Before Europe gets lumped in as one country, founding a company in Netherlands and Sweden, speaking from personal experience, is a breeze. Although Sweden is a bit strange in the fact that banks have as much equal say as the government authority does in you starting a company, and if they don't want you as a customer, they can simply deny the right for your company to start!
Legally, the banks in Sweden have no right to deny anybody as a customer. This is explicit in the law as a requirement for the bank to be covered by government depositors insurance. In practice banks will deny anybody to open an account, for no reason at all, because they are above the law in Sweden. The country has for a long time been owned by a few powerful banker families. Edit: Down voters might first want to lo…
Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
491–500 of 789 posts
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany, France and Spain are some of the biggest offenders here. Some years ago a case became quite famous in Spain. Someone wanted to turn a winery into a eco-tourism boutique hotel with a winery tour and experience. Should be simple in theory, in practice they were waiting for authorization to open for more than 4 years. I’ve been involved with startups and small businesses for more than a decade, and I haven’t st…
> Someone wanted to turn a winery into a eco-tourism boutique hotel with a winery tour and experience. Because a agricultural business and a hotel business are two different things, and Spain has, rightfully so, their thumb on the spread of tourism, because it affects local communities negatively. Otherwise investors could just come in, buy a random agriculture business and then turn it into luxury hotels/lodging. >…
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
It didn't actually click for me until this post that there was an actual US State called Delaware. I just thought it was a type of company.
Sure, a Delaware Corporation, like a Long Island Iced Tea.
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A company that starts with nothing wouldn't be a GmbH (limited liability company), it would be a GoH (company without liability), and there's a good reason why those don't exist... Those do exist in other countries. An LLC in the USA does not generally need to have a certain amount of assets. Such a company is more or less without liability until it has some assets; the worst case for its owners when it comes to a…
We have an UG for that. A GmbH is simply the wrong legal form for that sort of thing. You can create an UG with a single Euro on the bank account (and then immediately go bankrupt once you need to pay the notary).
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#495> Which leaves the only real question. Why 25,000 at all? It is my company and my risk. If I want to start with nothing, that is my call, not a toll the state collects before it will let me try. And the cheap door has a price of its own: to some clients, “UG” reads as “not serious,” and they would rather deal with a GmbH. The structure built to let me in quietly marks me for using it. The 25,000 is there to make sure…
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Germany getting 25k as a working adult is hard, because before taxes and social security that's 50k you need to earn. Thats more then an average person earns in a year before taxes , so they'll likely be saving for 5-10 years if they want to start one. Now wherever that's an issue with the 25k admission fee OR with the fact that wages have stagnated for about 25 years in Germany, consequently mostly wiping out the…
> In Germany getting 25k as a working adult is hard German median household wealth is 4x that.
This estimate includes things like a car, a partially paid off house and other assets.
Most of that wealth cannot easily be converted to cash which you'd need to start a company.
Also that's median. Germany is a country with a median age of 45. So yeah, someone who likely worked for 20+ years will likely have saved around 100k, I don't think you realize how that's an argument in favor of what I just stated...
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#497it is very funny that most of the (presumably germans) in the comments are saying "it's not that bad and it's fine because you chose a complicated LLC structure"
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#498Germany feels like the government tries to make everything as hard and complicated as possible, to block ANY steps forward. It feels like organized sabotage to me.
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany, France and Spain are some of the biggest offenders here. Some years ago a case became quite famous in Spain. Someone wanted to turn a winery into a eco-tourism boutique hotel with a winery tour and experience. Should be simple in theory, in practice they were waiting for authorization to open for more than 4 years. I’ve been involved with startups and small businesses for more than a decade, and I haven’t st…
> Someone wanted to turn a winery into a eco-tourism boutique hotel with a winery tour and experience. Because a agricultural business and a hotel business are two different things, and Spain has, rightfully so, their thumb on the spread of tourism, because it affects local communities negatively. Otherwise investors could just come in, buy a random agriculture business and then turn it into luxury hotels/lodging. >…
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that so? In Germany for example, you have a legal right to return anything you purchased via a remote means of communication - so e.g., the internet, or a phone call - free of charge, within two weeks, and it must be simple to do so; if a vendor tries to obfuscate how to cancel a purchase contract, you can simply write them an email.
yeah most US companies have return policies of 30 days or more, no questions asked.