[aleph_minus_one]

> In order to build competitive models, you need to offer competitive salaries and equity. Europe has very old and inadequate corporate law virtually everywhere but in UK.

It is a fact that a much smaller amount of money is available in the EU for startup investments.

But in which sense it the corporate law inadequate? As far as I am aware the laws allow quite a lot of freedom in setting up the corporate governance for many forms of companies.

[epolanski]

There's no stock option mechanisms available in most of EU.

You get someone you cannot tempt him with "do a great job and get X amount of equity".

In Italy it is not enforceable, even if you sign a contract.

With this, startups can only compete with bigger companies on salary, hard, and don't get equally motivated hires to get a piece of a company. You get people there for the paycheck.

It's also unfriendly to venture capitalists, for different reasons.

So corporate law is a major problem in most of EU, as it's unfriendly both to investors and employees.

Also, firing people is hard in EU. You hire the wrong person, you're stuck with it.