3 ms·
Opening an office in a new state may be just as difficult as opening an office in a new country, but my sense is that both a) selling to the entire US and b) hi
by lmm 1y ago
Opening an office in a new state may be just as difficult as opening an office in a new country, but my sense is that both a) selling to the entire US and b) hiring employees from the entire US (with the requirement to relocate to the state where you operate) are substantially easier than doing the same things across the entire EU.
- knorker 1y agoTo be clear, I don't just mean opening a physical office. I also mean the cost of having your first remote worker who lives and works from another state. For employee relocation, that's definitely true. Even moving from Hawaii to Alaska is less of a life change than Spain to Poland. Or hell, probably even Spain to Portugal. I'm surprised to hear you say selling would be that hard, though. It'd be interesting to see a comparison. And there's also both B2C and B2B.
- lmm 1y ago> I'm surprised to hear you say selling would be that hard, though. It'd be interesting to see a comparison. And there's also both B2C and B2B. I'm getting out of my depth, so this is more vibes than concrete knowledge, but: Selling goods isn't that hard in the EU, but you do have to be set up to collect VAT at a different rate depending on where the customer is from, which is a barrier, whereas I think in the US you can just tell the customer that they've got an obligation to pay sales tax in their state? (I remember Amazon battling about this at one point, but I think the states backed down). Selling services cross-border is a nightmare, there's still not really any standardisation of what licenses etc. you need. Plus of course even if there were no legal issues there's often a language barrier.