Fort Worth is now ranked the best city in Texas to start a business. Here’s why.

Fort Worth is the best city to start a new business in Texas, according to experts at WalletHub.

The Miami-based personal finance company evaluated 100 large U.S. cities and compared business environment, business costs and access to entrepreneurial resources.

Fort Worth ranked ninth in the country, ahead of Austin at 10th place. Farther down the list, Arlington ranked 19th while Dallas ranked 20th.

Cameron Cushman, assistant vice president of innovation ecosystems at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, pointed to several Fort Worth resources that have had a hand in the city’s success: TechFW, Sparkyard, CDFI Friendly Fort Worth, Main Street America and Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth Accelerator.

“I think this new ranking is a testament to great work that has been going on across the city over the last few years,” Cushman said.

The largest contributor to Fort Worth’s success was its ninth place ranking for overall business environment. The metric was determined based on growth in the number of small businesses, business revenues, job creation, industry variety, business survival over five years and more.

The city also ranked 15th in access to resources, based on the prevalence of investors, number of jobs available, accessibility of small business loans, venture capital investment, presence of higher education, working-age population growth and more.

“There is still work to be done,” Cushman said. “Fort Worth ranked 69th out of 100 in business costs, which I think represents an opportunity for continued improvement. We need to ask ourselves how we can continue to reduce barriers for starting and growing businesses in our region.”

The overall cost of conducting business was based on the cost of labor, cost of living in Fort Worth, affordability of commercial office space and cost of corporate taxes.

Art Clapp, CEO of Fort Worth-based Nuvothera, said Fort Worth’s win gives him confidence that entrepreneurs don’t have to be in Silicon Valley to successfully start a new business.

“As an entrepreneur, Fort Worth has an abundance of resources to support a startup or growing business from raising capital, tremendous sources of technical expertise, universities and technology incubators with entrepreneur programs, tremendous networking opportunities, and a local community of business people that like to help aspiring companies,” Clapp said.