Maybe it's the quality of life or the positive business attitudes, but the Houston suburb of Katy has one of the friendliest environments for business in America.
It's among the surprising results of a survey of more than 20 million online businesses in which more than 50,000 entrepreneurs were asked questions over a seven-year period, according to the company behind it, website company GoDaddy.
With access to big cities nearby but with a small-town atmosphere still intact, "so people want a better quality of life, and they find they can have those amenities at a lower cost than in an adjacent city," according to GoDaddy Vice President of Public Relations Greg Efthimiou.
His company has seen "a very interesting trend with our 2024 data, which comprised our 2025 Most Entreprenurial List, and in that we found that out that there are suburbs in various places across the country that are performing as strong if not stronger than large cities. Katy is one of them, plus Ontario, California (just outside Los Angeles), Frankfurt, Illinois (south of Chicago), all punching above their weight because there's a terrific concentration of small businesses -- and these are the smallest of small businesses, typically with fewer than 10 employees -- and there are a lot of things contributing to these vibrant communities for these small businesses to thrive," Efthimiou said.
That "lot of things" he mentions boil down to access to colleges and junior colleges where there is a spirit of entrepreneurship (Katy, yes, check), city incentives that can contribute to the growth of small businesses (Katy, check), utilization of transportation (check), and access to at least one major city nearby.
But part of the takeaway from the survey is that unlike many businesses as recently as 20 years ago, it's no longer true that the key to success is "location, location, location."
"And one of the most interesting things is, here in 2025 and thanks to artificial intelligence, you can start a business anywhere, it doesn't have to be in a metropolitan area any longer," the GoDaddy spokesman said, "they do that wherever they're most comfortable and wherever there is that 'wrap-around' support network of a community that wants to help them grow," a city with nearby extra resources and people to patronize those businesses.