

Why Greece is a great place to start a company - gtzi
http://drachmastartup.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/the-good-guys-win-in-the-end/

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rdl
This is amazingly bad advice, based on all the Greek people I've talked to.
The best thing to do as a young, entrepreneurial Greek is to do a startup in
another country. Berlin is nearly as inexpensive as Greece, still in the EU,
and a viable place for an actual business. Or, Silicon Valley and raising more
money more cheaply if that is what you want to do.

Greece is all risk and downside, zero startup culture, no professional
services, expensive capital, and not actually terribly cheap.

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PanosJee
Mixture of both is the key. Inc/business in the Valley, R&D in Gr

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rdl
It is just as cheap to put my R&D in Berlin as Greece (especially somewhere
like Athens). It is cheaper to put my R&D in a place like Albania. Hybrid
developed/developing is a great model, but you want your dev center to be
cheap for opex, have a large number of skilled people available, probably a
place where you have a personal connection, and such. University towns in the
midwestern USA, Eastern Europe, Israel, India all make sense for people for
that.

Greece has high unemployment, undeniably, but also has both high costs and
high risk, and a really small technical workforce. That's not great for a
startup.

I don't disagree that if I were Greek and in Greece, a startup would be a lot
more attractive than remaining unemployed or trying to get a government job,
but it's inaccurate and unhelpful to say Greece is objectively a good place to
do startups vs. practically anywhere else. One of the keys to doing a startup
successfully is to be honest with yourself about unpleasant things.

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moraitakis
In general I agree. Note that this is only one post of a blog about the
difficulties of starting up in Greece, and it's the post that lists the
positives to draw upon. It does not claim that someone from Germany should
move to Greece to start his company. It claims that despite the difficulties,
there are upsides one could take advantage of, and they are not negligible.

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rozap
One could make the same argument about Detroit.

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qweeeee
lol

