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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

After the election I know Canadian and colleagues from other countries thought of moving to US for an easier time building a business. Curious if anyone from the founder / small business crowd has had this feeling and either is still interested/happy with such a move? Or regretting it?

IIRC Culturally it was said by many that the US is much better that EU / Canada for building a business as US rewards ambition. While other countries it’s seen as not as positive of an attribute. Other countries did not let you easily build wealth or grow a business, while it was said US is culturally more welcoming to building wealth.

I’m curious how this will change in this administration.

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To be fair, as a Canadian, I think starting a business anywhere else is better than in Canada, except maybe Germany? (Apologies to our dear Germans; my sense of humor isn’t the best.)

Why? I have started two small businesses in Canada with reasonable success (not enough to retire, but a nice payday each time), there was nothing particularly onerous either time.

The US makes startups easier due to easy access to capital from investors. OTOH, I'd be wary of starting a lifestyle business in the US due to the poor social safety net.

Red tape is also a concern, but it depends on what European country you're talking of, some are better than others, and red tape is awful in the US as well, depending on the state.

Those are basically the only considerations, everything else (like culture) is BS.

Be thankful you're not in New Zealand. Our current government claims to be business oriented, but they appear to desire to screw our economy. Partly because of trying to appeal to voters that are generally socialist here (a strong preference to hobble greedy business owners and often little sympathy for anyone who exports something to bring a USD into the country). Short sighted policy goals aiming to sell off anything to overseas "investors". When everything is for sale, we all lose. Eventually there will be fewer productive export businesses left to pay for our free healthcare, our retiree's superannuation or our other welfare benefits. Lose lose. Our socialist policies are good and humane, but they are hard to balance against economic growth.

We lack economic balance over here even though we have MMP voting. Swinging leftwards and less leftwards (NZ is mostly lefty) seems to be the only way we achieve a modicum of compromise over the years.

The US idolises successful business owners (even the notorious are validated).

NZ does have a couple of successful tech companies that list in Australia (e.g. Xero) or moved to the US (e.g. RocketLab). They often keep engineering in NZ because staff are skilled and cheap.

If the economy crashes I hope we can put a stake through the heart of the obsession with founders.

The American economy is a giant magnet right now -- after the inevitable crash I think that innovation would be a lot more distributed and that'll be a good thing.

Kind of already happening with Asian/Chinese chip companies and will happen to European defence

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