| Now? Estonia. Hands down, Estonia. Although I haven't done it myself yet, I intend to, simply because it now makes an incredible amount of sense. In case you don't know already, Estonia is offering an e-residency program[-2]. For the time-being it requires a quick trip to Estonia to get this (and it's open to everybody regardless of nationality), but afterwards you can run and administer a company remotely with this smart card. (Bonus points for the fact the smart card reader plays nicely with Linux as well as OS X and Windows.) Soon you won't even need to show up in Estonia, but will be able to register as an e-resident at one of their consulates. Estonia have made it pretty straightforward to run a business there and it doesn't appear to be especially expensive to start an Estonian company either. To the best of my knowledge you can deal with the government entirely online and IIRC in English too. (This is a big deal because some English-speaking countries like the Netherlands have tax offices that are forbidden from speaking English unless they come out to you in person, even though all the staff are fluent. I hear this might change in the Netherlands in the future.) Banking in Estonia appears to be awesome and developed. Stripe isn't there yet, but Paymill is. Estonians are fluent in English and just about everything the government, banks, etc publish online is in English. The Estonian government even translates some of their laws (like the ones pertaining to companies) to English too. They might be translating others but I've just never looked. Taxes aren't super low, but are pretty sensible and IIRC corporate profits aren't taxed until they're distributed. [-1] To the best of my knowledge, Estonia didn't really implement the EU cookie directive. They got a slap on the wrist for it but no Estonian site (even big bank and government sites) has those "y'all accept cookies?" banners. That's a good sign. The biggest downside to Estonia is its size. It's going to be a ghastly nightmare to hire a decent number of staff if you want them to be all in the same building in Estonia, but hey, why not just run a 100% remote company? But cross that bridge if and when you come to it. You can always just open up offices in other cities around Europe or other places. [-2] https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/e-residency/ [-1] http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documen... |
Here's one list of Estonian startups: http://hub.garage48.org/estonian-startups