A fair while back a startup in Rome that I am very familiar with had lots of fun setting up there. They were a highly scrupulous group, and besides they were g

A fair while back a startup in Rome that I am very familiar with had lots of fun setting up there. They were a highly scrupulous group, and besides they were going after government contracts, so they paid all of their taxes and regulatory fees, which in Italy is both a financial and incredibly complicated bureaucratic mess that, to be honest, many people and startups simply, um, avoid. They also had to deal with all sorts of absurdities. For example, they needed high speed landline internet: at the time the only option in their area (Trastevere) was Telecom Italia (TI, now TIM), the government-associated telephone monopoly. To get internet service, you had to start paying TI as if you had service, and then when they got around to it they'd come by and hook you up. So they did this. Three months later they were still paying and still hadn't gotten service. They complained to TI and were told that someone had come out but couldn't find their office because "Trastevere has twisty streets and is complicated". TI said this. They were then put in the back of the queue and had to wait for another three months, until the same thing happened again. As I understand it, it took them almost nine months to get internet service. All along they ran the entire company on cell phone internet plans.