[rubber_duck]

Why Western Europe if you want to get cost of living down and move somewhere ? Eastern Europe is 1/3 cost of living, usually has very good tax rates (Bulgaria has 10% flat tax on income + local tax for example, Hungary is close AFAIK) and there are startup accelerators trying to take advantage of that.

If you're using your own money to fund it and have customers who don't care about your location you'll have much easier time finding employees, especially non-technical staff like art/marketing/sales/customer support.

[VeejayRampay]

How do you define "very good tax rates" though? Is it the same thing as "low taxes"? Are high taxes in Northern Europe "bad taxes"?

Taxes are not theft you know, they're supposed to buy you and your fellow citizens things (health care, infrastructure, cheap education, services, etc), some of them highly beneficial to a startup.

[rubber_duck]

Depends on what you need, but from a startup perspective they are stiffing and offer very little in return, if you're not dependent on the local market you're just increasing costs.

[m_t]

Proper health care, good infrastructure, all those sorts of thing can make a difference if the startup wants to have local employees - or even if the founder wants to benefit from them.

[rubber_duck]

If we're talking about supporting a family then having subsidized nurseries, good pediatric care, schools, social support structures etc. are definitely worth it.

If we're talking about single healthy people working for equity trying to cut cost of living in hope of big payout down the road then the difference between 40% and 10% income tax is huge and you're not really getting much out of your taxes.

[Normal_gaussian]

Quality of life varies greatly between countries.

That said I would certainly consider Bratislava if I was moving East. Its proximity to Austria (Vienna in particular) means that you can, in many ways, have the best of both worlds.

[rubber_duck]

I think in most capitals I've seen quality of life isn't that much worse, don't get me wrong it's not really on the same level as Paris or London (rural areas on the other hand - just don't make any random country trips on your own), but at the same time it's not like moving to Syria or something like that - for example I find Vienna to be quite unsafe and unappealing, compared to say Zagreb (related to that I actually know a guy who commutes from Bratislava to Vienna for work - the rent difference alone covers the commute).

It depends on what you want, but you can actually compete for staff even if you have < million € in seed capital, rent and office space is cheap, etc. if your goal is to bootstrap your company then moving to Eastern Europe can help you with that.