[bcurdy]

In my opinion, if you're looking only at legal requirements, the Valley is an awful place to start a company as an European entrepreneur. I explored a few years ago the opportunity to start a business there and it didn't take me long to realize that legal fees would eat up all my capital before I had even a chance to start writing a line of code. Moving your business there once it gains a bit of traction (and funding) is probably a better idea if that's what you want to achieve.

Now, legal issues are tricky everywhere. But one thing you need to think about is how labor intensive will your business be ? Some countries like France or Spain make it almost impossible to fire people whereas countries like Ireland or Switzerland offer much more flexibility.

But chances are high that you won't start by hiring a lot, right? Then, what you need to focus on is: how easy is it to grow a business and what would happen if you fail. You want to be able to add shareholder easily, while keeping administrative duties under control and you don't want to get into too much trouble if you need to file for bankruptcy. I heard Germany and the UK might be good choice if that's what you're looking for (not very sure though, please check ;)

Finally, if your startup will not be labor intensive, nor capital intensive at first, my advice is: don't overthink legal aspects. Go where you have the best networking opportunities while being able to hire great people at best cost. And that might just be exactly where you're living now...

Oh, one last thing. Europe has everything you'll ever need in terms of talents and capital. So I don't agree when you say that you're "less lucky to have been born in Europe". But that's another story ;)