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And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless democracy" is insidious at best. Well, GP wrote "endless bureaucracy" not "endless democracy", unless the

And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless democracy" is insidious at best. Well, GP wrote "endless bureaucracy" not "endless democracy", unless the comment has been edited. And that, IMNSHO as someone who has founded tech businesses here, is entirely fair criticism. The environment created by all those regulations is insanely hostile to tech entrepreneurship, and it's not as if many of those regulations are well considered or effective at protecting vulnerable groups anyway. The worst part is, I'm not convinced anyone deep inside the EU corridors of power even realises this is what they are doing. If the first step in solving a problem is understanding that it exists, the EU is still at step 0.

varispeed 5y ago
You have companies that specialise in creating "start ups" that get tax payer funding, ride the money wave out and then close. Usually they put homeless people in suits to act as CEOs. One business folds, they create another one. Then governments complain the public purse is shrinking and there is no economic growth.
- rusk 5y ago
  Please add some details or citation to this. It’s a fascinating idea and I’d like to know more. I mean YC is literally in the business of startup businesses but your whole remark about the homeless guys has thrown me perhaps it needs \/s?
- Silhouette 5y ago
  IMHO, the taxpayer funding aspect is a red herring anyway. There is no reason that a small team of founders or even a solo founder should not be able to start and grow a tech/software business well. The natural barriers to entry are very low in this industry. If you have a useful idea, the technical skills to implement it, and the willingness to try, you should never need lots of external help to build a viable business. Obviously there are advantages to taking substantial external investment or other funding, and doing so usually also comes with strings attached. You have to weigh up whether the cost/benefit is favourable. But in a tech/software business, this should primarily be useful for accelerating the success of a business already destined to be successful. We're not talking about manufacturing where you need to pay for factory facilities and supply chains of physical materials and other big up-front costs before you can start creating value yourself that you can charge for. The reason it is increasingly difficult for any small founding team to actually do that in much of Europe has a lot more to do with regulatory barriers and red tape than lack of funding. No startup is going to perform well if someone keeps distracting the people building it and making them do things that aren't directly adding value.
  - estaseuropano 5y ago
    I see this comment a lot but I have never seen any evidence for this. What exactly is the barrier that a tech startup faces in Europe vs US? Which regulations are in the way (and are they EU or national ones)? There is a lot of bs thrown around e.g. GDPR is far from evil or bothersome, as well funded lobby groups have made it out to be. You don't need cookie warnings if you use cookies to log your users in, only if you sell your users out to google and other analytics companies. You are obliged to have unsubscribe links in your emails to users. You have to provide and delete data you hold on specific users if requested. From a few hundred thousand users you need a data controller which is for ally responsible to watch out for data breaches (this is just an identified person, not a full time post). What's the big deal? Much more stifling are e.g. the processes to register a company in the country you are based in or to get a bank account, and of course Europe's language diversity shrinks the potential reach so most that want to scale do so in English and then find it convenient to have offices e.g. in the US or UK.
    - Silhouette 5y ago
      I see this comment a lot but I have never seen any evidence for this. While this is not intended as a criticism of you personally, you have ironically just demonstrated a big part of the problem. I might reply that I have seen this response a lot, no matter how often I have previously given detailed examples, sometimes even in the same forum. A lot of people who haven't themselves tried to run a business in this environment are almost completely unaware of the hassle it can be. Here in the UK, this is a particularly poignant issue because of the poor quality of "debate" around Brexit a few years ago. Now, to answer your question, here are a few of the different barriers a new tech business would face here in the UK right now. 1. It's been difficult-to-impossible to open a new business bank account for the past several months. The big banks have (they claim) been so busy administering government support schemes for existing business customers that they couldn't take on any more. Government have been mostly ineffective at dealing with this problem. 2. To hire anyone (other than owner-directors, when some of this might not apply) means drawing up employment contracts with all the required elements, establishing formal grievance and disciplinary processes, being aware of numerous employment regulations, arranging all required insurance policies, identifying what evidence you need to keep to confirm a candidate's legal right to work for you, understanding any relevant minimum wages and time off including many kinds of statutory leave and pay, understanding your health and safety obligations including things you must say/provide/fund for your employee, establishing a payroll system and integrating that with the government's real-time information system if you haven't already done this, setting up a compliant company pension scheme if you haven't already done this, and who knows what else because this sentence is already half a screen long. 3. All of your personal data processing needs to be GDPR compliant. Its defenders like to say this isn't a big burden because it "just" means you have to do a few reasonable-looking things they can type out in a single comment. However, the main GDPR document alone is nearly 100 pages long and that's before you consider all the supporting material and the views of 28 different regulators. One of these things is not the same scale as the other. 4. If you're selling B2C, the consumer rights rules will apply. Again, on the face of it, that's fine. Who can object to fair protections for consumers, right? But when you actually read them, they are full of things that aren't well considered, like defaults that probably no-one would ever want, long and highly context-sensitive lists of information that must be provided at different times, obscenely disproportionate penalties for minor infractions by merchants, etc. 5. VAT. I'm not going to elaborate much, though I could write a pretty long book on the subject at this point. You're welcome to Google the numerous extensive criticisms out there. I suggest starting with #vatmess. Pay particular attention to how the EU changed the rules so what used to be a single market where merchants treated customers anywhere in Europe the same as in their home country got turned into a situation where merchants had to understand and comply with the tax rates and rules in every one of 28 member states. This is literally the opposite of the EU promise of creating a single market. 6. The IP landscape is unclear. Attempts to standardise it have repeatedly failed. No-one really knows what you can or can't get a patent for, or even what types of inventions you can or can't get a patent for. Copyright rules differ significantly with geographical location, and in some places additional related rights exist. 7. Lots of relatively minor stuff like the "cookie law", which is a tiny and yet totemic issue. It was well-intentioned but written by people who didn't really understand the technology and its implications. It doesn't do much to protect anyone. It annoys almost everyone. Non-compliance is widespread, whether deliberately or through simple misunderstanding or ignorance of what is technically required. There is little enforcement in practice, so operators who do make the effort to comply are left at a disadvantage. And years later, all of this still hasn't been properly fixed even though just about everyone agrees on it. Edit to add: 8. How could I forget PSD2/SCA? There's nothing like putting obstacles in the way of actually collecting money from your customers to help a business grow.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
> And that, IMNSHO as someone who has founded tech businesses here, is entirely fair criticism. The environment created by all those regulations is insanely hostile to tech entrepreneurship, and it's not as if many of those regulations are well considered or effective at protecting vulnerable groups anyway. yup. Many different rules in eu countries, fscked up tax rules for companies trading with foreing customers, high taxes for relatively well paid tech workers, and high cost of entry into the business is killing european businesses. Even starting a business is hard... I hear a lot of people from USA who (eg.) find a old t-shirt printing press in a yard sale, and start their own t-shirt printing business, fill out some forms, sell 7 tshirts in two years, mostly to family, and then stop doing it. Just being able to letally sell a t-shirt in many eu states will cost you thousands and thousands of euros, where it's just not worth it to start. Wanna make an app by yourself and host the backend on a $5 digitalocean VM? Sure... but do it for free. Want to earn something? If you have just a few dollars of income, it's not worth it... you need a lot of users paying you a lot of money to pay the government fees, even if you work for free.

varispeed 5y ago

You have companies that specialise in creating "start ups" that get tax payer funding, ride the money wave out and then close. Usually they put homeless people in suits to act as CEOs. One business folds, they create another one. Then governments complain the public purse is shrinking and there is no economic growth.

rusk 5y ago
Please add some details or citation to this. It’s a fascinating idea and I’d like to know more. I mean YC is literally in the business of startup businesses but your whole remark about the homeless guys has thrown me perhaps it needs \/s?
Silhouette 5y ago
IMHO, the taxpayer funding aspect is a red herring anyway. There is no reason that a small team of founders or even a solo founder should not be able to start and grow a tech/software business well. The natural barriers to entry are very low in this industry. If you have a useful idea, the technical skills to implement it, and the willingness to try, you should never need lots of external help to build a viable business. Obviously there are advantages to taking substantial external investment or other funding, and doing so usually also comes with strings attached. You have to weigh up whether the cost/benefit is favourable. But in a tech/software business, this should primarily be useful for accelerating the success of a business already destined to be successful. We're not talking about manufacturing where you need to pay for factory facilities and supply chains of physical materials and other big up-front costs before you can start creating value yourself that you can charge for. The reason it is increasingly difficult for any small founding team to actually do that in much of Europe has a lot more to do with regulatory barriers and red tape than lack of funding. No startup is going to perform well if someone keeps distracting the people building it and making them do things that aren't directly adding value.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  I see this comment a lot but I have never seen any evidence for this. What exactly is the barrier that a tech startup faces in Europe vs US? Which regulations are in the way (and are they EU or national ones)? There is a lot of bs thrown around e.g. GDPR is far from evil or bothersome, as well funded lobby groups have made it out to be. You don't need cookie warnings if you use cookies to log your users in, only if you sell your users out to google and other analytics companies. You are obliged to have unsubscribe links in your emails to users. You have to provide and delete data you hold on specific users if requested. From a few hundred thousand users you need a data controller which is for ally responsible to watch out for data breaches (this is just an identified person, not a full time post). What's the big deal? Much more stifling are e.g. the processes to register a company in the country you are based in or to get a bank account, and of course Europe's language diversity shrinks the potential reach so most that want to scale do so in English and then find it convenient to have offices e.g. in the US or UK.
  - Silhouette 5y ago
    I see this comment a lot but I have never seen any evidence for this. While this is not intended as a criticism of you personally, you have ironically just demonstrated a big part of the problem. I might reply that I have seen this response a lot, no matter how often I have previously given detailed examples, sometimes even in the same forum. A lot of people who haven't themselves tried to run a business in this environment are almost completely unaware of the hassle it can be. Here in the UK, this is a particularly poignant issue because of the poor quality of "debate" around Brexit a few years ago. Now, to answer your question, here are a few of the different barriers a new tech business would face here in the UK right now. 1. It's been difficult-to-impossible to open a new business bank account for the past several months. The big banks have (they claim) been so busy administering government support schemes for existing business customers that they couldn't take on any more. Government have been mostly ineffective at dealing with this problem. 2. To hire anyone (other than owner-directors, when some of this might not apply) means drawing up employment contracts with all the required elements, establishing formal grievance and disciplinary processes, being aware of numerous employment regulations, arranging all required insurance policies, identifying what evidence you need to keep to confirm a candidate's legal right to work for you, understanding any relevant minimum wages and time off including many kinds of statutory leave and pay, understanding your health and safety obligations including things you must say/provide/fund for your employee, establishing a payroll system and integrating that with the government's real-time information system if you haven't already done this, setting up a compliant company pension scheme if you haven't already done this, and who knows what else because this sentence is already half a screen long. 3. All of your personal data processing needs to be GDPR compliant. Its defenders like to say this isn't a big burden because it "just" means you have to do a few reasonable-looking things they can type out in a single comment. However, the main GDPR document alone is nearly 100 pages long and that's before you consider all the supporting material and the views of 28 different regulators. One of these things is not the same scale as the other. 4. If you're selling B2C, the consumer rights rules will apply. Again, on the face of it, that's fine. Who can object to fair protections for consumers, right? But when you actually read them, they are full of things that aren't well considered, like defaults that probably no-one would ever want, long and highly context-sensitive lists of information that must be provided at different times, obscenely disproportionate penalties for minor infractions by merchants, etc. 5. VAT. I'm not going to elaborate much, though I could write a pretty long book on the subject at this point. You're welcome to Google the numerous extensive criticisms out there. I suggest starting with #vatmess. Pay particular attention to how the EU changed the rules so what used to be a single market where merchants treated customers anywhere in Europe the same as in their home country got turned into a situation where merchants had to understand and comply with the tax rates and rules in every one of 28 member states. This is literally the opposite of the EU promise of creating a single market. 6. The IP landscape is unclear. Attempts to standardise it have repeatedly failed. No-one really knows what you can or can't get a patent for, or even what types of inventions you can or can't get a patent for. Copyright rules differ significantly with geographical location, and in some places additional related rights exist. 7. Lots of relatively minor stuff like the "cookie law", which is a tiny and yet totemic issue. It was well-intentioned but written by people who didn't really understand the technology and its implications. It doesn't do much to protect anyone. It annoys almost everyone. Non-compliance is widespread, whether deliberately or through simple misunderstanding or ignorance of what is technically required. There is little enforcement in practice, so operators who do make the effort to comply are left at a disadvantage. And years later, all of this still hasn't been properly fixed even though just about everyone agrees on it. Edit to add: 8. How could I forget PSD2/SCA? There's nothing like putting obstacles in the way of actually collecting money from your customers to help a business grow.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

> And that, IMNSHO as someone who has founded tech businesses here, is entirely fair criticism. The environment created by all those regulations is insanely hostile to tech entrepreneurship, and it's not as if many of those regulations are well considered or effective at protecting vulnerable groups anyway. yup. Many different rules in eu countries, fscked up tax rules for companies trading with foreing customers, high taxes for relatively well paid tech workers, and high cost of entry into the business is killing european businesses. Even starting a business is hard... I hear a lot of people from USA who (eg.) find a old t-shirt printing press in a yard sale, and start their own t-shirt printing business, fill out some forms, sell 7 tshirts in two years, mostly to family, and then stop doing it. Just being able to letally sell a t-shirt in many eu states will cost you thousands and thousands of euros, where it's just not worth it to start. Wanna make an app by yourself and host the backend on a $5 digitalocean VM? Sure... but do it for free. Want to earn something? If you have just a few dollars of income, it's not worth it... you need a lot of users paying you a lot of money to pay the government fees, even if you work for free.