Rockville is tops for start-ups

Rockville was named one of the top 10 U.S. cities for start-ups, according to a recent Bloomberg News survey, the Washington Business Journal reports.

With 16.2 patents per 10,000 people, the 56,900-person city is the “epicenter of suburban Washington D.C.’s biotech industry” and benefits from nearby universities and federal facilities like the National Institutes of Health, Bloomberg Businessweek says. With data analyzed from zoomprospector.com, Bloomberg said creative professionals make up 26.2 percent of the population and 57.5 percent of the population have a bachelor's degree or higher.

Rockville, named No. 10 in the survey, is the only mid-Atlantic city to make the cut and one of three East Coast cities on the list. The top three cities were Boulder, Colo., Boca Raton, Fla., and Santa Monica, Calif.