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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

#961

Post by SeanLuke »

johnzim wrote: post #851
SeanLuke wrote: post #735

For those of you griping about German bureaucracy I urge you to come to Italy to learn just how good you have it. My wife is Italian and wanted to get married in her small home town. In order for her to get married to an American in her home town required paperwork that bordered on the Kafkaesque. We had to show up at the Italian embassy in Washington DC (fortunately we live there!) with proof and witnesses that I wa…

I lived this as an Italian trying to do the same for an American wife. I had already steeled myself for the experience but it was still mind-numbing, until the appearance of one glorious stroke of luck. The official in our consulate had incurred some minor peccadillo in the filling out of a form - their stamp was in the wrong part of the document, and because of that, their counterpart in Roma had officiously refused…

At Politecnico Milano (kinda Italy's MIT) they have this nice display for visitors where kids can pull out drawers of stuff representing different majors you can take. One drawer is for management or administration or something like that. It's filled to the brim with all sorts of rubber stamps.

Italy bureaucracy loves stamps.

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

#962

Post by Beijinger »

Tainnor wrote: post #919
Beijinger wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest problem: Germans don't understand digitization. They often try to recreate the paper process with IT, instead of making a complete new setup. Example: Previously, you had to go to the City Hall or whatever in your pace of birth to get a birth certificate. Now you can email them, pay, and they mail you the certificate via snail mail. How it should be: Use an online token, log into your account, request a birth…

> Previously, you had to go to the City Hall or whatever in your pace of birth to get a birth certificate. > Now you can email them, pay, and they mail you the certificate via snail mail. > How it should be: Use an online token, log into your account, request a birth certificate and just print it. It should have a URL that can be used to verify that it is valid. This would be faster and the risk of forgery would be m…

Luxembourg...

Even Brazil. Things like Background Check works like this. You can create a PDF that can be online validated.

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

#963

Post by Baguette5242 »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #774
Baguette5242 wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I was referring to in my previous post: _I am tired of the pretentious western europe politics/administration point of view that immediately ranks everything (including good ideas) coming from Asia/global South as "not transposable to Europe" or just "not as good as our ways"._ Did you live in China as an immigrant, did you settle down there for several years, did you have to go through their immigration…

It's not pretentious to trust officially published statistics more than anecdotal opinions from random strangers on the internet, and since we're talking about a difference of several orders of magnitude no further arguments why the comparison makes no sense are needed in this case.

What is pretentious however is to judge without having experimenting it. "no lessons can be learned from Chinese bureaucracy about how to deal with immigrants." is quite a bold statement...

But you go ahead, state that the way other countries are doing things are irrelevant because of almighty statistics etc. (in absolute numbers, 0.07% of immigrants in China represents more people than the population of either France or Germany). You are not the first one stating this and it just feeds my narrative of people located in EU countries that are convinced that they have nothing to learn from anything that comes over the Atlantic, the Ural or the Mediterranean Sea, so nothing will ever improve nor be challenged.

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

#964

Post by lynx23 »

SkinTaco wrote: post #366
lynx23 wrote: post #360

Wow, I love this thread. Tons of expats talk to each other how bad the country they choose for living actually is. And on top of that, words like legally entitled fly by. If you don't like Germany (who is?) then move on. It was never a country particularily friendly to expats. Berlin might be different if you find your flock... Heck, I had friends from .at move to .de and totally fail to connect with people. Really,…

Classic - someone from the EU who regularly hates on the US is upset when people do it to their country. I always say: if you want to know the bad parts about America - Ask a European! They're the only ones who seem to know.

There is quite a big leap from perceived cureaucracy to the living practice of the death penalty. I think your comparison between EU and US is pretty much off. They are not in the same ballpark.

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

#965

Post by sternchenfee17 »

usr1106 wrote: post #420
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 am familiar with both German and Finnish bureaucracy. German bureaucracy is (in)famous for paperwork and using faxes. Citizens/residents have no unique identifier (more and more weakened recently) and need to present documentation for everything. If you have no paper birth certificate you are not born... Finland has had much higher digitalization for decades. You have a person number and authorities store everythin…

Try building a house in germany.

We've been arguing with authorities, send hundreds (not an exaggeration) of papers to different involved parties, but still, one and a half year after purchasing a bit of real estate, we are not even allowed to start building. This includes dozens of funny anecdotes, an example would be changed rules for the width of your fence gate - meaning that you have to scrap the old one and have someone build a completely new one because it was 3cm (!) to narrow. Of course, it would take weeks after applying for the building license before any of their concerns would be communicated to us.

I don't think digitalization would solve this. If you have a shitty process and digitalize it, you have a shitty digital process. I do think arbitrariness of the people involved at the government offices and the time it takes them to react is way more of an issue.

If you just give me a bunch of paper to fill in, with actually understandable instructions, that's fine. Digitalization would save me a day here because I'd get it directly, but that doesn't really help if it takes six weeks for the clerk to actually react.

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

#966

Post by fransje26 »

data_maan wrote: post #843
fransje26 wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't wait for the new Nigerian immigrant to swing his beer at Octoberfest arm in arm with the second generation Turk from Munich, all while the waitress, a temporary worker from the Czech Republic, rushes on. Wait, isn't that what's happening already? I'm pretty sure the temporary worker from the Czech Republic is there, as is the second generation Turk voting for Erdogan. Not fully sure about the Nigerian immig…

Indeed everyone is there. Except that no one is arms in arms with anyone - that was the point I wanted to make. The immigrants mostly live segregated along with their peers, and you rarely have the "melting pot", especially not at the lower socio-economic scale, from what I can see. And that is not good for fostering a collective spirit. The order-abiding nature of Germans collides with the people from country that a…

Yes, I agree. There will not be arms in arms carousing..

> The order-abiding nature of Germans collides with the people from country that are more used to bend the rules, so everyone is stressed and unhappy.

Ah, there is a bit of a cultural misunderstanding right there indeed. In Germany, what is not allowed is forbidden. You need a certain rigidity of mind to be able to think that way. In many other cultures, what is not forbidden is allowed. Meaning that a badly defined rule leaves lots of leeway for a bit of creative thinking. Those are two different worlds careening towards an inevitable collision course..

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

#967

Post by dark-star »

Symbiote wrote: post #217
dark-star wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A last-minute decision to be married before a baby is born. Being married can simplify other bureaucracy if the mother dies or is incapacitated.

A baby takes 9 months to develop, if you notice 2 days before birth that you should be married so that you don't have to adopt (or whatever other reason), that's just very poor planning on the parents' side.

And in actual emergencies, these processes can be accelerated, like every other buerocratic process in Germany

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

#968

Post by Aerroon »

fransje26 wrote: post #908
Aerroon wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But maybe those experts should've been raising alarm over this? Western Europe is doing pretty poorly when it comes to economic growth. And prior to that Germany got a lot of help from the US, Spain did not do well, Italy was questionable, Portugal did not do well. Netherlands did well, but a lot of it is down to their location as a place for trade. That only leaves France and Belgium. Did they do well? > We've been…

> That only leaves France and Belgium. Did they do well? Looking at France and the quality of their industrial output in the 70s to 90s, ranging from high-speed trains, rockets, passenger airplanes, Concorde, helicopters, (racing) cars, submarines, nuclear power plants, medical labs, etc. I would say yes. Their infrastructure has also been of high quality, so has the education system of their elites, and their health…

>France

France also has kind-of a colonial empire still going on. Could that have an effect?

>The house you are getting has not improved 3 fold in quality compared to 20 years ago

That's true, but there is likely the 80/20 principle at play. Every additional level of quality costs more and more to achieve. Not to mention that often the increase of quality isn't really noticeable. Eg lead paint vs not, better wiring (fewer house fires), better insulation (lower heating costs), better air circulation (less mold) etc.

You also have the problem of survivorship bias. The old homes that are still used today are the probably the better ones. The worse ones from back in the day just didn't last.

But all-in-all, I can only suggest reasons. I'm from a former Soviet state. Some of the transformations are that good. Eg sidewalk roads actually feel 2x better if not more. These days they are nice and smooth roads you could skateboard on. Back in the day I'm not sure I would even want to ride a bicycle on them because they looked like the surface of the moon. And clothes are much cheaper in relative terms and even in absolute terms. But I think this is an exception and not a general trend.

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

#969

Post by Major_Grooves »

I experienced the same thing, and wrote nearly the same article two years ago: https://major-grooves.medium.com/just-how-complicated-could-...

Yes I know we can register a UG, but in the end you don't. And it is not just the share capital that is annoying it is everything else.

It literally costs 10x more to do the bookkeeping for a German company vs a UK one. Plus getting investors is much more difficult because of the notary requirements.

We used a SPV for our first round, but even that is annoying. I had some angel investors pull out purely because we are a German GmbH.

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

#970

Post by usr1106 »

Propelloni wrote: post #826
ben_w wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The data is published in English as well. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Home/_node.html Dankeschön. If I'm reading this right (I may not be, see previous comment: I am not an economist), half of the revenue is spend on social security: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Government/Public-Finance/... This is weirdly out of date, I don't know why the link was to a URL from 2013 whose content is about 2017, but it says fo…

Das ist eine Übersetzung des Oscar Wilde Zitats.

Oscar-Wilde-Zitats
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