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Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

maxkle.in

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Re: Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

#11

Post by varjag »

jacquesm wrote: post #5

When in China, do as the Chinese do. If you want to really get off the ground there you'll need to partner with a local that knows the ways things are done, which is not always intuitive from a 'westerner' point of view. A friend of mine is currently going this route and there are a few other HN'ers that are doing this, maybe you guys should get together somehow and compare notes. That might save everybody both hards…

Absolutely what Jacques said. Don't even think about getting there without a local hand.

Re: Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

#12

Post by towndrunk »

maxklein wrote: post #6
adamsmith wrote: post #4

having been in all three places, you should leave europe to start your company. but move to silicon valley instead.

I wish this were possible, but the difficulty in doing this is massive. If you are not U.S born, it's QUITE difficult to simply walk in and start a company in the U.S. And you'd spend a lot of time just solving those problems, and have a lot less time to setup your company. In comparison, I landed in china on thursday. Today is monday, and I have a fully furnished office (with furniture I selected myself), an assista…

Where in China are you setting up?

Re: Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

#14

Post by decadentcactus »

varjag wrote: post #2

It reads incredibly naive, but I wish the author the best of luck. He should however be prepared that drawbacks of Chinese way of doing business sometimes outweigh its advantages.

To me it seems that the post almost solely focuses on Europe's negatives and China's positives as well.

Re: Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

#15

Post by decadentcactus »

sirrocco wrote: post #13

What I don't like in the article is the accent that is put on the advantages of the entrepreneur and little accent on the employee. It's great that you can fire people when you want, but it sucks if you're the one getting fired.

Me either, seems to go from one extreme ("Can't touch the employee") to another ("Yeah you can dump them if they dress badly"). I'm hoping to attribute it to just the way it's written though but it does come across like you said.

Re: Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

#16

Post by davidw »

sirrocco wrote: post #13

What I don't like in the article is the accent that is put on the advantages of the entrepreneur and little accent on the employee. It's great that you can fire people when you want, but it sucks if you're the one getting fired.

Well; yes and no. If it's really difficult to fire people, like it is in many places in Europe, hiring is also less likely to happen. People tend to cling to jobs once they have attained 'unfireable' status.

An alternative solution: make firing people easy, but provide some support to those who get fired. That has costs and benefits too, and is a discussion probably best left to another site. Its main benefit is that it moves the provisioning of "social assistance" from companies, who are no longer forced to hold on to unproductive/unneeded workers, to the government.

Re: Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

#17

Post by maxklein »

towndrunk wrote: post #12
maxklein wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this were possible, but the difficulty in doing this is massive. If you are not U.S born, it's QUITE difficult to simply walk in and start a company in the U.S. And you'd spend a lot of time just solving those problems, and have a lot less time to setup your company. In comparison, I landed in china on thursday. Today is monday, and I have a fully furnished office (with furniture I selected myself), an assista…

Where in China are you setting up?

Shenzhen, beside Hong Kong.

Re: Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

#18

Post by arethuza »

decadentcactus wrote: post #14
varjag wrote: post #2

It reads incredibly naive, but I wish the author the best of luck. He should however be prepared that drawbacks of Chinese way of doing business sometimes outweigh its advantages.

To me it seems that the post almost solely focuses on Europe's negatives and China's positives as well.

I think anyone who is taking the ballsy step of moving from Europe to China is likely to focus on things that way round.

I wish him well in his new venture, even though I'm quite content to stay here in boring old Europe.

Re: Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

#19

Post by patrickg »

"These rules are also very difficult to discover and very difficult to implement correctly. From the situation with healthcare for your employees through to filing your taxes correctly, the amount of paperwork is insane and complex."

Sorry, but reading this is raising a question if the author of this blog article has experienced this himself or just hearing about it. The bigger your company is, the more complex tax forms and other things will become. But as a small startup company it is very easy to do taxes etc. You don't even have to fill out a standardized form for declaring your business income if you are a small company (EÜR in Germany). I was afraid of all this as well, but starting the company here is really easy, there are a lot of government/local institutions that help you with everything, even the IRS answers your questions if you have any.

I cannot judge on the other things, but they sound - as other said here - like the other grass is always greener.

Re: Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

#20

Post by desigooner »

maxklein wrote: post #6
adamsmith wrote: post #4

having been in all three places, you should leave europe to start your company. but move to silicon valley instead.

I wish this were possible, but the difficulty in doing this is massive. If you are not U.S born, it's QUITE difficult to simply walk in and start a company in the U.S. And you'd spend a lot of time just solving those problems, and have a lot less time to setup your company. In comparison, I landed in china on thursday. Today is monday, and I have a fully furnished office (with furniture I selected myself), an assista…

while the Startup Visa is a good thing, it's still difficult for people (who are not born here or who don't possess a GC) to start a venture here. Even with the startup visa, there's a lot at stake and a lot of pressure to meet the demands about a certain $ of investment, turnover, operating capital, etc. Not every startup is going to fulfill those criteria right off the bat and the cost of failure is too high.

That's one of the reasons why I'm thinking of moving to India or somewhere Singapore/ Hong Kong in the near future.

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