Business Week
New Orleans: A Startup Laboratory

Entrepreneurs are finding fertile ground for new ventures they think will help bring the devastated city back to life.
by John Tozzi
In a fifth-floor penthouse office in the central business district, developers craft an online trading system to let companies sell their accounts receivable at a discount for cash. A few blocks away, a programmer builds a tool to send patients' medical data to doctors' smart phones in real time. On the other side of town, workers assemble a sleek modular home from aluminum framing and interlocking panels—no nails or screws required. At the end of the day, they might all head for a hip new nightclub near the waterfront.
This is not New York or Chicago, Seattle or San Francisco. This is New Orleans, two years after Hurricane Katrina, and these ventures represent a cross-section of the entrepreneurial spirit that has quietly blossomed in the city since the flood. New Orleans suffered a net loss of 2,951 employer businesses, or 30%, between the last pre-Katrina quarter and the first quarter of 2006, according to a new report from the Louisiana State University Economic Development Div. (Businesses reporting no employees were filtered out.) Over the last three quarters of 2006, however, New Orleans gained a net 968 employer companies, representing a return to about 80% of the pre-Katrina level.
