Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

As a German I agree with the gist: Germany is overly buerocratic and not startup friendly.

When it comes to founding a company the author overcomplicates things, however. This is OK when you want to study the process, or want to become an expert in this and maybe make a business out of it.

If you just want a company get started, just buy a ready made one. There are specialized lawyers that always keep a pool of freshly founded companies to sell - exactly for that purpose. These companies are brand new, usually just a couple of weeks old and have no significant history. They have generic names and you can decide on a proper name later.

If you don't have anyone to advise you and insist finding a suitable lawyer on your own: Go to Germany's central company register (Handelsregister) and research startups in your field. The lawyers and law firms specialized in selling new companies will stick out pretty quickly to you.

This is such a cop out.

You shouldn’t complain about the process of incorporating and buy a ready made one?! This is just encouraging middlemen and lessening pressure on the government to actually work for your money!

I’m guessing you’ve never tried incorporating in a country where it actually makes sense and you can get going for cheap in a matter of days.

L.E.: Having worked with germans and german companies for a long time, I think this permanent mentality of making up excuses for why rules are this way (they must be Perfekt!) and blaming the people trying to follow them for not doing it right is one of the key things that’s holding you all back.

I’ve bickered so many times with germans and their bureaucracy in company processes, after years and years I just decided to give up (I was never going to make any difference, just hurt my own sanity) and I try to avoid german companies now.

I find that Europe often has things like this. That is, the “easy way” that everyone uses.

The frustrating thing is that there is no way of learning about it until you’ve already endured months of pain trying to follow the impossible steps outlined on the official government website.

If that site had a little notice on top saying “Stop! Nobody does it this way! Google this term instead”, that would save a lot of pain.

I'm Dutch (Netherlands) and lived in Germany a while. I started companies in both. The Netherlands is ultra-quick and cheap. Germany not so much as per this thread.

The mythical "European state" where everything works the same does not exist.

Ah yes, Europe the country

I don't know how it works in Germany but where I live one reason to buy an 'off-the-shelf company' is that you can pay out dividends with relatively low tax faster.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com