mean household income of $157,923 and an unemployment rate of only 3 percent, Sugar Land lives up to its statue of the strong-willed Stephen Austin, the 'Father of Texas.'"

Key sectors of the economy in Sugar Land, home to roughly 118,500 residents, include manufacturing, biotech, financial services, and energy. Among the major employers are Accredo Packaging, Champion X, Fluor, and Schlumberger.

Frisco and Sugar Land are the only Texas cities to make the list of 15, which is dominated by California communities: West Covina (2), Torrance (3), Santa Clarita (4), Carlsbad (5), Norwalk (6), Thousand Oaks (9), Fremont (11), and Burbank (14). Rounding out the list are: Pembroke Pines, Florida (7), Coral Springs, Florida (10), Columbia, Missouri (12), Scottsdale, Arizona (13), and Miami Gardens, Florida (15).

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A version of this story originally appeared on our sister site InnovationMap.com.

rankings

entrepreneurship starts here

Dallas leads on 2026 list of the best big cities to start a business

Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash

Dallas ranked 11th in the U.S. in 2026, and previously ranked 16th in 2025.

The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is showing its strong entrepreneurial spirit after Dallas and five of its neighbors appeared on WalletHub's new list of the best large U.S. cities for starting a business in 2026. Dallas leads the charge in North Texas as the No. 11 best city nationwide.

The annual report compared 100 U.S. cities based on 19 relevant metrics across three key dimensions: business environment, access to resources, and costs. Factors that were analyzed include five-year business survival rates, job growth comparisons from 2020 and 2024, population growth of working-age individuals aged 16-64, office space affordability, and more.

Florida cities locked out the top five best places in America for starting a new business: Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Hialeah, and St. Petersburg.

Dallas' business environment ranked as the fifth-best in the country, and the city ranked 45th for its "access to resources," and 64th in the "business costs" category. Dallas also topped a separate ranking of cities with the longest average workweeks nationwide.

Here's how Dallas compared in some of the other rankings in the study:

No. 24 – Numerical small business growth
No. 29 – Financing accessibility
No. 40 – Labor costs
No. 55 – Cost of living

Elsewhere in North Texas, Irving ranked No. 16 nationally, followed by Arlington (No. 23), Fort Worth (No. 30), Plano, (No. 35), and Garland (No. 65).

Earlier this year, WalletHub declared Texas the third-best state for starting a business in 2026, and several DFW cities have seen robust growth after being recognized among the top 20 best career hotspots in the U.S. WalletHub also ranked Plano the 7th best U.S. city for finding a job.

Only seven other Texas cities earned spots in the report: Austin (No. 24), Houston (No. 26), Lubbock (No. 36), Corpus Christi (No. 39), San Antonio (No. 64), El Paso (No. 67), and Laredo (No. 76).

Austin tied with Boise, Idaho and Fresno, California for the highest average growth in the number of small businesses nationally, while Corpus Christi and Laredo topped a separate list of the U.S. cities with the most accessible financing.

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