Or, the kind of people who are likely to create startups are drawn to cities that are big on coffee shop culture.
As usual the direction of causation is a bit difficult to tease out
replies(3):
As usual the direction of causation is a bit difficult to tease out
"...tracts that received a Starbucks saw an increase in the number of startups of 9.1% to 18% (or 2.9 to 5.7 firms) per year, over the subsequent 7 years. A partnership between Starbucks and Magic Johnson focused on underprivileged neighborhoods produced larger effects."
Seems like third places have strong effects here.
For instance, what if Starbucks only decides to move into neighborhoods that have reached a certain level of economic growth (ie number of households, number of business, etc…)? Neighborhood economic growth would likely attract entrepreneurs as well, and we wouldn’t be able to conclude that Starbucks had anything to do with entrepreneurship growth.
Said a different way, would adding Starbucks in the middle of the Atacama desert grow Peruvian entrepreneurs? I mean come on it’d be the only third space around!
I can’t read the full paper because I don’t have a subscription, but the fact that they don’t call this out in the abstract makes me doubt it’s a meaningful conclusion.