Report names Florida No. 2 state for startups

Florida took the No. 2 spot in a recent report about the best states in the U.S. to launch a startup.

Comparisun, a company that provides advice on point-of-sales software and payment processing platforms for small- and medium-sized businesses, put together the analysis of entrepreneurism-friendly states.

The report examined which states offered a more positive environment to grow a business. It looked at several factors, including new business applications, business survival rate, rate of new entrepreneurs, corporate tax rate, share of college-educated population, labor cost and the cost of living index.

No. 1 was Texas, earning an overall score of 77.77 out of 100. Texas was followed by Florida, with an overall score of 69.75. Rounding out the top five were Ohio, Colorado and Arizona, respectively.

The Sunshine State had the most new business applications nationally, at 389,490. Texas had 299, 617. The report measured the number of applications in the last four quarters.

Florida’s business survival rate was around the same as several other states, at 49.50%. That number represents the percentage of businesses opened in the year ending March 2013 still operating in March 2018.

The state’s share of the population that’s 25 or older with a bachelor’s degree or higher, the report shows, is 28.50%, about the same as Texas, at 28.70%. Florida’s labor cost, the average income per capita, is $32,869, above both Texas ($26,627) and Ohio ($26,778).

Also making the top 10 of the Comparisun report were Utah, California, North Carolina, Georgia and Oklahoma. Rhode Island didn’t fare too well in the startup analysis — it was at the bottom of the list at No. 50.