Moving to Estonia | Hacker News Reader

Moving to Estonia

maksimdrachov.github.io

89 pointsmaksimdrachov145 comments

> I tagged every one of our ministers (remember: 6 governments) that could have made a difference in solving this question. 1600 people saw the post, no one got back to me.

> This might seem trivial, however to me this is part of a larger problem. The political class does not really care about improving the system as it is too busy with infighting.

He left Belgium because some politicians he tagged on LinkedIn didn't reply to his post? Lol

I mean, he doesn't like how they do politics which affect him so he left. Is there a better way of dealing with the issue?

He can't force a vote. He also doesn't have to stay. So he packed up and left. Sounds like a great way of dealing with people in power. Imagine if we all had that flexibility.

'We'll just pack up and leave. Good luck with your bullshit and governing over nothing.'

It's a valid option, but an alternative is to stay in the country and try to lobby and advocate for change within the country.

There is a certain point where lobbying and advocacy can be futile, and emigration is a stronger option. For example, in Venezuela's recent history, it went from a prosperous country to an economically devastated one, and the population fell in the 2010s as a result [0].

However, Belgium is in a much better place in terms of political stability. It's far more likely that advocacy can be effective. However, it takes a lot of time, and you can give up a lot of potential earnings by staying and trying to advocate. If one has an attachment to a country, especially as a citizen, one can find a lot of value in trying to introduce reforms instead of emigrating.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=Venezuela+population+over+ti...

Not a very astute reading of the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

I mean, this would be the case in every country. I face similar Issues in Germany but decided to join a political party and drive the change by myself - it won't change overnight but at least it is a beginning of a long process.

Without constantly talking directly to politicians in a political party, it will be very hard to change political topics.

I had a similar thought, but honestly if he wrote/called each one of them, would he get a better response? My guess is no.

And really, he left because he felt that Belgium wasn't a good place for startups and decided to move rather than try to change Belgium, which is completely his choice.

> "if he wrote/called each one of them, would he get a better response?"

Honestly, yes. From the social media post in the article, it's quite easy to interpret the question "How come I can’t find something similar for Belgium?" as rhetorical, and intended to raise awareness more than to get a response. The tone is also accusatory (nothing wrong with this, but it's less likely to get a response on social media), so there's less benefit for an official response on social media that will invite further scrutiny.

The post also tags multiple representatives. If he tagged just one, there would already be a greater likelihood of a response, otherwise each person can deflect the question to the rest of the group.

If he sent a personalized email or letter to a single representative with a question or proposal (then waiting, and emailing a new representative if they didn't respond), then he could have been redirected to the most appropriate person. It's generally recognized that calls/emails/letters are quite effective. You can see it in campaigns where people are asked to "call/send an email" to their representative, instead of getting asked to tag them on social media.

All fair points. As someone who has never actually gone to the effort of reaching out to a representative by email/mail/etc, perhaps I should give it a chance instead of dismissing it as not useful.

He got fed up by the tug of war between parties that seem to focus solely on grabbing power instead of implementing long-term solutions. I think we will see major changes in the ranking of countries in Europe in the next lifetime. Austria and Belgium are now net beneficiaries of EU budget. You simply can't build a competitive economy with 50-79% income taxes. I can't think of any single high-value add product or service that comes from Belgium. There must be a reason for that.

The reason isn't just income tax, considering the tax deductibles in Belgium the income tax doesn't go near that for starters.

Belgium is a net beneficiary of the EU, because the European institutions housed there.

The reason that you don't know high value services is likely because drivers of the Belgian economy are not hyped products.

Take a peek at the BEL20 and you'll see some internationally influential businesses.

That would be the most myopic way of interpreting his narrative license.

One thing that is unique about Estonia is its corporate tax system. Specifically, a business does not pay any tax on profit that it does not distribute as dividents. Meaning that any profit that you re-invest into the business (or just save for the rainy day) is not taxed. It's hard to appreciate what a game changer this is unless you've experienced the traditional system with capitalization of assets, depreciation, etc.

BTW, if anyone else knows of other countries with a similar tax system, please share (I did a bit of research but couldn't find any).

a business does not pay any tax on profit that it does not distribute as dividents

Can a business get around this by re-purchasing shares from the open market?

Yes, but how long can you do that? Also, our local stock exchange has listed only a few dozen companies.

As long as you want. When the share prices go up you do stock splits.

Private persons have to pay income tax when they sell their shares for a profit. So there is no way to avoid the income tax and getmoney out of the company without taxes.

But the stock buyback is at capital gains rates. And non-income personal revenue can have other advantages like avoiding various payroll taxes.

There is no such thing as "capital gains" tax, everything is covered by income tax, at the same rate. You can't use the US tax system to cheat Estonian taxes:)

As long as you want really. Say you have 100M shares outstanding. You do stock buy backs over the years now there is only 50M shares outstanding. You do a two way stock split, now there are 100M shares outstanding again.

You would still pay taxes when selling the stock for profit.

Yes, though in the US the capital gains tax (for investments held over a year) is quite often lower than the tax on dividends (which are treated as income).

The US has a similar system. It is not officially written into law, but any halfway decent tax accountant knows the loopholes.

I wonder if Biden's proposal to tax based on reported income to shareholders instead of taxable income, will change that for public companies: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/what-bidens-minimum-b...

How about a free zone in the UAE?

So Estonia wants to play the tax haven card like Malta and NL?

Ok, but let's not pretend that taking away tax money from other countries for stuff like healthcare and schools is something to be praised.

That really depends on how much more efficiently invested the money is in the startup vs in the government. Depending on which country you are in the answer is different but if you are in the first world the answer is almost certainly the money is better invested in the startup.

These kinds of apples to oranges comparisons are a little ridiculous. Estonia is a tiny country compared to Belgium, which is also small, but is obviously going to have a much different set of trade-offs. There are so many other factors to consider besides those listed in this article. And ultimately, being an entrepreneur is not really about where you live, it’s what you choose to do. People who think that if they move somewhere it’ll suddenly make them into the person they want to be are usually in for a disappointment. The example of a place to find standard contracts is also frankly trivial. Anyone who wants to start a company quickly figures out what they need to do in the environment in which they live, and ideally they will involve locals who understand the system very well. Just hiring a good local accountant who understands the laws is going to be of benefit regardless of any websites that make your research easy.

Far more important is living in a place that inspires you to do your best work, that’s ultimately the most important ingredient.

> And ultimately, being an entrepreneur is not really about where you live, it’s what you choose to do. People who think that if they move somewhere it’ll suddenly make them into the person they want to be are usually in for a disappointment.

Where you live dictates the laws, culture, and tax policies that you're expected to follow and will be punished for breaking. There are many entrepreneurs in Africa but one rarely hears of any successful ones internationally that don't come from South Africa. Obvious reasons for this would be ethnopolitical turmoil, lack of personal liberties, and kleptocratic dictatorships.

While Belgium is a far cry from a failed state, policies that interfere with one's personal goals will require a change in geography, at least for the foreseeable future. It would be great if entrepreneurs could be residents of the moon for tax purposes while stating put, but no such e-citizenship program exist.

The example of a place to find standard contracts is also frankly trivial. Anyone who wants to start a company quickly figures out what they need to do in the environment in which they live, and ideally they will involve locals who understand the system very well. Just hiring a good local accountant who understands the laws is going to be of benefit regardless of any websites that make your research easy. Far more important is living in a place that inspires you to do your best work, that’s ultimately the most important ingredient.

the last paragraph is a quote without a response. hit the reply button to early?

My mistake

never mind, i was hoping you'd see that early enough to fix it.

But we’re not talking about an arbitrary African nation in comparison to South Africa, we are talking about two countries within the European Union. Your analogy is a bit hyperbolic.

I used Africa as an example to provide the clearest demonstration of how location and associated factors impact business. With the exception of defense contracting, warfare, strife, illiberalism are pretty obvious barriers to starting a business, much less a tech business. I didn't however suggest that these were only factors or suggest that Europe is comparable in that regard. What I'm trying to demonstrate is that policies applied over a certain jurisdiction will cause people to vote with their feet and their wallets. Being in a state with lower taxes even mattered to Jeff Bezos, now the second richest person in the world, when he started Amazon. You can read it from the man himself:

You moved from New York to Seattle to start this business. Why?

"It sounds counterintuitive, but physical location is very important for the success of a virtual business. We could have started Amazon.com anywhere. We chose Seattle because it met a rigorous set of criteria. It had to be a place with lots of technical talent. It had to be near a place with large numbers of books. It had to be a nice place to live — great people won’t work in places they don’t want to live. Finally, it had to be in a small state. In the mail-order business, you have to charge sales tax to customers who live in any state where you have a business presence. It made no sense for us to be in California or New York.

Obviously Seattle has a great programming culture. And it’s close to Roseburg, Oregon, which has one of the biggest book warehouses in the world. We thought about the Bay Area, which is the single best source for technical talent. But it didn’t pass the small-state test. I even investigated whether we could set up Amazon.com on an Indian reservation near San Francisco. This way we could have access to talent without all the tax consequences. Unfortunately, the government thought of that first."

https://www.fastcompany.com/27309/whos-writing-book-web-busi...

Yep, but your last update is after just 1 month you were there:

https://maksimdrachov.github.io/2022/03/05/estonia-month-1

what happened later?

Is it all going fine and along your original expectations/wishes?

A gem from the post you linked:

Your compensation is on a second-by-second basis: at the end of the day you’ll see that your wallet has been topped up by the exact amount you’ve earned that day

No no no. I want a salary. I want to know how much money I'll be making over a week, a month, even , <gasp>, a year. How else am I supposed to plan expenses? Support a family?

Really, what a stupid idea.

You have a surplus and don't live paycheck to paycheck.

To me the idea of having your life function like a JiT warehouse is stressful...

The Amazon warehouse worker experience.

Those two concepts aren't at odds really.

I mean it's not a particularly new idea, it's basically what the gig economy is all about and is very much the norm in low skilled labor with shitty payment.

It's not by-second, but that's a way too small unit of measurement anyway, so that was a non starter to begin with.

Being paid for what you have actually done is not a "stupid idea."

If you have no control over the hours you have to work, could be called in at any time, or are not allowed to work for others at your discretion, a paid a base rate for being retained makes sense.

Not to mention, for many jobs, time at work is not a measure of ‘how much work’ you’ve done and such a measure creates an incentive to be inefficient.

It is a stupid idea in the sense that you can see everyone at the top of society financially, socially, influentially, does not have that apply to them or want it to apply to them. From landlords and business owners wanting to be paid for what other people have actually done, to singers and movie makers and authors wanting to be paid for every copy long after what they did, to personal branding wanting to be paid for putting "Michael Jordan" on clothing, to patent holders wanting to be paid for what they thought of, to license holders wanting to be paid for what they permit others to do, to conduits wanting to be paid for what travels through them, to governments wanting to tax what others do, to lobbied politicians wanting to be paid for not getting in someone's way. If the people 'above' you definitely don't want it for themselves, it's quite likely a stupid idea for you to accept them doing it to you.

On the other side, business owners want to pay employees for "what they have actually done" miss the forest for the trees; leading to stories like the developers committing unfinished code, QA finding lots of bugs (for all the basic functionality that was never written), developers fixing those bugs, and hooray the metrics look great for activity but meaningful progress is through the floor and quality is nowhere to be seen. And keys pressed, minutes spent in meetings, reports written, are on the up - easily padded filler and busywork - and difficult to measure things like customer satisfaction, employee morale, creativity, design, planning, are on the down.

> I want a salary.

That's your opinion.

You want safety and don't like risk.

There are many folks that think like you.

But thankfully, not everyone functions this way.

I really enjoyed the second example of paying Netflix by the second. The blockchain has invented movie rentals.

I wouldn’t write it off that quickly. The reason we have a two week pay period is a matter of administrative costs. When these drop because they are automated with a computer you can now pay continuously. Why should you work two weeks on credit? On the flip side a payroll company could make decent money off the two week time arbitration.

The two week period is "typical" in US, in the EU countries usually payment for personnel is monthly, JFYI (though in some firms/fields there can be an "advance" around the 2nd week, usually less than half the pay).

I would say I'm still very happy with my choice so far. I haven't written much due to being busy.

Some things that happened after the first month that might be worth mentioning:

- By working in the local co-working space (which I did for a month to get some additional contacts outside of my workplace), I've managed to get to meet quite a lot of interesting people. Once, the minister of Digital Innovation came to visit. He talked about his work/future projects, we could ask questions, he seemed pretty knowledgeable about his stuff. In general it seems to be pretty easy to get into contact with anyone if you have some question (be it government-related or startup-related).

- A couple of weeks ago, the Estonian startup community organized a "freedom convoy" to Kyiv (pickup trucks for the army). I participated and since it was organized by Ragnar Sass (co-founder of a local unicorn called Pipedrive), I got the chance to hang out with a "real" entrepreneur. I found it a interesting experience, since I've always wondered if there is something special about successful entrepreneurs. My main observation has been that he did seem to be a very high energy kind of person, I guess that helps with building a successful startup.

- I discovered there's a really sizeable French-speaking community in Tallinn. From most people I've heard the same reasons over and over: stifling bureaucracy and high taxes.

- I'm noticing also lots of Italian people moving here.

Just to give a balanced perspective, I'll try to also mention some downsides:

- Coming from Belgium, I sometimes miss the architecture. Tallinn is mostly modern-looking, except for the old town (which I don't find myself in that often). Some of the new areas are actually quite nice-looking, but I still feel older architecture has more liveliness to it.

- Due to the war/inflation, the prices have been rising noticeably lately. I'm not sure how to feel about this, but I guess this is something that is not just the case for Estonia, but also wider Europe. (Estonia did have the largest inflation numbers at one point though). We'll see how it evolves, at least I have more faith in the Estonian government than my previous Belgian one.

In general, I think the main reason I'm happy to live here: Estonia feels like a country on a positive trajectory. Living in Belgium can be, at times, a bit of a downer: it feels like everyone is just trying to "maintain"; and on some level everyone agrees: the best days are behind us.

Startup people do their best to convince others that their startup is the best and that things are going great.

It might not be true.

How do you currently make your living if you don't mind me asking?

> "...Ragnar Sass (co-founder of a local unicorn..."

Excellent nominative determinism here!

Having lived both in Estonia and Belgium, I think this is just an initial attraction. Estonia is a strange country. While the tech-sector is booming, other sectors are struggling. Average blue collar jobs pay is similar to few 3rd world countries. The ageing population coupled with slow birth rate, brings other problems for the state. Health service sector is deteriorating with almost all health professionals eyeing to migrate to West Europe and USA or even Finland. Public infrastructure is bad, don't even have to go more than 10km outside of Tallinn center to notice it. The tech and startup scene is indeed one of the best in Europe, but the tech utopia fascination will wear off in few years unless you succeed in becoming filthy rich. On the long run, you will start noticing the overall quality of life is much much better in Belgium.

> For the level of service offered by the Belgian government, I would argue the tax burden is quite high

I live in another EU country, and I agree.

It's difficult for me to see institutions such as healthcare fall apart while the government is taking a large amount of my salary from my employer and myself every month.

One of the biggest reasons I struggle with it is lack of transparency. Something as simple as a quarterly breakdown of what my money is being spent on along with a feedback form would make it much easier to cope.

Can someone explain to me, in little tiny words, the "e-Residency" thing? As an American, if I become an "e-resident" of Estonia, I can then open a business in Estonia, right? But then aren't I just making myself subject to the regulations and taxes of two governments instead of just one? How is this simplifying things or reducing costs?

IMO this is not for people from developed/"western" countries. This is mainly for people living in countries that have problems connecting to the western banking system, or with a lot of bureaucracy and/or corruption. In most developed countries, an Estonian e-Residency company falls under something like a "Foreign Controlled Corporation" and can be fully taxed just like a local one. This will surely create a lot of legal and accounting problems.

Perhaps this is an option for crypto startups that have trouble opening bank accounts in their countries.

My wife and I considered moving to Estonia awhile back.

One of the major things that convinced us against it was the safety issue - Estonia shares a border with Russia. Estonia has been a soccerball between Germany and Russia in the past, and Russia's current ambitions could very easily expand to include the Baltic states.

Did you move to a different NATO state instead?

Estonia is in NATO, an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies. Maybe I'm trivialising the issue, but that fact alone seems a large enough deterrent to any potential Russian offensive.

It's a big deterrent, yeah, but.... Putin doesn't seem rock-solid in the sanity department.

I don't think Estonia (or the other Baltic States) are in concrete danger - I think Putin specifically attacked Ukraine because he felt he could get away with it (actually he did mostly get away with the annexation of Crimea etc. in 2014), but that the window of opportunity might be closing because Ukraine had a very clear target of joining NATO. The Baltic States are already NATO members, so their situation is completely different.

I frequently hear about "startup-favourable climate" in Estonia, but how good it really is and at what stage. A good analogy may be tourism. When you come as a tourist to a village in a middle of nowhere you get all the hospitality and attention. When you come to Paris, shop sellers can yell at you 15 minutes before the shop is closing to get you out immediately, since they simply don't care - there is a constant flow of tourists, so individual ones don't matter any more for them. At what stage Estonia is with startups?

They are at the '20% company tax' stage

Table 3 in [1] seems to suggest that there are many other places (some in Europe/EU/NATO) where company tax is lower than 20%. From the blog post it seems author moves for the attitude rather.

1. https://taxfoundation.org/publications/corporate-tax-rates-a...

> For the level of service offered by the Belgian government, I would argue the tax burden is quite high

This is fairly standard for western Europe (with the exceptions of Scandinavia): very high tax burden, terrible government services.

In other words: at best, you're not getting your money worth, at worst you're being sheared and milked by your government.

I think Switzerland is an exception, too: low tax burden and good government service in many areas.

Very high cost of living though.

That's similar in Scandinavia though.

I've not lived in either but I've traveled through Switzerland and Denmark (and a few other European countries) and hotels and food were 75% to 100% more expensive or so in Switzerland than anywhere else including Denmark.

My brother lived in Switzerland and France (though not Scandinavia) and mostly confirmed that Switzerland has unnaturally high CoL for the area.

Does Scandinavia have a lower tax burden or better government services?

Better government services

What does your startup actually do? Your linked Github and Twitter only led me to hackernews.ee but I doubt that's what you're trying to build a company around.

I see a reference to Unikie on your LinkedIn but that's much more than a startup at this point; it's got over 250 workers and has acquired several other companies if https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/unikie is to be believed.

Maybe you're working on something behind the scenes that you're not ready to reveal yet, but I don't see the connection. Not every tech company is a startup, nor does it have to be. The digitalisation found in Estonia is nice, but I haven't really heard of anything that the Dutch government doesn't allow you to do online as well.

Off-topic: for anyone who lives in Estonia, what is their eID system like?

(For those unaware, Estonia is one of a few countries that has a government issued electronic ID for all citizens.)

Estonia also has electronic voting that seems to work well. Wish more countries could be similar.

Electronic voting is a bad idea. Almost no upside, but lot of downside. Nobody can proof that the system works, nobody can keep it secure (noone cares about estionian elections, imagine the US...), nobody can proof authenticity in retrospect. And of course, they can’t really be anonymous.

And for what? So that somebody that is too lazy or too disengaged to fill out a paper form or spend 10 minutes at a voting both can have a say in the countries direction?

> Nobody can proof that the system works, nobody can keep it secure (noone cares about estionian elections, imagine the US...), nobody can proof authenticity in retrospect. And of course, they can’t really be anonymous.

Why do you believe none of this can be proofed or kept secure?

I'm guessing they are talking about electronic voting in general, and not the specific system Estonia uses.

And yet it works fine in Estonia.

Not everywhere has to be technologically backwards.

The electronic ID is a great idea for everything except for voting.

I can easily go to someone's place, make sure he votes for my candidate and give him 10$. A lot of people with low interest in politics would sell their vote, I suppose.

Polling booths are still safer than all other options (mail voting, electronic voting, etc...)

And then after taking your money I can vote again as many times as I want for someone I actually like. Only the last vote counts. And I think that next elections it will be possible to override your electronic vote on paper at the polling stations.

1. the vote buyer can lock the eID in the vault until the end of the elections

2. the vote seller can be paid only after the end of the elections, given s/he didn't voted on paper (it it all possible to authenticate wuthout eID on the voting station).

> Only the last vote counts.

Is it always like this? I could also go at someone's place one minute before the voting closes.

Voting at the voting booth is still more secure.

Mail voting already exists and works fine, despite the scenario you're positing. I live in Washington state where it seems to be the default.

In person voting at the voting booth is without any doubt more secure. For something so important like voting I would only use the most secure option.

I live in a country with only voting at the voting booth and I am perfectly happy with it!

In addition to this, the fact that you are not aware of voting fraud does not mean it does not happen. That's why it's important to care about potential voting fraud.

Unfortunately, voting fraud occurs even with in-person voting at the voting booths. Here election observer committees are made up of representatives of the various parties, and there are reports of the deals that split the votes of people who did not show up at the voting booth.

There was a proposal to install cameras on the voting booths, but it was rejected by the high court.

Surprisingly e-voting can solve these low-tech corruption problems, but it introduces a much larger attack surface.

Voting fraud might occur in any way, but I think it's quite obvious that from this point of view voting booths are better than mail voting.

I'm an Australian living in Estonia. The short answer: absolutely amazing.

The long answer: eID was originally through an ID card, and you'd have a USB chip reader you'd plug into your computer and a browser plugin and digital signature software (open source, I believe.) You could use this to authenticate on government, bank, etc websites, and sign documents, very easily: you just remembered a PIN code.

These days many people use Mobile ID which has the same signature functionality on your SIM card, and you sign by entering a PIN on your phone. This is very convenient but I do worry about security a lot more. In the past, there have been security issues, such as flaws in the signatures, and once this caused a large number of ID cards to be reissued. It's not without problems but all problems so far seem to be caught. I don't wholly trust it and I am waiting for the situation where a document is "signed" and the owner of the ID denies signing it.

Almost everything is accessible online, and you do not need to visit offices for the vast majority of government and often other business/bank interaction. I think there are only three things you cannot do online: get married, buy property, and I think deal with deaths. Everything else you can. The famous example is starting a company, which takes about fifteen minutes and even has a customisable template for company documents (in English!) for you, you just pick the options on the website, sign it digitally through the website, establish a holding bank account if necessary (through the website - bit of an echo here!) and done.

Most data about you is digital - your tax, medical etc. For background, I'm someone this scares. I see huge value behind an attack here. I also worry about access by the government or others. But in practice, it seems to work well. Data is stored in different enclaves: the tax department can't see medical data, for example, and access is logged. There are cyber-attacks, most commonly from Russia, but the Estonian IT team is top-notch. If this same system were in Australia I'd have no confidence, because Australia outsources everything and the government cannot run good IT systems. But Estonia does it well.

So is there no biometric for verification? Just physical enrollment and then for all subsequent use, you just use a PIN (no biometric)?

No, there is no biometry. To do anything with your electronic id you need your id card with the chip or your phone with a sim that stores your private key, and you need to know your PIN-s. What other kinds of verification do you need?

It is assumed that whoever is using the id card to sign in somewhere or sign something is the owner of the card. Since.. the pin is also required, stealing someone's card doesn't give the thief any benefit.

I always found the infatuation with Estonian company setup a bit weird. For this convenience you pay 20% company tax. In Europe several countries offer a better rate - for example Ireland is at 12.5% with a similarly easy company setup system - in English. Or Hungary at 9%. At an 11% difference I'd gladly pay for a local accountant. If you earn 100k through your company you leave 10k in the hat just for the PR & marketing Estonia has. No thanks.

What makes it secure is that by law government entities (ministries, departments, etc) should not store data that can be queried from other available registries. So when I go to some official then they look at personal number, look up where I live, and don't have to ask me to fill forms about where I live and what car I have or whatever, data that is already stored in one place. The advantage is this: it is a lot easier to keep data secure when it's in one place (for example.. your address), than when every department had their own databases about addresses of people who have interacted with it.

Why do you think our current system is scarier than the alternative that exists in most other countries? Where every ministry has their own random databases, with data that is probably outdated.

Also, the cyber attacks by russia are always DDOS attacks, they can't achieve anything else.

In short: extremely convenient.

In addition to enabling me to use practically every government service from my couch (and signing legally binding contracts!), the eID system has expanded to become a single sign-on method for many more things. For example, if I would want to change my ISP or mobile carrier, I'm able to log into the new provider's site without any prior registration and have an account with my identity already verified. Even random e-shops will provide this as a login option, and then upon checkout I can use the very same authentication method to confirm the transaction with my bank.

Also, with the advent of Smart-ID (https://www.smart-id.com), I don't even need to pull out my card reader for any of this.

The only government interaction that has required me to be physically present in an office was when the residence permit + ID card were issued to me in the first place.

(For reference, I moved to Estonia from the US in the beginning of 2020)

How are you verified? Is there a biometric at time of authentication?

Sorry, perhaps "verified" was a misnomer. Verified to the extent that I am in possession of a factor (ID card with chip or phone with registered Smart-ID certs) and a memorized PIN (one for authentication and one for signing).

I would kindly say that they didn’t think this system hard enough since it has no fallback way to authenticate. I left the country, a year and a half ago and I accidentally locked the card couple of month ago then I went to their embassy in Copenhagen. Their answer in short: “Sorry the format of your card is not supported anymore, we can’t recover your code, you have to go to the police office in Estonia and ask for a new one, but it won’t be approved since you don’t live there anymore, so you should maybe try to apply to e-citizenship” For a card that expires in middle of 2023 isn’t amazing to learn that they don’t support it anymore. Also applying to e-citizenship costs ~120€. When this card is the only thing you can use to access to your Estonian bank account like it was my case, I don’t know how does it sound to you but well not that great! I have something to compare with since I have pretty much the same electronic id in Denmark and in Sweden.

The fallback is having a second method of authentication or even a second ID card. If getting access to a new document is too difficult then that's a risk you should personally work on reducing.

Somewhat related, Singapore also has a national digital ID system called Singpass[0] which is part of their Smart Nation[1] initiative. Once registered, you can use it from your PC/Phone for digital access to most government services.

[0]: https://www.singpass.gov.sg/main

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Nation

Does Singpass use biometric (either for enrollment, or during each use of it)?

It does utilize biometrics - face/fingerprint scan.

You said "most government services" but eID is usable with all Estonian government services and a significant amount of private sector services.

I was sort of hedging my bets there w.r.t government services. Granted, it is comparatively less prevalent in private sector services.

I'm planning to move to Estonia to start a software product company so this is a very interesting discussion. I was already aware that Ireland and Hungary have lower corporate tax than Estonia but reading the comments I stopped to ponder why I'm not starting the company there instead.

One reason is that I don't have to begin paying (much) tax in Estonia until I start taking money out of the company, which could be many years into the future.

Another reason is cultural: I admit to not knowing all that much about Hungarian culture, but being from Northern Europe I think I will like it better in Estonia and fit in better.

Ireland is just too far away. Also I'm not sure if Ireland being an English-speaking country is only a good thing. I prefer to keep a safe distance from the more toxic parts of Silicon Valley culture (just see what happened to Base Camp).

Just FYI: Belgium has 4 unicorns, not 2 (Odoo, Deliverect, Collibra and Team.blue). We also have a similar thing to the PayPal mafia in Belgium: the Netlog mafia (with people like Lorenz Bogaert). Greetings from a fellow KUL FirW Alum ;)

I think the problem with estonia is that it's just not that attractive a place. I wish they could join forces with some southern european country (which have far more issues than belgium)

I've never been there but I'm curious: in which ways do you mean unattractive? As in the buildings/architecture/landscape is ugly? The pay there is low? Government services are lacking/corrupt? Something else?

cold

I don't mean it's a bad place, but for europeans to move, they usually choose somewhere more exotic

Cold (i dont think estonia is cold but whatever) > warm in times of global warming when you dont even have enough water to support nuclear reactors in France.

South Europe (outside south France) is probably worst place to live if you care about 10+ years window and plan or have kids. You'll just let them out to live in 25% unemployment, high possibility of another immigration crisis and stagnant economy cause you prefere 40+ celsius over 25 in the middle of the day.

Don't know why someone would complain about Estonia? Haven't lived there but visited quite many times. Tallinn has a dense old town. Pärnu is a laid back walkable summer city with a great beach. Saarenmaa is calm and quiet. For negatives, they do lack mountains, there aree large boring pine forest parts in the middle and there are still, after 30 years, a lot of Soviet era semi ruined buildings that make at least me sad. (Buildings can be even older but they were not maintained for the 40+ years of Soviet occupation.)

It really depends on your definition of attractiveness, which would be highly subjective. For the author of the article, the things you would consider unattractive clearly didn't pose a big enough issue to counter the things they do find attractive.

Howdy. Non-European here - Australian - living in Estonia.

Estonia doesn't have mountains. It's flat. It's biggest mountain is a hill about 400 meters high. And I miss mountains. But other than that... this place is beautiful.

The Tallinn old town is wonderfully preserved. There's a vibrant (though expensive) alternative / bar culture in old warehouse districts. The towns, like Pärnu or Viljandi, are unique and have amazing old usually wooden architecture. The air is clean, and I mean really clean. Water comes mostly from wells, and the country is built on limestone. There are lots of lakes. The country has amazing forests, and is one of the most forested, best preserved in terms of nature in Europe.

Yes, it gets cold in winter. Minus 15, minus 20 degrees. Lots of snow. But it's a country that shows seasons: the cycle here is visible and I think that helps a lot. In Australia it was just hot all the time, sometimes a bit wetter. Estonia shows nature's path.

This is all personal opinion. It's a fantastic place.

A side note on forests. I love nature and if you do too, so long as you can handle no mountains :) then Estonia is a good place for you. But the government is rapidly destroying this unique element of the country. I wrote about it for Estonian World, which is the main magazine covering Estonia for foreigners and in English. If you have time please give it a read, both for the photos and discussion of Estonian culture, and also just to see current events in the country. https://estonianworld.com/life/the-war-on-estonian-forests/

I also prefer cold. But the flows of remote workers are usually towards mediterranean countries

This article might have been correct before the Ukraine war but right now Estonian inflation is nearing 25%. Digital economy is working well only when the economy overall is booming.

Great to see that at least some places in the EU seem to be doing it right. The startup ecosystem is a shame for such a developed place.

Moving to a country based on how many "unicorns" there are in that country seems uniquely stupid to me.

Better healthcare? Wonderful. More like-minded people who share your values and interests? Sounds great!

But a valuation means literally nothing. You could just as well have a country full of "unicorns" that absolutely do not improve society and result in crippling socioeconomic inequality.

I also don't understand the point about the bureaucratic German system. I've lived in Germany, and yes, the bureaucracy can at times be annoying. But are you really going to base where you live your life on how difficult it is to incorporate a company, an activity you will do at most a few times?

I also hope that you are now in a country that will help you "become a founder more quickly and increase the odds of [your] startup being successful", but I trust you already know that these odds will be overwhelmingly decided by your own ideas and work, not by the specific legal details of limited liability companies in your jurisdiction.

I truly hope OP finds a lot of happiness and a wonderful life in Estonia, but if they do, I don't think it will have been for the reasons they expected.

(Note: nothing against Estonia, I've always wanted to visit)

It is about future.

“how fast is it to incorporate” and “number of unicorns” etc. will likely result in better economic activity and standard of living in the future.

“annoying bureaucracy” will likely result in degradation and lower economic activity in the future.

If you look at things like the GDPR, Reverse Charge VAT and other stuff the EU has planned, then you will realize that is an EU wide problem with “annoying bureaucracy”.

So moving from one EU country to another doesn't solve this issue.

Also, Germany has the most political power in the EU because they have the most population - so the same shitty things German politicians plan for their own country have a big possibility to become EU standards.

I agree with you.

I own a GmbH in Germany and many things, which you are required to do, make total sense. (E.g. for government supported founding you will need a business plan - but that you need anyway, even if you talk to private investors)

There are a few annoying specialities (like the Reverse Charge VAT) but most of them are EU wide things.

But the author is moving there to open startup. It's a business opportunity, not just a place to live.

isn't estonia a top 3 target for russia right now?

Estonia is in NATO. That seems quite stupid. Who's number 1 and 2? The US and Germany?

finland? moldova? georgia?

Moldova and Georgia aren't in NATO.

I'm not sure on the timeline - but Finland will soon be a NATO member.

I don't think Finland has anything to worry about.

Moldova, maybe. George - not being a border state with the EU - definitely.

Estonia is in NATO. So seems doubtful it's a serious target.

Certainly one hopes, although one also hopes that Putin is acting rationally and is advised by people who can speak truth to power.

In the EU, maybe? But there are at least three countries currently partially occupied by Russia (or "pro-Russian" forces), and none of those are Estonia. Estonia also enjoys the security guarantees that come from being a NATO member.

Estonia is a member of NATO, so it "doesn't matter", in the sense that Estonia being a target means that all other members of NATO are a target. Of course practically speaking it is a bigger issue for Estonia than for say Canada, but at least within EU, I would not let that aspect be a major point in deciding places to move to.

Estonia is a lot closer to the Russia missiles and planes, though.

Estonia is in NATO and the EU right? I think a Russian invasion of a NATO country would be a problem if you lived anywhere in Europe, or the world really.

If it wasn't in NATO or the EU, Russia would've already invaded by now, that's obvious enough.

But they are in NATO and the EU, so they appear to be safe. Russia invading Estonia would give the US and other NATO powers effective free license to start hurling missiles themselves (instead of just handing them to Ukraine).

that's like saying "don't worry if the defender breaks your leg because the ref will call a foul"

I don't see how the US entering the war would be equivalent at all. Russia's army can't even handle Ukraine's army after they've been hastily handed a bunch of random Western equipment, the US would zero issue manhandling the Russia military.

Saddam's invasion of Kuwait still sucked for the people in Kuwait

Don't get me wrong though, I have a high opinion of Estonia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_Genome_Project

There's already NATO troops in Estonia, the US has a bunch of troops relatively nearby in Poland, and when Russia invaded Ukraine recently, the US knew months ahead of time. Given that the US is in a military alliance with Estonia, Russia won't dare invade in the first place.

The Ukraine conflict made it clear that Russia bluffs its capabilities pretty severely.

They frequently make statements that can be construed as threats to EU and NATO states, eg. some jackass in the Duma saying they don't recognize the sovereignty of the Baltic states. A few years ago it seemed like it might not be a bluff. And with Donald Trump openly bashing NATO... It would have been conceivable that Putin could attack and assume the west wouldn't care.

But the Ukraine conflict made it clear that it's not possible. The west cares, and the Russian military is pretty weak.

I suspect that the real reason is that you are a Russian speaker, moving to Estonia to connect with all the new Russian emigrants that flocked there before and especially after 24 February 2022.

Being EU citizen, you can look them down, feeding your narcissism. You may also profit from their desperation as they are being pushed back to Russia because Estonia cancel their visas.

It's also a great moment to hit a girl or two that would usually be out your league.

"To be fair, there is one notable exception: Imec, an R&D hub for nano- and digital technologies. This organization has succesfully spun-off multiple startups in its specialist field. However those are often based on specialization in a very narrow field of research. I’m more into the Silicon Valley-type of startups."

Isn't this exactly what countries should be doing, funding emerging niche technologies?

I assume by 'silicon valley-type' you mean facebook, twitter, uber, and the like?

IMHO, many of these don't seem to add any real value to society, certainly not in proportion to how much money they attract.

> don't seem to add any real value

These comments make me angry. Thanks to Facebook, I keep in contact with a lot of friends who would otherwise have completely lost touch with. Thanks to Uber, I get comfortable rides from point A to point B, even in places where the taxi systems completely fail (and there are a lot of these, I have plenty of stories, even recent ones).

I get enormous value from these services. You don't, fine. Stop projecting on others.

So we're still getting the fb excuse/apologism. Anyone could have used - and many of us used - plain old email, then irc, various messengers et al before zuck came. Back then, at that time, there were other ways to keep in touch and still is, just much more. All of them are better in terms of privacy.

Please tell me of one service that existed before Zuck came along that you could use to set up multi-directional live video streaming for a group event connecting the US and multiple locations across Eastern Europe and South Asia with mediocre internet connectivity, for several hours, for free, and that would be so simple to use that your elderly grandparents could join in.

Please tell me of one service that existed before Zuck came along that automatically performed genuinely good machine translation of chat messages between two non-English languages.

Please tell me of one service that existed before Zuck came along where you could, after moving to a new town or neighborhood where you know nobody, be certain that you would be able find active local groups for your non-nerdy social niche.

Because these are all things I have recently used Facebook for. And while there are alternatives for some/all of them in the era after Facebook, in the era before Facebook, I don't think I would have been able to do them easily, or at all.

just, LOL.

What's so special about Facebook? Before Facebook there was MySpace and before that there were others. During Facebook there were many competitors, some big, some small, but Facebook managed to hold out the longest.

Years before Facebook introduced DMs people were chatting on MSN and video calling over Skype. MSN and Skype were everywhere before Facebook took over, and if they weren't, alternatives like AIM were.

There's nothing technologically or ideologically superior to Facebook. Most new and interesting features have been a result of acquisition rather than internal drive for advancement. Facebook rolled out calling in 2013, three years after Skype did. Skype translator came out in 2014, Facebook added their version in 2018. Google Chat introduced a translation bot all the way back in 2012.

Their current quest for innovation centers around the Metaverse, something nobody but Facebook seems to want to be a thing. Even that is just the unholy amalgamation of Second Life and VRChat. The big difference there is that people actually use Second Life and VRChat.

Facebook made the best business model out of scraping the stuff people somehow fed freely into their system. It's one of the few remaining social media companies, that's it. None of the inventions you quoted were done by Facebook, they just copied features others thought out and merged them into a single place to become the bloated tech giant it is today.

I used Skype. I distinctly remember that my grandparents were not able to set up Skype on their own: I had to visit them and install the thing and set up their account and add everyone they wanted to into their contact list. I also distinctly remember the video/audio quality often being close to white noise when chatting across multiple international boundaries.

I used MySpace for a bit. As far as I remember, it was a network targeting teenagers. Not a place where, say, one could search for an electrician or a dentist, discuss the relative merits of the vegetable selection at nearby groceries, or look for baby formula in a time of shortage.

I used ICQ and IRC and MSN and AIM and plain old SMS. None of them invested much design effort in internationalization. IRC in particular was brutally hostile to non-English alphabets. None ever considered the possibility of auto-translationg a conversation between people speaking different languages; perhaps there were third party addons that tried to do so, but I never encountered them.

You are correct that Facebook did not invent its portfolio of technologies. What Facebook did is integrate them, implement them extremely well, and made them ridiculously easy to use for non-technical people, which is extraordinarily useful given that much of one's social circle is non-technical.

Except it's not free, you're the product.

https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/

"Loveable Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called his first few thousand users "dumb fucks" for trusting him with their data, published IM transcripts show.

Facebook hasn't disputed the authenticity of the transcript. Zuckerberg was chatting with an unnamed friend, apparently in early 2004."

lots of people got enormous value from the labor of enslaved people

start considering the lives of people beyond yourself

Please quote the actual thing I said, 'value to society'. That is what countries are (should be) concerned with.

And so it seems to me perhaps Belgium has a fairly sensible approach, to fund actual technology development, rather than monopoly schemes based on extant technology.

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