[frankblizzard]

Seriously, Spain being in an economic crisis since so long, they should work on making it more attractive for people to open and run their business there instead of adding new regulations and complicating things for founders.

[omegant]

All the new labor and economic laws created after the crisis have been done thinking in the interest of big corporations and banks. If you are a small entrepreneur you are basically screwed.. No that they don't help you, they are actively trying to make you go bankrupt even before beginning.

In this case if you have a project that can go beyond 1mill € (I can't think of any that could reach that quantity, but that's another question), you'll have to be creative and create a company in the UK or USA to manage it.

Reading the article I realize that what they are trying to do with the new law (that basically makes the crowd-founding unusable for startups), is to protect the small investor. We've had several small investors scams (one of them by Caja Madrid, a big savings bank), in all the cases, the regulators were accused of being too little involved.

I have to agree that is a matter of time before there is a big scam with crowd-founding in Spain. So the Spanish bureaucratic logic says you'd better punish all of them(those dangerous crowd-founders) before a notorious crime is committed. Sad

Edit: added the last paragraph. Edit2: readability and typos.

[akumen]

Spain is a horrible place to do business. First hand experience and official data http://www.doingbusiness.org confirm that.

[walshemj]

And it doesn't even have a strong safety net and workers rights - the way Spain implemented TUPE is a joke.

[Kurtz79]

I beg to differ (I completely agree with it being a horrible place to do business, on the other hand).

Apart from having free healthcare (although they are trying to change that as well), layoffs are regulated by law (companies must file a special request,ERE, to the government in order to axe more than a percentage of employees, which must be justified), workers are entitled to a severance package of 30 days (it was 45 a few years ago) of pay for each year spent at the company, and for each year working you accumulate three months worth of unemployment benefits.

I'm sure that there are countries which offer better conditions, but I can't say Spain has a weak safety net.

[walshemj]

Um I know how Spain treats TUPE which is to say you have no protection on transfer of employer that is not the sign of a country that treats its employees well.

[yrochat]

More than a million: two years ago, Double Fine crowdfunding project revolutionised video game industry and revived a genre long-time abandoned by major companies: adventure games https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/double-fine-...

It is the best known proof that it works, that people can be heard when someone is ready to listen them. And they will give money for that.

And this, this will probably never happen in Spain.

Edit: > million (reason for this answer).

[omegant]

I´don´t mean that crowdfounding doesn´t work, I mean that reaching a million (like Kickstarter projects do) is going to be very difficult for any Spanish startup. There is no culture of giving money to help a business

Not so for "popular" projects, that are promoted via TV programs or so.. those will surely reach 1 mill easily.

On the other side, charity is very popular and people donates money (small and big quantities) when they see a need.

Of course it can always become fashionable, with everybody crowdfounding something, but that´s when a big scam will take place, with a scandal in the media and crowdfounding getting hit hard.

Edit I changed crowdsourcing for crowdfounding

[aragot]

In Spain, if you want to have a side business, you need to register as a sole trader. That also means... guess what... you have to pay for the common sole trader's health insurance, 200€/month. Even if your income from the side project is below 200€. Even if you have no other job and you don't make 200€/month.

With one single rule, they've killed most chances of growing businesses locally.

[jng]

I am so fed up with spaniards complaining about this (I'm a spaniard myself). Let me rephrase the rule: if you pay 250 EUR / month, you get full health coverage in the public system, which is amazingly good. How does this sound to americans now?

There are only a couple considerations here: first, they do force you to pay this in any case or you can't do business at all. The rationale is that having health insurance / social security is not optional in Spain. Thus the illegality of doing business / working without paying that. I would leave this untouched.

The other consideration is that you have to pay this even if you have a salaried job and your employer is already collecting from your salary and doing the contributions for you. I would make it unnecessary to pay the extra 250 EUR/month in this case, it doesn't make sense, except for people with very low salary (for whom no social contribution is mandated for their employer), in which case I would keep the need of contributing separately, or it's a huge loophole to avoid contributing.

A socially-oriented state has some cost, you know. Having to pay 250 EUR/month when you do business is such a ridiculously low price to pay for near-universal health care.

[aragot]

> The other consideration is that you have to pay this even if you have a salaried job

That's the part I meant was unfair. To the rest I agree: When you earn money, you have to paid fees to get your health security, I agree it's normal.

[akumen]

That would be logical. However, this is not how things works here in Spain.

[eLobato]

A childhood friend of mine is now really worried since nearly 80% of his new videogame funding comes from crowdfunding. This measure will easily throw down the drain his and his 20 employees jobs.

[omegant]

He better changes the mother company (the one doing the crowdfounding) to the UK and then "contract" the Spanish agency to do the actual coding.

[alberto_rico]

As far as I can tell, this doesn't affect Kickstarter and such, since you're not legally investing, but buying a product. So if that's the case, he should be on the safe side.

A shame of law, however, since it's only meant to discourage small scale investing.