[Xylakant]

We have that. In germany the Berufsgenossenschaft mandates that every company with more than 2 and up to 20 employees has at least 1 person trained in first aid on site. Companies larger than that need 5% - 10% of the personal trained, depending on what work is done.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfallverh%C3%BCtungsvorschrift...

[btilly]

What is the consequence if 3 co-founders start a company, and only find out about this requirement a year later?

See item 7 of http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html to know why I asked it.

[Xylakant]

Good question.

* First: It's employees. Founders don't need to be employees. In fact, I'd say most are not.

* Second: You have to go through a basic first-aid course when you get your drivers license. So most people actually are basically trained. I think you have to refresh that course every two years to comply with the regulation, but that's a refresher only. It's really a basic first-aid class that's required if you're a small company.

* Third: This is the kind of regulation where you get a slap on the hand the first time you violate it. So I'd assume the answer is "Basically nothing"

Btw: Paul Grahams view on the regulations in germany is a bit outdated. SAP started in a garage. And you don't need 20k to start a startup. You need 25.000 Euro to form a GmbH which is one kind of a LLC. There's a lot of reasons why big startups mainly happen in the USA, but the garage issue is none of them.

[pmorici]

Right, and that is probably a negligible cost as you can get first aid training for free in a lot of places. The point is the op is advocating that businesses be required to buy expensive equipment that they themselves probably wouldn't be willing to spend the money on.

[Xylakant]

I need to pay that persons training, the wage for the lost day of work once a year. The training cost itself is negligible, but a day not billed to a customer costs me ~ 800 USD. I can nearly pay an AED for that.

However, given that a colleague nearly died from a stroke (he completely recovered) and another colleague permanently failed to show up for work after a bike crash, I think that having more people solidly trained in emergency procedures can't be a bad thing. And a one-time investment for medical equipment mandated for companies from a certain size on might be a good thing to consider.

[Xylakant]

Actually if you read the OPs statement twice, you'll realize that he just voices his surprise that no AED was on site and does not advocate anything.

[subsystem]

In a normal office you wouldn't need more than one AED per 50+ employees. That's an insignificant cost.