Strategy for EU Bootstrapping Hardware Startups: Don't Sell to Anyone in EU | Hacker News Reader

Strategy for EU Bootstrapping Hardware Startups: Don't Sell to Anyone in EU

flyingcarcomputer.com

44 pointsJoshTriplett29 comments

I think article lack of research, and shows EU as less hardware friendly that is in reality.

1. You can do self-certification for CE.

2. You can find many companies that will do assembly in EU, so you can controll quality.

3. If you are selling kit as DIY, you don't need any certification at all (look at first years of Prusa)

The EU is at the end of the day still 27 countries with their different laws and regulations each trying to protect their own little market. The way the ‘single market’ is constructed is by slapping a bunch of eu wide regulations on top of this mess.

So yes it is much easier to sell to single big countries like China or the USA if you can, and it always will be

This is not going to be solved soon as EU countries are responding to this pressure by voting for even more protectionism at the national level

> In addition, the marketing is currently only in English, which is not the primary language of any EU country.

Sorry Ireland...

And Malta

I wanted to be fair to Malta, so seeing this on Wikipedia:

> A study collecting public opinion on what language was "preferred" discovered that 86 percent of the population preferred Maltese, 12 percent English, and 2 percent Italian.

I thought that although English is an official language, it isn't really the primary one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta#Languages

Then add in the 15 million euro fine if do fail to comply to the cyber security resilience act. You’ll love it here!

For that reason alone I expect increasingly less willingly to offer more than the basic guarantee due to risk of not being able to carry out upgrades at a certain point to be CRA compliant.

The first question about Chesterton fences is: why is it there?

Correct. On the other hand, Europe (and especially my home Germany) tend to be really bad at navigating people through the laws and regulations they create. Laypeople are left to figure out what the laws are, what they mean, how to follow them, where to get the required certifications etc.

My first year of running a simple business in Germany was unbelievably confusing. My only saving grace was that none of those laws are enforced. GDPR is a good example.

> Europe (and especially my home Germany)

Europe/EU is not Germany… and Germany is infamous for it's dumb redtape and being stuck in "their ways" (if it works then it works then there is no need to change that" seems to be a proverb there, inni't?)

Besides - in majority of the countries you have to navigate the laws… either yourself or you get an expert/lawyer that does that for you o_O

I did business in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Estonia and Sweden. It was a total shitshow, and I moved it all to UK, which is much better (especially the gov.uk site is a godsend).

What exactly was a shitshow in Sweden? So far in my experience it's quite a breeze to start and run a business here.

As everywhere else in EU (and unlike the UK), filling taxes and registering employees for all the necessary insurances and gov agencies becomes an extreme burden as soon as you go beyond just one person / the simplest business transactions. It's a fulltime job even if the company is still very small and just doesn't have the resources to hire a fulltime dedicated person.

Uhm... usually if you go beyond 1 person then you get someone to handle all the paperwork and this applies to almost all countries... In case of Poland it's not all that expensive either, especially if it takes off of you the burden...

No, not really. I can't make the money to hire the person to handle it without first having the employees. I handle it all myself, I am not VC-funded nor eligible for incentives.

Still, cost of accountant in Poland is just... low...

My point is that the UX of running a business in Europe is not great. Germany is worse, but the EU is not great either.

I would love for the people to stop being ignorant and finally realise that "The UE" is not a country... it's a union of 27 diverse countries/economies/cultures... Each one having own interests so managing (and sometimes pushing) to integrate that is just plain difficult... And if you apply to much force the counterforces emerge…

People are going to point out flaws or loopholes they know about that would be even easier, but they’re missing the point: it was not possible for someone genuinely in the process of launching a product to find out.

My side business was a small tool which was just a 3d printed case with an ESP32 I programmed w/ some small electronics and I sold it as is online. US + local government made sure there was zero friction even down to dealing with USPS shipping pickup issues. If I was still in Germany they would have shut me down and fined me personally for even trying.

It is crazy that the best business plan for a European starts at buying a plane ticket to America.

It's almost like free enterprise is one of the scariest things to those who would much prefer bureaucracy & monarchy.

You think Germany has a monarchy??

Are you one of the ones who would prefer it that way?

Actually I think it goes something like this:

Q. You think Germany has a monarchy??

Answers own Q with clenched fist. I'll show you a monarchy !!

so the American president can prosecuted for crime he or she did during the presidency? ;)

Good call, the US probably has more fans of future monarchy than Europe has nostalgia for lost royalty.

I'm pretty sure there is no nostalgia in Germany about royalty.

Are you sure that would actually happen in Germany? In Norway (which has the same rules), most likely no-one would care - unless the electronics actually ended up in a safety hazard (say fire).

Can you name an example of someone being shut down cus of that in Germany (or anywhere else in the EU really)? I honestly can't think of a single regulation that would apply in the EU and not apply in the US for some reason or another for this use case.

What does the author mean here when referring to customs when shipping products from within the EU to other EU countries? The EU has a customs union...

The VAT per country can be a bit of a pain but is a solved problem (Shopify, Amazon, can all take care of it easily).

I stopped purchasing from the US as the vat gets collected - has to be in cash - by the delivery drivers. Now, i just sweep through the EU various countries (not you, UK [I do so enjoy HP sauce...no more]) to get the best deal, and get charged vat up front.

An ARM computer running a BSD and x stack. What's interesting about it, that makes it a "flying car" as opposed to everybody else's 140 characters?

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