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How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

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Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#251

Post by ufocia »

pantalaimon wrote: post #165
yau8edq12i wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As explained in the article, if you don't have 25k€ of capital, then you open an Einzelunternehmen (sole proprietorship), not a GmbH (LLC). It's a much simpler process.

You can also create an UG (haftungsbeschränkt) which is basically a GmbH with the 25k€ requirement removed. The only drawback is that this can make the operation look less trustworthy, depending on whom you are dealing with. If you are selling Hot Dogs, nobody will bat an eye if it’s a UG, but if you apply for a big software contract, people might be wary.

I'm skeptical that an at most 25k€ recovery would alleviate weariness of a big software contract without additional due diligence.

It seems to me that a sole proprietorship would do more to protect against counterparty risk, i.e. more of the person's assets would be available to satisfy the debt.

My guess is that counterparties prefer a limited liability partner to arguably insulate themselves from employment liabilities.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#252

Post by ufocia »

tdullien wrote: post #50
yau8edq12i wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As explained in the article, if you don't have 25k€ of capital, then you open an Einzelunternehmen (sole proprietorship), not a GmbH (LLC). It's a much simpler process.

A GmbH is not like an LLC, it's more like a Delaware C-Corp. People forget this all the time.

Why Delaware?

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#253

Post by philsnow »

physhster wrote: post #240
callalex wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a USA perspective, I find that usually when a bureaucratic process is hopelessly broken, it is because a small portion of the population actively hates the people that would benefit from the process and want to harm them. However they cannot legally or popularly discriminate against them so instead they destroy the processes that benefit the hated group. Do you get that impression where you are too?

Given the amount of immigrants in Europe in general and in Germany in particular, I don't think they are trying to deter people. Or if they are trying it's not working. The incompetence is not confined to immigration, it's pretty much everywhere. Same goes for France actually.

The impression I got from the last time I was in Germany (some ~7 years ago), there's a going concern among at least some people that a certain ethnicity of immigrants is "taking over". This might be a pearl-clutching minority, or I may have completely misread the situation.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#254

Post by np- »

dark-star wrote: post #210
miohtama wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get married in Denmark: This not a joke, but my friends did it (German woman, Indian husband). It Germany it would have taken two weeks. In Denmark you get it done in an hour (minus the booking of the time at the civil registry).

I fail to imagine a scenario where "getting married fast" is a requirement. I mean you've supposedly been living together for a few years already at that point, so why is 2 weeks too much?

> I fail to imagine a scenario where "getting married fast" is a requirement.

This rubs me the wrong way a bit, and it’s because it’s clearly quite obvious there are many reasons you’d want to get married fast (emergency health issues, unplanned pregnancies, visa issues, etc etc. can come up with a million reasons easily).

You are really asking in a very ungracious way why doesn’t everyone just simply live like an ideal German.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#255

Post by ufocia »

tdullien wrote: post #49
bouncing wrote: post #2

Not to brag, but there are so few things to actually feel some civic pride for in America, and business registration is one of them, so I guess we have that. I can get an IRS EIN (tax ID), register an LLC, obtain a sales tax license (only required for selling stuff), and open a business checking account in about 2 hours in Colorado. Someone who knows what they’re doing and doesn’t spend time researching banking optio…

Important to realize: A GmbH is much closer to a Delaware C-Corp than to an LLC.

Why this fascination with Delaware? How are Delaware corps different from other states' corps?

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#256

Post by kanbara »

hariharan_uno wrote: post #160
nicbou wrote: post #114

I document German bureaucracy for a living,[0] and everything is like that. Every life event - immigrating, getting a job, getting married, having a child, buying a car - is mired in slow, paper-based bureaucracy. It is a constant, significant impediment to life in the country. Just last week, I was telling people that the best way to get married in Germany is to get married in Denmark. I cannot overstate how terribl…

I completely agree. I have been living here for 8 years, and recently applied for a permanent settlement permit. My application went into a blackhole for more than 4 months, while my existing permit expired, essentially making me a prisoner here (I can stay and work in Germany but if I travel internationally, I won't be allowed entry back). Meanwhile, my applications for a temporary travel permit were unanswered for…

mine took like a few weeks and was very painless, even in berlin. anecdata ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#257

Post by philsnow »

dpeckett wrote: post #226
twixfel wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's less work, it's less work. And it can take months if one of you is not German.

Yeh two weeks would be very quick for a German marriage involving foreigners, more realistically a few months at-least all things considered.

Is the delay ostensibly to ensure the identities of the parties, and that's why it takes longer if any foreigners are involved? I could well imagine it being unconscionable for Germans to aver something they were not yet certain of.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#258

Post by dragonwriter »

ufocia wrote: post #255
tdullien wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important to realize: A GmbH is much closer to a Delaware C-Corp than to an LLC.

Why this fascination with Delaware? How are Delaware corps different from other states' corps?

Mostly, it’s that Delaware’s corporate law is more developed so investors have more certainty of what they are getting; this is also a self-reinforcing condition, since the preference for Delaware corps means more corporate issues get resolved under Delaware law.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#259

Post by Newlaptop »

callalex wrote: post #235
hariharan_uno wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. I have been living here for 8 years, and recently applied for a permanent settlement permit. My application went into a blackhole for more than 4 months, while my existing permit expired, essentially making me a prisoner here (I can stay and work in Germany but if I travel internationally, I won't be allowed entry back). Meanwhile, my applications for a temporary travel permit were unanswered for…

From a USA perspective, I find that usually when a bureaucratic process is hopelessly broken, it is because a small portion of the population actively hates the people that would benefit from the process and want to harm them. However they cannot legally or popularly discriminate against them so instead they destroy the processes that benefit the hated group. Do you get that impression where you are too?

This is not a USA perspective. This is a conspiracy theory perspective from spending too much time in liberal/progressive echo-chambers that repeat fearful, hateful myths about their political opponents.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#260

Post by resolutebat »

chironjit wrote: post #185

Having lived here for 1.5 years, I can say that beraucracy in germany basically works in the sense of how bureaucracy in other lesser third world countries work. Basically, the system works in general for the average population but is broken such that it affects most those at the margins (for example, the rich, the poor, those entrepreneurial, etc). In other countries, when this happens, you see the rich paying their…

In third world countries, if you're wealthy (by local standards), you can grease the wheels with bribes, or better yet, cheaply outsource tasks to "consultants" who know exactly how to navigate the system and pay the bribes on your behalf, giving you plausible denialability. Need an Indonesian multi-year business visa? $200 to the right "visa consultant" and it's yours in days.

As far as I can tell, this is not an option in Germany, certainly not cheaply. Healy, one of the global companies that does this kind of thing, wants €14000 to create a GmBH for you, and I'm pretty sure that doesn't speed up things, it just makes it somebody else's headache.

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