Traditionally Austria has many problems with founding of startups. In particular the culture does not embrace failure, the social security net is ridiculously tight and rewards people who do not work a bit too much, the taxes are high and the rules and regulations are strict. None of that is new however.

What is new is that for the first time in a long time this has been acknowledged as a problem and it would appear that the ones in charge are genuine about wanting to change this.

Taxation wise I think it would be nice to improve things a bit but if you do the math a fully insured person in California will have to deliver a similar percentage of their income to the state so I think this is mostly a marketing problem than an actual issue.

We will see how this goes. In the last few years many of my friends and collegues when to the states and I really wish that some of that talent will eventually come back. There is a lot that is wrong in Austria but the quality of living is great and at one point in life this matters a lot.