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Entrepreneur Magazine's Best Cities for Entrepreneurs

We found the nation's most livable, viable cities for entrepreneurs to be successful and enjoy life. Come take the tour.

By Clint Carter, Jeff Chu, Matt McCue, Kate Rockwood, Stephanie Schomer and Amy Wilkinson •

Roberto Bowyer | Getty Images

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Yes, there's life for entrepreneurs outside New York and San Francisco -- and we've got the proof! To identify the best places in which to launch and operate a business, we partnered with Livability.com, which studies small and midsize cities.

Matt Carmichael, the site's chief trend analyst, developed the ranking, crunching a wide range of data, including the number of businesses and employees between 2011 and 2015; unemployment rates; number of VC deals in the past 10 years; business tax rate; value of SBA and 7(a) loans; percentage of college-educated locals; cost of living; commute time; accessibility of high-speed broadband; projected household income and population increase from now to 2020; "leakage and surplus," which charts whether people spend their money outside a city on goods and services rather than in it; the growth of good jobs and high-income positions: and Livability's own rating of overall quality of life.

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