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Comment by mianos | Hacker News Reader

There are lots of reasonable arguments to investing in the UK first. They now have the opportunity to innovate without having to work on with committees with thousands of people on them (cookie laws, wtf). As an investor I have more trust in the UK than the rest of Europe. The employment argument is reasonable except, there is still plenty of Eastern European talent that was never in the EU.

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- The UK will end up still following EU regulations because anything else would risk their access to the common market

- Even now, EU regulations affect non-EU companies. No way to avoid the "cookie law" if you want to serve EU customers.

- The list of regulations that affect startups, especially in the web/software space is rather small. The impact of regulation on the startup scene in Europe is almost zero.

> The list of regulations that affect startups, especially in the web/software space is rather small. The impact of regulation on the startup scene in Europe is almost zero.

Complete and utter nonsense.

If you're planning on establishing a start-up in the UK/Europe, and you believe this to be the case, you need a lawyer to give you a reality check sharpish.

I've been running a successful startup in Germany for 5 years and I feel the impact of bureaucracy is negligible in the scheme of things.

One exception may be employment law, but that's not made by the EU and generally, once you figure it out for your first employee, it becomes much easier for any 1+n.

You can ignore the cookie law if you're not in the EU because the EU has, at the moment, no way to enforce its laws on companies without a physical presence there. And soon the easiest way to be close to the EU without being physically present there will be to place yourself in the UK.

The UK will not end up following EU regulations, because the government has a clear instruction from the electorate not to compromise on the immigration issue. The EU will either compromise (unlikely), or face further exits in the coming years, because the UK is merely more democratically responsive than most other countries, not significantly different.

You claim many reasons, but offer only one: Innovating without interference from the EU. This is however far from reality. The UK even once it leaves for real, will still be affected by EU regulations, but now without being able to directly influence them. At this point it is unclear what kind of trade agreements the UK will have with the EU, but even if it will do a radical separation (i.e., remove free trade) it will still be affected by EU regulations if there is to be any economic relations.

The cookie law is of course utter nonsense, but it will not go away with the Brexit: https://www.cookielaw.org/blog/2016/6/27/brexit-and-the-cook...

I fully expect UK companies to ignore the EU GPDR assuming it's not passed into law due to Brexit, and gain significant competitive advantage over EU software firms as a result. I expect the EU will react by not really enforcing it to try and win back the firms that will leave.

What eastern European talent is actually left these days that isn't part of the EU? The only thing that's really left is the Ukraine and Belarus...

Exactly this. And I've known a company in Germany that are very happy to hire people from these nationalities even if they require a visa

(Which just goes to show how "we can't hire people outside of the EU while in the EU" is complete BS)

It's not hard for UK companies to hire outside of the EU either, Tier 2 general and Tier 2 ICT sponsorships are pretty easy to obtain. The cost is different tho, developers from spain can just move to the UK and look for a job. Hiring some one internationally is usually a more complicated process.

Yes, I know that, but it was one of the selling points of Brexit

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