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Comment by Zenul_Abidin | Hacker News Reader

Europe should start by reducing the amount of legal paperwork required in running a business, because that is the main reason why founders flee to places such as the US

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That's why the famously over regulated California doesn't have any sort of tech scene. All the best big startups usually start somewhere more business friendly like Mississippi or Tennessee

Is there an inverse relationship between "places people would like to live" and "places that are business friendly"?

Not really.

The level of regulation between California and Germany is much wider than between California and Tennessee. Ever tried to incorporate a GMBH?

And yet many parts of Germany have a much more thriving tech scene than Tennessee...

Because the friction of moving from Tennessee to California is very low. The valley is full of founders and developers from middle America. Marc Andreesen is from a town of 800 in Indiana. Low regulation is a necessary but not sufficient criteria for a thriving entrepreneurial economy.

Low regulation is completely orthogonal to entrepreneurial economy, it matters what regulations exist. The idea that if we just had laissez-faire things would be perfect isnt really true. Because, keep in mind, all of our pro-competition practices are also regulation. A free market needs to be maintained, it’s not just a default state.

Imagine how much harder it would be to be a successful entrepreneur if all the big boys could merge into mega monopolies and that’s your competition. Or if they could straight up lie in advertising. Or if they could threaten and blackmail you.

When I read "I don't want to follow safety regulations", I always think "WOW that dude must really have some great product I must get!" -_-'

Most of the regulations in question are not safety. More stuff like not being able to fire people.

I think ideally they try to make the labor market fairer as it’s so obviously extremely leveraged in favor of employers.

Which does matter, because if it sucks to be labor then people leave and you don’t have talent. We see this pretty clearly in the US. We have a lot of states where companies can pretty much do whatever they want with their labor.

And… well… how are those states doing economically? Not good. The big companies are in California and New York State. Inside those “laissez-faire” states the economy is weak, and in the few places it isn’t, it’s where the city itself leans a certain way.

What would you like to see less "legal paperwork" about? What regulations would you want rid of?

Do you think you would stand even the tiniest chance of hiring European tech workers into a company run the way they are in the US?

Lot's of low hanging fruit. How about when creating a corporate legal entity not requiring public notaries to spend several hours reading the entire corporate charter out loud to all signatories before signing.

That's not something that's required in 'Europe'. It would be a much better discussion if people could point to specific countries and regulations rather than talking as if the whole of Europe had a single regulatory regime for business.

You're right, it's only required in the largest European economy, I should have been more specific.

I mean, yeah? If you're talking about a particular country and a particular problematic national regulation, then name the country and regulation, so we can have a proper discussion about it. Otherwise this thread is just going to be generic moaning about how 'Europe' is over-regulated, which everyone has already heard a thousand times before.

How much self-flagellation do you want from me brother

But the bendy bananas!

What sort of entity is that? Creating a simple limited company (aksjeselskap) in Norway takes a few minutes of work and is done entirely online. You fill in a few simple forms, create a simple memorandum of association, set up a specific type of account with your bank and deposit at least 30 kNOK (3 kUSD). Get the bank to confirm the deposit to the registry. The registry will send you electronic documents that all board members must sign electronically and that's pretty much it. Takes a couple of weeks of elapsed time, or less.

Can you give specifics of that? When have you ever had to do that? Which country?

Absolutely. That and the lack of accessible and agile VC funding in Europe. No idea why someone would downvote the above comment, it's spot on.

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