[redrove]

No, you CANNOT found a company like that. It’s an absolute fabrication.

You also seem to somehow justify spending 25k on an endeavor you don’t know will succeed upfront, when every other country on the planet allows you to open one with orders of magnitude smaller amounts of capital.

You can open a UK LTD in a few days with 12GBP. Similar in DK/NL/CZ… the list goes on.

I’ve learned firsthand that germans will bend over backwards to justify this insanity.

[sehansen]

Needing to put in >1000 EUR in starting capital is not uncommon. The "cheapest Danish limited liability company, the Aps needs 20k DKK up front, i.e. ~3000 EUR. In Sweden an AB needs 25k SEK, ~2300 EUR.

And you can always dissolve the company and take the capital out again tax free, so what's the big deal?

[9dev]

> No, you CANNOT found a company like that. It’s an absolute fabrication.

I'm a German. I have done this myself. I assure you it's true.

> You also seem to somehow justify spending 25k on an endeavor you don’t know will succeed upfront, when every other country on the planet allows you to open one with orders of magnitude smaller amounts of capital.

If you are planning a serious endeavour where you intend to limit your liability, you'll have a business plan. And that allows multiple options, from a bank loan of a local bank that will very likely be granted on good conditions, to one of the various municipal, regional, or federal programs that offer grants for newly founded companies. My current company secured 200k Euro at the beginning from a federal program that we did not have to pay back, for example.

[Dacit]

You are clearly misinformed. According to German law, you can start a UG (limited) with only 1€ + notary cost. Starting a business with personal liability doesn't cost anything.

[ragall]

Businesses with personal liability don't count. They might as well not exist. AG or nothing.

[ragall]

It's beyond me why anyone would downvote that. An UG is uninvestable, and a GmbH would also scare most investors. Anything but an AG is not going to work.

[9dev]

What are you talking about..? A GmbH is the German equivalent of an Ltd. An AG is a publicly traded company and thus not something investors are looking for. Also, the majority of companies in Germany are just ordinary eigetragene Kaufmänner (so normal businesspeople like your average plumber), or GmbH (literally any other company that isn’t a stock market traded enterprise).

[ragall]

> What are you talking about..?

We're talking about VC investing here, not your local currywurst kiosk.

> An AG is a publicly traded company

Falsch. An Aktiengesellschaft is a corporate form that protects the investors and mandates a certain formal governance and management structure. It has nothing to do with being publicly traded.

For the same reasons, VCs will be very wary of investing in a Delaware S Corp (similar to a GmbH) instead of the preferred C corp (similar to an AG), even if the company is fully private and has no revenue.

> Also, the majority of companies in Germany are just ordinary eigetragene Kaufmänner (so normal businesspeople like your average plumber), or GmbH (literally any other company that isn’t a stock market traded enterprise).

Irrelevant.

[9dev]

> It has nothing to do with being publicly traded.

It is, in most cases. Tell me about a startup that started off as an Aktiengesellschaft as opposed to a GmbH? Why would you even want to put 50k in instead of 25k, deal with all the governance overhead and reporting duties? It makes no sense at all, and during all the VC conversations I had, never once was a GmbH mentioned as problematic.

> Irrelevant.

It's not to the claim that you cannot found a company in Germany without putting down a significant amount of money and a notary. You just moved the goalposts.