Glad no one mentioned Italy, don't even think about it. Just founding a limited liability company costs 6000euros+ (2500 of those are to be put in as starting capital MANDATORY and the rest is pure cost)
That's not a lot of money. Neither relatively nor absolutely. For contrast, starting a GmbH in Germany (llc equivalent) requires a 25000 euro investment plus all the fees and legal cost. Starting a B.V. in the Netherlands requiresna 18000 euro investment, again not including overhead and registration. The US is the exception, with its liberal LLC and bankrupty laws. In europe there just are a few additional hurdles.
I agree that italy should be avoided, but for other reasons (mentality, corruption, etc)
Separate corporate structure from where you base yourself. For example to start a limited company in Ireland with accountant fee's etc is about €300. Capital Requirement is €1. And that company can base itself anywhere in Europe. One of the advantages of the Single Market.
I've heard varying things about this from people in Italy. I'm not sure it's entirely ok to live and work in country A for a company that is located elsewhere, but I'm neither a lawyer nor an accountant.
It very much ok to have a company registered in one country and work for it in another . This is the whole idea of the Treaty of Rome, which is the treaty that forms the EU. Some famous examples are like Air Berlin which is a UK PLC. Where things can get a bit complex is the tax situation. You need to pay tax where the business is, which can be different from where it is registered.
As riffraff says, corruption isn't a problem for internet companies, really. Especially seeing as how most of them are in the north, which, while still not being a model of squeaky clean, is much better than the south.
The problems in Italy for an internet company are 1) bureaucracy 2) the fact that many potential employees are going to value stability over the good things about startups 3) fairly high cost of living in many places (Milan is expensive and an armpit - hot and humid and smoggy in the summer, cold and clammy in the winter).
That said, there are an awful lot of bright and creative people here. I hope that we'll see that potential unlocked sooner, rather than later.
BTW, here's a more in-depth article about Italy's problems, although some of them are not so applicable to internet startups:
For this reason the german UG (Unternehmergesellschaft - Society of Entrepreneurs) was created. The investment can be chosen freely by the founders, the fees are very low (about 300 Euros) and the only drawback is that you have to put one quarter of the profits back into the capitalization.
Starting a B.V. in the Netherlands requires you to have 18000 euro in your bank account at the moment of inception for a few days, but the actual cost are much lower. I managed to do it for less than 1000 euros and within a week (although usually it takes about a month).
The 18K liquidity requirement for Dutch BVs is about to be dropped, if indeed it hasn't already.
It's a trivial obstacle anyway. You only need the money in an account on the day of incorporation.There are a number of companies that will lend it to you - for a fee, of course. :-)
18K is in the range of what YC companies receive. It's not a 'trivial amount' - it's a bunch of extra hassle that one has to think about, especially if we're talking about a couple of kids just out of college with an idea and not a lot of money.
And, at least in Italy, the 'social capital' thing means that the money has to go into the company somehow - you can't just borrow it and then give it back to the bank the next day.
What about ireland and england LTDs? They're pretty cheap.
And 6k euros for "2 guys and an idea in a garage" can be a lot of money.
Agree for mentality, people might want stability.
Corruption no, here in the north there's almost none - that I heard of, at least.
And if you aren't selling to the government how is that a problem anyway? You only need an internet connection
in what way does corruption obstructs a startup working on the internet to the world? It is an issue if, say, you try to market you new cool X thing to local administrators and state owned companies, but that does not seem the case for the OP.
