- They are optimized for Big funds, Holding structures and Multinationals
If you are a bootstrapper, or small company or any early
stage startup, the ecosystem works against you.
- Setup costs are absurdly high if you include Notary
around plus possibly Lawyer, Bank onboarding
plus accounting you are looking at burning €10k to €20k
easily before making a cent.
- The scourge of the state Fonctionnaires. Untouchables and incredibly well paid state employees. One told me would take care of my long delayed VAT returns... AFTER they would return from their long summer holidays in Switzerland ...
- It only works if you have some special deal like the famous Mr Marius Kohl also known as Monsieur Ruling used to do...
"Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg"
https://www.icij.org/investigations/luxembourg-leaks/leaked-...
- Banks will treat you like a criminal by default and assume, you are laundering money, or hiding taxes and you are compliance risk. They have extreme KYC requirements, and do account freezes for trivial reasons.
- Accounting is rigid, expensive, and slow. Taxes are not low in practice. On paper, it all looks good, but in reality they have the Corporate tax and municipal tax. Many complex withholding rules and limited deductions unless
structured perfectly.
- The legal system is slow and formal. Everything takes a lot of time
and a LOT of paperwork with more costly intermediaries. Small changes
like directors, statutes will force Notary, Formal filings, Delays.
- The ecosystem is completely closed and relationship driven and the few startups
like Talkwalker and Doctena are coming and financed from local families.
Luxembourg runs completely on local networks and specially reputation over
merit. If you are not local, from finance, or law or government circles you are
invisible.
- Incredibly promiscuous relationships between the banks, law and legal professions, with a permanent revolving door between local companies and banks management and government officials. We are talking about less than just a few hundred people. This means Luxembourgeois families with long term historical relationships. Good luck on any legal or business dispute between you...and a local, who is a cousin from the local judge or government official....
I have had the chance of setting up and running companies in many countries. Specifically for Europe, currently I would suggest as two best options right now: Estonia and the Netherlands. Avoid France, Luxembourg and definitely avoid Germany.
Wow thanks for the long reply, unfortunately many if not most of your points are common in all of Europe. I asked you to clarify because I am not only curious about the topic but I strongly believe that these issues should be talked about way more frequently and reach when possible the general population.
Most people are completely unaware of the risks and difficulties of running a company in our countries.
In Italy for example the tax agency operates on a model that is often no different from extortion and innocent people can suffer greatly because of it, I have seen it happen.
I am skeptical that EU Inc will solve all the main problems or even that it will become reality at all but let's see.
> Banks will treat you like a criminal by default and assume, you are laundering money, or hiding taxes and you are compliance risk. They have extreme KYC requirements, and do account freezes for trivial reasons.
I see that everywhere though; my banks in my birth country NL, one of which I have used since I was born (my parents made an acc obviously) half a century ago treat me like that every year. Achtung! We are not sure who you are, provide a lot of paperwork or else! Worse even in other countries. And they are all very afraid of US residents.
Autocracy isn't a switch you can flick. To establish one, you first have to win a protracted civil war, likely between loyalist paramilitary groups like ICE, the standing US Army and regional defense paramilitaries that would spring up. The likely result of this is a stalemate that leads to secession into separate countries.
Why? Russia didn't have a protracted civil war between 2000-ish and now?
Isn't Trump busy replacing US Army leadership with those loyal to him? Why would Army and ICE be on opposite sides?
Seems MAGA just have to continue the present course and apply just enough pressure to the election system to keep "winning" half-credibly and autocracy is there in not too many years.
I mean they are already past pardoning those attacking congress for not accepting the election result.
It is just a gradual process which is well underway, at what point would California and Washington suddenly prop up a militia?
> I suspect they'll follow the law and do what the court says
Which, to me, seems like a clearly worse outcome? I hate the feudal masters more than most on HN, if that somehow matters for the credibility of my own opinion.
Yeah I apologize, I fell into that rabbit hole purely by accident, but it is really really interesting and considering the current prices to get a home built, maybe even practically applicable some day :D
I am in the process of trying to understand how businesses work and I have been comparing the realities of starting and running companies in various european countries. Most of the information that I can find is very surface level so thanks for sharing anything that people should be aware of.
A community/forum/subreddit focused on this does not seem to exist. I guess professionals are too busy.
I was also surprised to not see much discourse over Section 174 recently.
But getting back to the point, europe needs to decide if it wants to be relevant or not in the future. As an italian currently living in my country, I can say that doing business here looks like insanity, it's not hyperbole, the environment is as anti-business and innovation as it can be.
HN used to have that but most YC founders migrated to Bookface where there is better moderation and less off topic or toxic conversations (just take a look at this entire comment section)
Also Section 174, while annoying, isn't the end of the world for most founders, and there is bipartisan support for a repeal of it.
> understand how businesses work
You can only learn by doing. Start your own company or land a BizOps related role, but honestly, it's probably easier to make the classic Italy-to-London move
I speak to my Greek friends and family, mostly outside of tech, and the sentiment isn't yet as positive as the macro numbers in articles like this indicate.
As a diaspora Greek, it's positive news, but it seems this all hasn't "trickled down" to citizens' day to day lives as much. It does give some hope for those who left for economic reasons, and there are even groups out there to encourage a return to restore the brain drain of the 2010s.
That being said the elder population would probably be grumpy no matter how much things improved.
Exactly. Like, what was the outlook ten years ago? Possible exit from EU and euro, state bankruptcy, economic and political collapse. The stability and slow economic improvement might be a bad result for many countries, but for Greece it's IMHO a good result (for me, better than expected).
If you're still on X, or subscribe to newsletters, I can recommend The Greek Analyst[0]. He follows a lot of macro trends for Greece and makes an active effort to be a positive voice in the sea of Greek pessimism, including results like these "great result in relative context" pieces.
One of the things with Greeks (in Greece) really is that they're notoriously pessimistic and depressed, unlike what people usually associate with the country. I do think though that there's a bit of a new spirit though among the younger generation which is slightly less focused on 2k year old history and a bit more realistic in the way they approach the world. But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my end
I don't think it's wishful thinking. I think newer generations in times like these will tend to rebel against the attitude of their parents in any direction that takes them. With grumpy old Greeks, that means the younger generation are calmer and maybe more positive too. Life's too short to be miserable.
I find the ancient and Byzantine history fascinating myself. Naturally the liberation struggles are also important, but the very religious and closer-to-present history and culture don't interest me as much. I also always found it quite hypocritical of the older generation that they biased towards the more recent history and the Orthodox religious aspects, but then they'd sell you trinkets of the ancient world while quietly ignoring the pagan nature of it.
IMO, one of the last big issues with Greek culturally and in terms of economic opportunity for young adults, is mandatory conscription. I won't be returning for anything more than a holiday unless I get a permanent exemption. Many Greeks tend to ignore the opportunity cost this impacts young men with. It's not just "a forced gap year" since you have to do it regardless of if you study or not.
By having emigrated before the peak of the crises around 2015, I avoided both wasting a year on conscription and finished my studies sooner. Anecdotally I'm pretty sure taking that leap was the best thing I could've done, considering what I know of my pees right now (highly educated, but overworked and underpaid).
I think that's spot on - what annoys me with some older Greeks is a fairly consistent 'look at our amazing history' attitude, as if they're ancestors of Gods. But then the actual culture is deeply rooted in Greek orthodoxy, driven by entirely different values, mostly pretty conservative. In reality, many older Greeks know relatively little about their own ancient history, or they focus on very specific aspects of it. Even though it's actually so colorful and full of human conflict and complexities.
I believe it's important for the country to look beyond that history. Not saying one shouldn't be inspired by it, almost everyone in the West is somewhat inspired by it anyway. This is a piece of humanity that played out on the same geographical area as modern-day Greece with a somewhat similar language, but it's long gone.
And I totally agree regarding conscription - if it were some sort of useful exercise for 6 months or so, one could probably make sense of it, but as it stands currently, it's a total waste of time.
I've been keeping an eye on Greece as they started to introduce benefits for foreign capital / workers similar to what Portugal did. I've a feeling this is why Greece is seen to be doing so well. If it ends up being like Portugal, it will be foreign investors and a select few locals that benefit the most.
From the one or two accounts I follow that talk about these macro trends, the benefits for capital at least are helping, not sure about individual incentives. As Greece's tech hubs grow, they also start to paint a different picture of work and work culture in Greece.
I remember being very negative about the Greek's long term outlook ~10 years ago. I mean, it was obvious that there will be an economic downturn for many years in basically all scenarios, but I was very worried about the political uproar, turn to populism and authoritarianism (which would further worsen the economic woes).
IIRC there was an election in ~2015 which Syriza won, back then pretty radical in its anti-austerity campaign. But after they won, they made a turnaround and more or less went along with the austerity.
The problem of Greece is that due to decades of nepotism and corruption, there is no real political hope. The ruling party is one of the two that has brought Greece to where it is now, and the prime minister comes from a family with a long tradition in politics and power thirst.
His best man is the biggest gangster in Greece, Marinakis. They found a ship of his containing 2 TONS! of heroin, and nothing happened.
Because the Mitsotakis family controls the court system in Greece.
Not to make an excuse, but tell me a country that isn't like that. For all the pomp and circumstance that democracy provides, it all feels like it boils down to tribalism where oligarchs rule and control the tides. Sure we all control our individual boats but the tide is what controls the sea.
Sure every nation has an elite, but it’s a stretch to say that Germany, Sweden, Denmark, USA, and many other countries have an oligarchic system similar to how it is in Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.
