Thumbtack.com, in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation, has released new data showing that small businesses rank California among the least friendly states for small business.  California earned Fs in 6 of the 12 categories ranked, and the three worst cities nationwide for small businesses are all in California.  The one bright spot is San Jose, which ranked in the top half of cities nationwide.

There are a lot of “business climate rankings”, but there aren’t any that draw upon considerable data from small business owners themselves. The Thumbtack.com Small Business Survey is the only survey to draw data from an extensive, nationwide universe of job creators and entrepreneurs themselves in order to investigate the best places in the country to do business.

After a two-month survey of over 6,000 small business owners nationwide, it’s clear that California is failing in the eyes of its small businesses. For policymakers at every level looking for ways to jumpstart economic growth and job creation, California can serve as a case study of what not to do.

Some of the key findings for California include:

The full survey results can be seen here and include full sets of rankings, dozens of easily searchable quotes from California small businesses, regional comparisons within states, and Census data comparing California’s key demographics against those of other states.