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Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

doingbusiness.org

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Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#11

Post by hga »

derre1 wrote: post #6

I'm not sure all those numbers are correct. I was born in the Dominican Republic and I can say that the time to open a business is least than 20 days. Besides, there are some companies offering "packaged business"s with legal fees, registrations, and other paperwork ready. You can buy one of those and get up and running in 24 hours. They take care of transfering the company to you.

What's the cost, especially compared to standard incomes in the nation? I know a number of countries score very poorly because of this (CHANGED: per capita income is a factor in the calculation: http://www.doingbusiness.org/MethodologySurveys/StartingBusi...).

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#12

Post by frisco »

Reading this list made me think, "wow, I could have been born in so many other countries, with such dramatically different possibilities, but I was born in the US." Just a strange thought to consider. A lot of these countries barely have the rule of law: police misbehavior anywhere is unacceptable, but next time I see "Police mistreat innocent bystander X" here or on reddit, I'll think "but at least you can't walk down the street and bribe the cop to get away with Z" for a second before I start being furious with the system.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#13

Post by Murkin »

quizbiz wrote: post #3

I'm surprised Israel was so low given the info I read in the book Startup Nation ( http://www.startupnationbook.com/ )

As noted in other comments, the numbers are a bit skewed.

E.g. it takes half a morning to open a company. But it takes up to two weeks to get all the approval documents mailed to you.

In any case, this info is not for tech-startups, its statistics for opening 'real' businesses.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#14

Post by ronnier »

quizbiz wrote: post #3

I'm surprised Israel was so low given the info I read in the book Startup Nation ( http://www.startupnationbook.com/ )

Israel ranks really low on "Dealing with Construction Permits" and "Registering Property", according to this list. Don't let this list fool you, it's a true start up nation. The amount of tech and start-ups coming from Israel is amazing.

From the book: "a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? How is it that Israel has, per person, attracted over twice as much venture capital investment as the US and thirty times more than Europe?"

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#16

Post by nigelsampson »

steveh73 wrote: post #10
utunga wrote: post #2

mmm NZ seems very high in the rankings but the vc/angel investment community very immature over here... possible opportunity for low hanging fruit just across the ditch for a few valley based investors perhaps ? ;-)

NZ has expensive (and not particularly fast) internet, which is probably why. On the other hand, setting up a limited-liability company took me an hour (including registering for GST) and cost $40 when I did it (it's a little more now), and costs nothing to renew. And the time zone difference means we're often working when the US is sleeping, which can be handy when you're deploying a new version of a production site…

I set up my LLC around a month ago, very painless and cost me $160.

I think the distance thing is a factor, however for internet based start ups it's not as important.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#17

Post by auxbuss »

Well, that put numbers around my recent decision to return from Spain to the UK. I love Spain to bits, but doing business there, legally, is utterly impossible even when fluent in the language. It's very easy to do business there illegally and cheap, if that's your thing.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#18

Post by hga »

quizbiz wrote: post #3

I'm surprised Israel was so low given the info I read in the book Startup Nation ( http://www.startupnationbook.com/ )

I haven't read the book but are the scores really that low?

These are rankings compared to other nations, the scale is not linear. It's easier to startup a business in Iceland and more difficult in Norway, the two counties on either side of Israel.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#20

Post by patio11 »

barrydahlberg wrote: post #8

My wife is Japanese and when I said I was starting a company she asked me But, how? Are you even allowed to do that? I didn't really understand how you could not be at the time. I guess that's why NZ ranks #1 and Japan ranks #91 for getting started.

One of the big things we did at the tech incubator is tell people how easy it is to start a company -- there isn't a significantly higher paperwork burden or capital requirement these days than there is for a US LLC. (That did not used to be true.) The problem is that this has not hit the mainstream in terms of cultural acceptance yet.

I knew this and I was absolutely amazed by the amount of time it took to get my health insurance, pension, and taxes squared away when I went full-time: 3 hours. Two hours of that was bike riding to and from city hall.

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