Does anyone know the context around this ? It's not clear form the PR at all. Was there some US regulation/requirement that SH didn't agree with ?
They have a bit of an ethical track record where they've disallowed use of their services for crypto commodity projects and the like, for example.
Edit: I mean ideological not exactly political choice.
>I have felt a kind of dissonance with my home country of the United States for a long time now, and I have found it very difficult to resolve. I am not of one mind with my peers in this country on many issues; social, economic, and political. Even limiting this inquiry to matters related to FOSS, it’s quite clear that the FOSS community in Europe is much stronger than in America. In the United States, capitalism is the secular religion, and my values, in FOSS and otherwise, are incompatible with the American ethos.
Seems ideological to me.
Where are you getting that info from ? There's more invesment that ever in EU startups.
One I know of recently : https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/06/italian-publishing-house...
Simply proving that there are some startups is not useful. I still think it has to do with the founder’s personal ideology.
Netherlands, and the EU in general, are cumbersome to deal with regardless of all the "startup incentives" they've been pushing in the past few years. Compare the incorporation, maintenance and closure processes of a Delaware/Wyoming/New Mexico/Florida LLC with anything even remotely comparable in Europe (e.g. a BV/NV/SRL in the Netherlands) and you will quickly see why the US has become the world's center-stage for doing business.
For SourceHut Estonia and Romania would have probably been a better choices, as from my understanding, they are not investor-driven and do not seem to head that way, they are fully digital/remote, and they require disproportionally more infrastructure than office workers to operate.
However, when living in the EU one has to take into account various (frankly absurd) taxation laws that might ultimately prevent founders from incorporating their company in any of the neighboring countries. Hence it would be necessary to look at the details of the founder's circumstances to evaluate if incoporation in a different country would have made sense to begin with.
That said, I agree with the top rated comment [1] as for the broader topic of where to incorporate.
My theory is that they are eyeing to get rid of their US citizenship and naturalize in the Netherlands, which is possible after 5 years when certain criteria is met. Having economic ties to the country you're trying to get citizenship in helps immensely. The logical next step for them would be to open a physical location and employ Dutch citizens to further solidify their case.
You have to remember: As long as the founder is still citizen of the United States, they will inevitably support the country and its policy with the taxes on their world income. After all, the US is one of only three countries in the world that taxes based on citizenship rather than residency.
Having that said, there have been various attempts across Europe to change from residency-based taxation to citizenship-based taxation in the past decades. All of which have been unsuccessful so far.
This is true, but only on taxable income over $130,000. Drew is probably not making over that from Sourcehut, so he’s not going to be paying any taxes to the US anyway.
Doesn't the ease of incorporation get erroded by the ongoing burden of filing taxes in multiple places? I remember looking at this years ago as an alternative to a GmbH and thinking it wasn't worth it. Maybe for this type of company it is.
Since you're mentioning a GmbH I'm assuming you're based in either Switzerland, Germany or Austria. Generally speaking, regulation and tax codes in these countries have made it very unfavorable to operate any foreign entity, unless there's a fair amount of substance and structure in the target jurisdiction that make it worthwhile.
However, it is important to mention that while it is often the "natural" thing to do, operating a business in the same country that the founder is based in is almost never ideal from a regulatory and tax perspective. Unforunately, though, proper planning and execution of advanced structures is usually not something the average startup founder is a) primarily interested in and b) able to afford.
Given the other comments in this thread mentioning the founder's rather left-leaning political views, I assume that regulatory and, specifically, tax optimization were none of the founder's main goals to begin with.
https://www.globalfounderscapital.com/
Then there are many niche VC-networks, like https://www.timetoraise.co/.
Like if you moved to Saudi Arabia, and the motivating concern was ideological rather than political… I don’t know, what’s the difference? Is it a big picture vs little details thing?
I bet the reasons for the move were: ideological, political, lifestyle (maybe they have better weather and nicer cities)—moving countries is a big decision.
The difference between ideological and practical (not political) is crucial. Practical reasons can generalise to everyone but not ideological reason. I wouldn’t move to Saudi for example because I’m not a Muslim. But if I were to understand that he moved due to practical reasons that matter for his core business then that is generalisable.
> Practical reasons can generalise to everyone but not ideological reason. I wouldn’t move to Saudi for example because I’m not a Muslim. But if I were to understand that he moved due to practical reasons that matter for his core business then that is generalisable.
I think I sort of disagree that practical reasons are universally generalizable in a way that ideological reasons aren’t.
Practical reasons are generalizable in some cases, but your ability to learn practical lessons from somebody else will depend on how your situations are practically similar.
Ideological reasons are also generalizable in some sense—I mean, lots of people have similar ideological beliefs. And SourceHut was founded on ideological principles that are not universally held, but which are widespread enough for folks here to at least be curious about them here.
pretty much the other way around. Europe's startup base is still smaller than the US but has been growing faster. It's now 20% or so of global VC capital compared to about 5% a decade ago, and has produced unicorns at faster rates. Just misses the mega-sized companies at the tail end (https://tech.eu/2023/07/05/europes-best-decade-in-tech-reach...)
You can just look at an investor like, ironically enough, Thiel who has been pumping a lot of money into European tech. Defense startups in Germany for example.
Merely showing some startups gaining funding doesn’t show the full picture - I can also show similar statistics from India but you don’t see companies moving to India.