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Italia Startup Visa

italiastartupvisa.mise.gov.it

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Re: Italia Startup Visa

#61

Post by drtse4 »

gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

I'm italian myself and not a fan of how a boatload of things works in Italy, but the reference to the criminality just sounds like something straight out of the Sopranos, which it's quite far from reality in every productive region of the country.

The issues related to fiscal pressure and the perceived lack of rule of law are instead quite real (see every independent ranking about corruption or ease of doing business).

A startup visa program without a serious effort to fix these obvious issues (something that should be done beforehand) is useless.

I've read the summary of the new policies, not enough numbers and details, i hope to find the full document somewhere.

Also, intriguing the fact that you need to show that you have at least 50k in pre-existing founding to partecipate to the program, it make sense to add some filtering criteria but i'm not sure how many new startups will qualify.

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#62

Post by [deleted] »

harrygold wrote: post #24
gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

My Italian ex-roomates/friends (Italian 30-something entrepreneurs living here in L.A.) echo many these sentiments you write. No matter how much they love their country and families they are living (and creating) here and in New York for many of the reasons you mention above.

[deleted]

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#63

Post by raverbashing »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #56
danmaz74 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was lucky not have the pleasure of such acquaintances but don't worry, if you become large enough or successful enough, they will come to you. I'm Italian too, live in Italy, and I'm really sick of this ill-informed self-disparaging attitude from so many Italians. There are millions of Italians who will say "I haven't personally never been touched by this, I don't even know anybody who was personally touched by i…

Italy is ranked as more corrupt than Brazil, South Africa and Bulgaria. It has very serious problems with crime and corruption. http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results#myAnchor1

Don't believe in any ranking blindly, also

The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be

It's a PERCEPTIONS rank.

"Very serious problems with crime" compared to what?

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#64

Post by aliem »

danmaz74 wrote: post #27
gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

> I was lucky not have the pleasure of such acquaintances but don't worry, if you become large enough or successful enough, they will come to you. I'm Italian too, live in Italy, and I'm really sick of this ill-informed self-disparaging attitude from so many Italians. There are millions of Italians who will say "I haven't personally never been touched by this, I don't even know anybody who was personally touched by i…

I can assure you, corruption is the least of our problems in our country.

As stated by gruturo the real problems are taxes, inadequate laws, infrastructure (for example cable connection is scarce even in the bigger cities) and finally economic issues.

I was born in Italy and I love my country, but I had to move to a different country to be able to work and being payed for my work.

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#65

Post by svzdvd »

DaniFong wrote: post #19
gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

"the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it." Hmm. Why not go there, write some code for the broader world, start the business somewhere else?

It's simple: because if you live here, you have to pay taxes here. A lot of taxes. And the Italian equivalent of IRS can just come to you and say that you don't pay enough, you're presumed guilty and you'll have to accept to pay a fine or try to prove you're innocent in court (which could take years).

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#66

Post by Lucadg »

gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

As an Italian running a business focused on Italy I can only agree: RUN. I basically begged to be able to run my online company in Italy. No way. I had to emigrate to Germany instead and I've paid taxes there for more than 10 years. Hell, I even paid for the reconstruction of Eastern Germany. Just go to some Selection Day in any Italian incubator and you'll witness how fiscal and regulatory issues are discussed more often than the business model itself. Or try to discuss a start-up idea with an italian and count the seconds before he tells you "how about taxes? how about the regulation?". It's a broken platform.

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#67

Post by napolux »

gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

As italian, I second this. Stay away from Italy if you want to do business.

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#68

Post by vidarh »

harrygold wrote: post #24
gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

My Italian ex-roomates/friends (Italian 30-something entrepreneurs living here in L.A.) echo many these sentiments you write. No matter how much they love their country and families they are living (and creating) here and in New York for many of the reasons you mention above.

As an expat myself, you would expect expats on average to be substantially more inclined to be critical of their home countries than others: After all we left.

Not all of us left because we were unhappy, but almost all of us left because we for one reason or other saw more opportunity elsewhere (e.g. in my case I left because getting larger financing for my startup at the time was easier in the UK). We're on average likely to be horrible misrepresentative of our countries as a whole.

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#69

Post by davidw »

riffraff wrote: post #47
Fede_V wrote: post #40

Ehh, I thought I was negative about Italy, but seeing what everyone else is saying, I'm probably the most positive person here. The pros: - There are some absolutely excellent open source developers who can be hired much more cheaply than the US. - Life is excellent. Italy is a really beautiful country. - Lots of incredibly low hanging fruits. Italy has a lot of great companies that makes excellent products the entir…

> Public sector contracts are given to people who are completely incompetent but well connected to be fair, I believe this to be the case about everywhere. I.e. the Oregon healthcare site fiasco[0] seems straight out of italian newspapers. [0] http://www.wired.com/2014/03/oracle-oregon/

I can comment on this, being from Oregon and living in Italy:-)

Basically, this kind of thing happens everywhere. It just happens more in some places.

Back to this:

> - There are some absolutely excellent open source developers who can be hired much more cheaply than the US.

I can confirm this. I think a valid strategy would be to open up the main office somewhere else, and do some R&D in Italy. There are good developers who don't cost as much as elsewhere.

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#70

Post by tobltobs »

aliem wrote: post #64
danmaz74 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was lucky not have the pleasure of such acquaintances but don't worry, if you become large enough or successful enough, they will come to you. I'm Italian too, live in Italy, and I'm really sick of this ill-informed self-disparaging attitude from so many Italians. There are millions of Italians who will say "I haven't personally never been touched by this, I don't even know anybody who was personally touched by i…

I can assure you, corruption is the least of our problems in our country. As stated by gruturo the real problems are taxes, inadequate laws, infrastructure (for example cable connection is scarce even in the bigger cities) and finally economic issues. I was born in Italy and I love my country, but I had to move to a different country to be able to work and being payed for my work.

In Italy corruption is not a problem, it is the only tool to solve problems with the bureaucracy.
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