Thumbtack

Small businesses make up the backbone of our country. They exist in every single state in America, though not ever single state is friendly to these entrepreneurs. But that isn’t the case for every city and state. Thumbtack recently released the data from their fourth annual Small Business Friendliness Survey, which ranks which states and cities are the friendliest to small businesses.

Ranking in at the number one most friendliest city to small businesses is Manchester, New Hampshire, according to the small business owners who operate there. To add even more praise to the state, New Hampshire also ranked as the number two most friendliest state to small businesses, just behind Texas.

What’s interesting is the fact that the rest of America’s Northeast was considered the most unfriendliest grouping of states in the entire country, according to the survey. Utah and Colorado join Texas and New Hampshire as being very friendly to small businesses whereas California, Connecticut, and Illinois joined the Northeast states, all receiving a score of “F”.

Chief Economist of Thumbtack Jon Lieber stated that whether a city or state is friendly or not to small businesses comes from a plethora of primary considerations. “What most influences a business owner’s perception is the presence of training programs, as well as events that allow networking,” Lieber added.

In terms of training, this usually refers how easy it is for small businesses to obtain online information that regards rules and regulations that pertain to how small businesses must operate in that city or state. “Websites matter,” Lieber says. So basically what he’s saying is that entrepreneurs and small business owners do not want stress or hassle when it comes to gathering information on how to properly file things like local taxes. In addition to that, opportunities to network are also important. This is due mainly because of the isolation felt by many of the small businesses currently operating in the United States.

One more factor that determines whether or not a state or city is friendly to small businesses is determining whether or not a city or state is the ease of regulatory compliance. A key compliance issue for small businesses was licensing. Cities and states that require certain professionals to obtain a license did not automatically make them unfriendly. However, if the licensing was not carefully monitored then there is the liability of increasing perceived unfriendliness. Licensed professionals do not really like it when an unlicensed competitor gains a competitive advantage.

Thumbtack is an online service that connects local small businesses with customers. These businesses can range from anything like plumbers and house painters to therapists, physical trainers and more. Small businesses are able to compete for customers that are interested in their services through the use of a bidding system. As for the Friendliness survey, nearly 18,000 U.S.-based small business owners participated by providing their rating of both their state and their city governments on a wide array of factors. Over a dozen different metrics were used by Thumbtack to evaluate states and cities against each other.

So, if you’re thinking of starting a small business where you live I would advise you to take a look at Thumbtack’s survey to determine how easy or hard it is going to be for you to get your startup off the ground where you live.

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