Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

doingbusiness.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 101 posts

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#21

Post by lionhearted »

Not sure how accurate this list is. Thailand, for instance, requires all businesses to have at least 51% Thai ownership, and I've heard Thai courts are fairly heavily biased towards locals over foreigners. Foreigners can skirt around this a little bit by having 10+ Thai silent partners in different parts of the country that don't know each other who collect a dividend or payment each year without active involvement, but still a hassle and reflective of the lack of trust Thailand has for foreign investors and entrepreneurs.

Also, I was surprised by some of the rankings. I'd have expected UAE and Israel to be higher than Germany and the Scandinavian countries for instance, but maybe I'm biased by experiences with small sample size. I've had German friends complain to no end about the Kafka-esque bureaucracy of the country, and generally I've had Israelis and expats in the Emirates tell me doing business is easy in those places.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#22

Post by hga »

lionhearted wrote: post #21

Not sure how accurate this list is. Thailand, for instance, requires all businesses to have at least 51% Thai ownership, and I've heard Thai courts are fairly heavily biased towards locals over foreigners. Foreigners can skirt around this a little bit by having 10+ Thai silent partners in different parts of the country that don't know each other who collect a dividend or payment each year without active involvement,…

Their methodology assume the company "Is 100% domestically owned" (http://www.doingbusiness.org/MethodologySurveys/StartingBusi...).

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#23

Post by lionhearted »

hga wrote: post #22
lionhearted wrote: post #21

Not sure how accurate this list is. Thailand, for instance, requires all businesses to have at least 51% Thai ownership, and I've heard Thai courts are fairly heavily biased towards locals over foreigners. Foreigners can skirt around this a little bit by having 10+ Thai silent partners in different parts of the country that don't know each other who collect a dividend or payment each year without active involvement,…

Their methodology assume the company "Is 100% domestically owned" ( http://www.doingbusiness.org/MethodologySurveys/StartingBusi... ).

Ah, that changes things quite a lot. Good info, thanks for pointing that out.

Unfortunately, this makes the list less pragmatically useful for choosing places to live abroad... I wonder if there's any reliable info like this for how well treated you are as a foreigner doing business in a country.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#24

Post by vosper »

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…

Deploying updates to production sites when the US is sleeping is a massive boon, it was one of the reasons my previous employer did all their R&D in New Zealand. The downside is that pagers tended to go off in the middle of our night when server load was highest.

The company has been extremely successful, but the software is complex and recruiting and retaining skilled employees here has become an issue for them. I think they've been forced to move some R&D over to the US as a result.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#25

Post by apotheon »

Starting a business in the United States is a little like pulling your own teeth while getting your fingernails trimmed with a wood chipper. The fact that it still ranks fourth overall just indicates how much worse most of the rest of the world is.

It's amazing to me that so many nations (the US included) seem to want it to be so difficult for people to succeed in business.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#26

Post by nihilocrat »

I'm curious if anyone has worked for a company in Singapore, done lots of business with one, or better yet started one. By these rankings and the stereotypes I've learned it basically seems like a capitalist's paradise, with practically the whole society being pro-business and a gigantic minority of the population (42% according to Wikipedia) being foreign workers/students.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#27

Post by Swoopey »

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.

Indeed. Starting a business in Japan is a hurry-up and wait game. There was a recent panel sponsored by the ACCJ last month which invited several government officials to a panel discussion to inquire into why things were so burdensome and to come up with solutions. At the conclusion of the panel we had a long list of ways the 'start-up' process and culture of Japan could be improved-- among them was updating laws, making banking and related matters for small business (bank transfer fees) easier, encouraging the media to cover more entrepreneurs, and engaging college students in the start-up process more.

I'm a start-up founder based in Tokyo and the most popular questions I receive is, why are you founding a start-up focused on a market outside of Japan? Market research aside and my being American who will be returning to the US some time in the very near future, Japan is not the easiest company to start and run and successful small operation in. A Rank of #91 for such an advanced country is an indication of the system being broken and burdensome.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#29

Post by rospaya »

acangiano wrote: post #28

Ranking for the G8 nations: 4 - United States 5 - United Kingdom 8 - Canada 15 - Japan 25 - Germany 31 - France 78 - Italy 120 - Russia With the exception of Russia, which has its roots in communism, Italy is by far the worst G8 country you could start a business in.

This (again) makes me wonder what Italy is doing in G8. Let's give China or Spain a shot.

Re: Countries ranked by ease of starting a business

#30

Post by mahmud »

rospaya wrote: post #29
acangiano wrote: post #28

Ranking for the G8 nations: 4 - United States 5 - United Kingdom 8 - Canada 15 - Japan 25 - Germany 31 - France 78 - Italy 120 - Russia With the exception of Russia, which has its roots in communism, Italy is by far the worst G8 country you could start a business in.

This (again) makes me wonder what Italy is doing in G8. Let's give China or Spain a shot.

Spain? The "S" in PIIGS?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIGS_%28economics%29

Post reply on HN