Steamboat Springs — In 2013, Steamboat Springs became Dog Town USA.

In 2014, it was one of MarketWatch’s 10 greatest mountain towns for retirees.

And now, Steamboat has been deemed one of the top three places to start a business in Colorado.

Consumer finance website NerdWallet bestowed the latest honor on Steamboat.

To determine the top places in the state to start a business, NerdWallet used U.S. Census data to gauge and rank the city’s business climate and local economic health.

The business climate ranking was based on the average revenue of businesses, the percentage of businesses with paid employees and the number of businesses per 100 people.

NerdWallet also looked at the city’s median annual income, median monthly housing costs and the unemployment rate.

Analyst Jonathan Todd found Steamboat is home to nearly 3,500 businesses, and the average revenue per business was just over $1 million.

“A number of the city's homegrown businesses have made it big, including SmartWool and Moots Cycles,” Todd wrote about Steamboat. “The latter, a custom-bicycle manufacturer, started as a four-person operation and now employs about 25 full-time workers to make the bicycles it sells around the world.”

About 35 percent of the businesses here have paid employees, according to the study.

The NerdWallet study proclaimed that only Aspen and Greenwood Village were better places than Steamboat to start a business in the state.

Todd wrote that Greenwood Village, which took the top ranking, is home to about 4,700 businesses and benefits from having the Denver Tech Center, a more than 900 acre business campus.

To determine the top places in the state to start a business, NerdWallet crunched numbers on 85 places in the state with populations of at least 5,000 people.

To reach Scott Franz, call 970-871-4210, email scottfranz@SteamboatToday.com or follow him on Twitter @ScottFranz10