| Wow. Is this "everything I need to know about Germany, I learned from Fox News"? Let me pick apart the pieces 1) 20k minimum for startups You're confusing a few things here. The costs to form a company depend on what kind of legal form you want it to have. What you're talking about is the GmbH (basically a LLC), where you actually need 25k of capital. This is by far not the only form a company can take. If you just want to make sure that every founder gets its part, you've got a name for the company etc, you can form something like a UG. If you don't have more than three founders, you can use some standard forms and everything's done within a few days at most. And even if you want limited liability and don't have the capital, you can choose from several other legal forms available in Europe. The British limited company is quite popular, as you need less capital. This is hardly a problem for most IT-based startups, who rarely have a lot of founders or actually trade something (where limited liability is quite welcome). 2) Diplomas/certificates are required There are several cases where this is true, but I don't see any that would affect startups. Yes, if you want to become a hairdresser or want to open your own carpentry shop, you need to have the proper papers. For a web-based startup? What kind of papers would those be? 3) 35 hrs/week That's France. Never mind that the difference between a regular job and startup hours doesn't have to be that different. And even if you're doing the stereotypical 100+ hours a week, the difference to a regular job in any country will be quite high (well, South Korea excluded). 4) Less hunger because of welfare Hows is that particular to startups? If this were true, people would drop out of almost any job because it would be easier otherwise. Germans on the dole don't live in limitless luxury. I'm not saying that there isn't a tendency to copy things here. The whole Facebook vs. StudiVZ affair is pretty embarassing. But that's basically one market niche some companies are filling, it's not really representative of the whole German startup scene. Yes, there's no equivalent to the venture capital-backed silicon valley startup scene. But that's pretty unique in the US, too. |