News and information from Europe πͺπΊ
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It would be nice to see more worker owned startups. I guess that's too much to ask though.
Measuring the number of new startup's as a success factor is IMHO very stupid. I once started a startup. Starting a startup is not that difficult. Keep that startup running past the five year mark, then you may start to talk about success...
Yes, but for germany this might be a metric for reduced bureucracy. Failing a startup is always easy, but starting a startup in germany might not be trivial.
Otherwise I agree.
It is very easy. Can be done within a week for a capital based company and even faster with a personal liability company.
Source: Am a Founder.
The amount of nihilistic, anti-German views (which are even mostly unrelated to the topic) is very telling imo. And more so as the views come in parts from accounts that post almost exclusively comments seeking to criticize Europe while hailing China and Russia if I may say so.
telling of what?
How many of those startup's are one person delivery contract firms, exclusively working for Amazon?
Verena Pausder comments: βTo create global champions βMade in Europe,β we need a strong European capital market.
She should start a startup to fund startups.
Though the easiest way would be to overvalue a company, e.g. an electric car company, which allows its investors to borrow against the shares and invest that money in new startups.
Unfortunately, Europe doesn't make it easy to borrow against shares yet. /s
Or one expands typical funding channels. Why do you think that investment is a bad thing?
I don't think that. This was an attempt at questioning the value of Tesla with a dash of conspiracy theory.
Europe has to expand the channels but the safer laws make it more difficult, which is the right thing. Otherwise we can expect that our banks have to be rescued soon.
Many laws in Europe are not about risk aversion, even though they are perceived like that (and there's a media obsession with this trope).
Forbidding pension funds from using certain investment types does not reduce long term risk, it only reduces short term risk.
The real problem in Europe is that it ingested neoliberalism much more deeply than one might think. One consequence is that Europe has an ideologically motivated short term investment horizon.
Another consequence of this ideological stringency in Europe is that Europe has subsidies (by GDP) that are about half as big as US subsidies and a fourth of China's.
Many european countries have a more than twice as large share of outsourced state tasks as the US.
Etc. Etc.
Many laws in Europe are not about risk aversion, even though they are perceived like that
Which laws would you change?
The Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) - Directive 2011/61/EU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Investment_Fund_Managers_Directive_2011
Many laws in Europe are not about risk aversion, even though they are perceived like that (and thereβs a media obsession with this trope).
You are right, no mentioning of any problems. What are the problems?
Well, a big problem is that many pension funds cannot invest into firms.
Yeah but most of these startups were founded because people fear for their job and want a redundancy...
Isn't that kinda what you'd want to see though? I.e. if older less competitive businesses are not able to operate or compete, we don't want them to just hold onto talented people, and we don't want those talented people to be jobless. It's good if those people go and start new, dynamic, competitive companies.
Obviously there's a balance to be found, and we don't want companies to be allowed to just dump employees for no reason every time they hit a hiccup, but Germany has very generous worker protections, and a strong social safety net. It's good to see these people starting new companies.
Or have been made redundant and now use their severance.
This is NOT good news. It is actually bad news.
A lot of these startups are founded by people who have recently been fired or otherwise made redundant. The survivability of these companies is questionable.
Additionally there are on going issues that the relatively quick process of starting up a company is used by organised crime in money laundering (e.g. Chinese Prato based structures) - there are estimates that these use thousands of shell companies that vanish after months
Just looking at the number of startups is a very very bad metric. Much more interesting would be:
Gross revenue in the first year
Average employees per Startup (a lot of these are single employee companies)
Reported profit per company after one year
Lifetime of startup companies
I am afraid a lot of these metrics will be really really bad looking.
Despite what people think founding a company is easy in Germany. You can do found a limited liability company with basically only the notary costs+1β¬. I had mine started in a week at the beginning of Covid. Getting a notary appointment is the hardest and most expensive part and that is only necessary for a limited liability company. Otherwise? Generate a few documents and send them in. You can do that electronically these days if you can sign via eIDAS.
No issues.
Bureaucracy comes later.
The German mandatory old age insurance comes to check in. Oh...you are building a new company, are the only employee or have very little employees and only have two clients so far? Yeah fuck you that's dependent employment and you are not a actual company. They can even decide in one year it's not and then come back next year and decide differently.
The workers comp deciding seemingly randomly when they come to check you actually do things the way they want.
The tax office is a different matter as well. (Mine is actually somewhat cooperative and nice. Other's aren't)
And don't get me started on the sheer lack of competence in the German banking system. I operate outside Germany as well and the difference is staggering.I happily let someone pull a teeth out of my jaw without anaesthesia or deal with the tax office every day if I could avoid those. With my Italian and Swiss banks? No issues.
Source: Founder - 6 years ago. Still hating it. Worst and best decision of my life.
Worker rights are important too though!