Presenting Minnesota

As you know, Minnesota is also a state of enterprise, evidence of which is plentiful. Although Minnesota has only 1.73 percent of the U.S. population, it is the headquarters of 4 percent of the country’s 500 largest publicly traded companies. Per capita, it has more Fortune 500 company headquarters—20 of them—than any other state.

In other words, Minnesotans are statistically more likely to be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies than residents of any other state. Minnesota also has 34 Fortune 1,000 companies (public companies with at least $1.63 billion in revenue)—more, on a per-capita basis, than any state but Connecticut.

There’s more. If you are a Minnesotan, you are also statistically more likely to be CEO of a private company with more than $1 billion in sales than you would be if you lived in all but three other states (Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Missouri). Forbes magazine reports that Minnesota has 13 such companies, including Cargill, the second-largest of them all.

Forbes also ranks the 400 wealthiest Americans, of whom eight were Minnesotans in 2004. As a Minnesotan, you are more likely to have made that list than if you lived elsewhere in the United States. And frankly, we think they missed a few Minnesotans who should have been listed.

Negatives? Well, certainly. Our visitors will have to contend with Minnesota’s weather, for example. They’ll be arriving in late August—so we hope they remember to bring sunscreen.