Startups: Women Twice As Likely To Start Companies In New York Than Silicon Valley

Another win for Silicon Alley. Women are twice as likely to start new companies in New York than they are in Silicon Valley, America's largest startup hub, according to new research.

The findings come courtesy of Startup Genome, a research project launched by three entrepreneurs, in conjunction with Stanford and Berkeley, that aims to map, model and analyze what makes new businesses successful. Its latest report dissects crowdsourced information from more than 3,200 new companies around the globe.

A preview of the report, to be released in June, found that 20 percent of startup founders in New York are women. That is twice the percentage of female entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, where 10 percent of founders are women.

The finding could be related, in part, to general demographics, BetaBeat noted. In New York City, 52.5 percent of the population are women, while in San Francisco, women account for 49.3 percent of residents, in San Mateo county, 50.8 percent are female and Santa Clara county has 49.8 percent women, according to 2010 Census Bureau.

The latest Startup Genome report retrieved data from roughly 300 companies in Silicon Valley and 150 companies in New York, Max Marmer, one of its authors, said.

Silicon Valley and New York ranked as the two largest startup markets in the world, the report found, though Silicon Valley's market is now three times that of New York. London, the third largest startup market in the world, had roughly the same gender makeup as Silicon Valley, with around 10 percent of founders reporting that they are women.