Chattanooga is the least cost city in America to start a business, according to a study released today by an online personal finance web site SmartAsset.
With relatively cheap office space, utilities and wages - combined with the least expensive gigabit-per-second Internet hookup connections in the country - Chattanooga had the lowest overall startup costs among the five major criteria analyzed in each city.
Read the study
smartasset.com/mortgage/cities-lowest-startup-costs
Downtown Chattanooga tileSmartAsset's research found that Chattanooga has some of the most affordable office space in the country. A one year lease on a 1,000 square foot office in Gig City would cost less than $15,000 on average.
"One of the first cities in the country to invest in fiber-optic internet service, Chattanooga's ultra-fast internet has become a major draw for businesses," SmartAsset's Nick Wallace wrote in a report today. "High speed internet is great, but for many startups it is far from top priority. A young business can deal with the occasional internet outage, it can't weather exorbitant costs. In Gig City, however, it isn't an either-or."
Nine of the 10 cities with the lowest startup costs are in the South, primarily due to lower labor costs and commercial office space rents.
The most expensive startup costs are in Silicon Valley and San Francisco even though they have produced some of this century's most well-known startups. The SmartAsset study found the costs of starting a business in San Jose or San Francisco are 50 percent higher than the average for the other 81 cities included in the study.