Last week, webacquisition.com, a company that advises on mergers and acquisitions, released a report looking at the best states to launch tech startups and Florida ranked in the top five.

California led the list while Mississippi stood at the bottom of it.

“This conclusion was drawn based on various parameters, including the number of Bachelor’s in Science & Engineering (S&E) degrees among 18-24 year-olds, the percentage of S&E occupants in the workforce, the number of venture capital deals in technology and knowledge sectors, venture capital investments relative to GDP, average business applications over the past 5 years, the business survival rate, tax rates, average weekly wages, and the Quality of Life (QOL) index in each state,” webacquisition.com noted. “webacquisition.com meticulously evaluated all 50 states in the US using these distinct criteria, assigning a score out of 100 for each criterion. These individual scores were then combined and weighted to generate a final score out of 100. The data for this exhaustive study was sourced from the Tax Foundation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, and the United States Census Bureau.”

New York and Massachusetts followed California at the top of the list followed by Florida. Texas rounded out the top five.

“Florida, secures the fourth spot with a relatively lower percentage of S&E graduates (20.57 bachelor’s degrees in S&E per 1000 18-24-year-olds) and 3.60 percent S&E occupants in the workforce. It has a limited venture capital investment in tech (0.10 percent of GDP). Still, it makes up for it with many business applications (507,669) and a reasonable survival rate of 50.20 percent,” noted webacquisition.com. “With a lower tax rate of 5.50 percent and an average weekly wage of $1,203.50, the state has a quality of life index of 102.8, resulting in a final score of 73.55.”