4 ms·

It’s not imbecilic, it’s actually a very real effect. If you want to innovate, why bother in Europe? Taxes are high, VC funding is impossible, the workforce is

It’s not imbecilic, it’s actually a very real effect. If you want to innovate, why bother in Europe? Taxes are high, VC funding is impossible, the workforce is going to spend half the time working as an American. A friend of mine tried to start a startup in Germany and he said his only option to raise money was to go to a bank for a loan, which would only be approved if he had a profitable company. He moved to the US.

grugagag 2y ago
The siren call is entrepreneurship. But overall how many people win this game and how many people just want normal lives? We tend to hear stories of winners but not so much of wrecked lives.
snowpid 2y ago
" VC funding is impossible ". Sorry but wrong.
noodlesUK 2y ago
On a contrary note, many more of my circle in the UK are running small businesses than their peers in the US. N.B. the distinction between startup and small business. The US is not a very friendly place to run a small agency or an artist's studio - here in the UK it costs a few pounds to register a company (or nothing as a sole trader), and doing accountancy and compliance is WAY easier. It's fairly simple to employ someone in the UK, but it's hard in the US without a league of accountants and lawyers behind you - hence why stuff like Stripe Atlas exists. I wouldn't run a business in the US with revenue below 150k.
- iteria 2y ago
  I am so confused by this comment. Accounting software for small businesses is standard. Quick books is so ubiquitous and it's dirt cheap and supposed to be operated by a lay person. There are whole professions here are almost exclusively small businesses. Trucking being a decent call out. I know several moonlighting tech people who spun up single person businesses using a template and carried on that way for years just using very basic accounting software. They do contracts and everything on their own. I have an aunt who has spun up several businesses doing business with the actual federal government and she's never had more than an accountant she has check her receipts for taxes. She has no background in anything and somehow was able to launch these businesses. I have writer friends and artist friends who have LLCs. I've never heard anything like what you're talking about. I don't know anything about the UK, but it most certainly is not hard to spin up a business in the US.
  - noodlesUK 2y ago
    I agree about QuickBooks being good for small businesses. Perhaps I've just been so personally burned by how complicated US compliance is from outside (form 5471 and friends being a personal boogeyman of mine) that I've missed that it's quite easy to do business inside the US. I am aware that you have to do stuff like file as a foreign business if you do business between multiple states. I don't like that you have to pay a private monopoly company (Intuit) to stand a chance of being compliant with your tax obligations over there.
frognumber 2y ago
That's not universally true in Europe. One of the upsides of doing a startup in parts of Eastern Europe, for example, is the ability to self-fund even for normal people. Cost-of-living is ultralow, since medicine is free, housing is cheap and available (at least outside of major cities), public transit is cheap and works, education works without private schools / tutoring, etc. Basically, $10k / year gets you the good life. And if you screw up, the safety net means there's not too far to fall; you land on your feet and try again. That's a very favorable climate to bootstrap a business in. You do see a lot of entrepreneurship from there of that type. It's not US-style big tech, but it works well. Your odds of building Google are low, but your odds of building a self-sustaining small-to-midsize business which you own are quite reasonable. The latter of those is likely a better thing to aim for. If your goal is to raise $100M, give up 98% of equity to investors, and have the business explode or implode, Silicon Valley is the place to do it. Not everyone wants to get on that ride, though.
latexr 2y ago
> If you want to innovate, why bother in Europe? Taxes are high, VC funding is impossible, the workforce is going to spend half the time working as an American. What you’re talking about is starting a company, not innovation. The value of innovation isn’t measured by “how much money can I make from this”. The World Wide Web was intended in Europe. So were the first truly popular music streaming and VoIP services.

grugagag 2y ago

The siren call is entrepreneurship. But overall how many people win this game and how many people just want normal lives? We tend to hear stories of winners but not so much of wrecked lives.

snowpid 2y ago

" VC funding is impossible ". Sorry but wrong.

noodlesUK 2y ago

On a contrary note, many more of my circle in the UK are running small businesses than their peers in the US. N.B. the distinction between startup and small business. The US is not a very friendly place to run a small agency or an artist's studio - here in the UK it costs a few pounds to register a company (or nothing as a sole trader), and doing accountancy and compliance is WAY easier. It's fairly simple to employ someone in the UK, but it's hard in the US without a league of accountants and lawyers behind you - hence why stuff like Stripe Atlas exists. I wouldn't run a business in the US with revenue below 150k.

iteria 2y ago
I am so confused by this comment. Accounting software for small businesses is standard. Quick books is so ubiquitous and it's dirt cheap and supposed to be operated by a lay person. There are whole professions here are almost exclusively small businesses. Trucking being a decent call out. I know several moonlighting tech people who spun up single person businesses using a template and carried on that way for years just using very basic accounting software. They do contracts and everything on their own. I have an aunt who has spun up several businesses doing business with the actual federal government and she's never had more than an accountant she has check her receipts for taxes. She has no background in anything and somehow was able to launch these businesses. I have writer friends and artist friends who have LLCs. I've never heard anything like what you're talking about. I don't know anything about the UK, but it most certainly is not hard to spin up a business in the US.
- noodlesUK 2y ago
  I agree about QuickBooks being good for small businesses. Perhaps I've just been so personally burned by how complicated US compliance is from outside (form 5471 and friends being a personal boogeyman of mine) that I've missed that it's quite easy to do business inside the US. I am aware that you have to do stuff like file as a foreign business if you do business between multiple states. I don't like that you have to pay a private monopoly company (Intuit) to stand a chance of being compliant with your tax obligations over there.

frognumber 2y ago

That's not universally true in Europe. One of the upsides of doing a startup in parts of Eastern Europe, for example, is the ability to self-fund even for normal people. Cost-of-living is ultralow, since medicine is free, housing is cheap and available (at least outside of major cities), public transit is cheap and works, education works without private schools / tutoring, etc. Basically, $10k / year gets you the good life. And if you screw up, the safety net means there's not too far to fall; you land on your feet and try again. That's a very favorable climate to bootstrap a business in. You do see a lot of entrepreneurship from there of that type. It's not US-style big tech, but it works well. Your odds of building Google are low, but your odds of building a self-sustaining small-to-midsize business which you own are quite reasonable. The latter of those is likely a better thing to aim for. If your goal is to raise $100M, give up 98% of equity to investors, and have the business explode or implode, Silicon Valley is the place to do it. Not everyone wants to get on that ride, though.

latexr 2y ago

> If you want to innovate, why bother in Europe? Taxes are high, VC funding is impossible, the workforce is going to spend half the time working as an American. What you’re talking about is starting a company, not innovation. The value of innovation isn’t measured by “how much money can I make from this”. The World Wide Web was intended in Europe. So were the first truly popular music streaming and VoIP services.