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Comment by Bewelge | Hacker News Reader

German here. That's not true. What crazy documentation do you require? An ID, proof of residence, and a business plan? (edit: you don't even need a business plan)

That being said, everything about the process is annoying and you always have the feeling that you're doing something wrong or forgetting something. Together with some ridiculously slow processing times, it's the perfect combination to frustrate you and I'm sure it ultimately reduces innovation.

But in reality, getting all the paperwork together is probably a couple of hours of work. You can buy services that do it for you for a couple of hundred Euros.

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> ... and a business plan?

Why would the government need a business plan?

It's none of their business what you want to do with your company besides a general description as "software development" or "consulting services" or whatever.

Actually I think I might be mistaken that you are even required to make a business plan. It's listed as one of the steps on the states portal about founding. But it goes on to say that it's not technically required, just highlights its importance.

https://www.existenzgruendungsportal.de/Navigation/DE/So-geh...

> It's none of their business what you want to do with your company

There are plenty of European member states that want the ability to control very precisely what you do with "your company". You want to call yourself "a software engineer"? Ooops...

In the EU it seems particularly the German-speaking countries are borderline obsessed with a) titles, and b) whom may use those titles. See, for instance, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34096464

I like that you know what an Engineer is in German, and not the 1000 BS Meanings it has in the US

> it seems particularly the German-speaking countries are borderline obsessed with a) titles

There is nothing borderline about that - the German cultural space (including very much the countries of former Habsburg Empire) is still completely obsessed with titles and formal positions despite many of them losing any practical importance in modern times.

Several sectors of economic activities have the potential for atrocious externalities and it's absolutely the government's business to know about these and make sure that you're following regulation to minimize these externalities. When you make your employees the neighbours sick (or straight up kill them) it's an enormous failure on the part of government. It's easy to be oblivious to that when you only think about software.

Exhibit A: https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/battery-facility-acc...

Except it seems that it's often large companies - typically those with lots of lawyers - who seem to get away with what I can only describe as "corporate misdeads" most regularly.

"Following regulation" sounds great until it's revealed that corporate lobbyists have been helping (co-)write regulations to make sure that fair competition is quashed.

It’s interesting how people can apply thinking like “there are problems, it’s not perfect, better not to try” to government, but also be pro starting businesses

I don't know much about corporations, but why business plans are needed at all? I mean, for EU citizens.

bank (loans), immigration and investors can be interested, but their interests are not covering every corporation out there.

It's basically a proof of "most basic effort" that you're serious. You could probably note down some stuff on a single A4 and get it approved, it doesn't have to be a 40 page dossier.

Kind of like fizzbuzz, just something really simple and most basic to get rid of the "easy scams" and so on.

Edit: So "easy scams" are probably the wrong word, I initially wrote "riffraff" because in my mothertoungue that isn't so... disparaging, but what I meant was that it's used as "bare minimum filter" basically.

That doesn't really sound like a barrier to the easy scams at all. It just sounds like something someone once thought would be a good idea and now everyone has to do it because that's the process.

How would this get rid of easy scams?

ChatGPT, give me a convincing sounding business plans for starting a bussiness in Germany.

Done.

There’s absolutely no need to have a business plan to start a company in Germany. You articles of incorporation and they state a company purpose, but this can be something as simple as “do IT consulting”.

Obviously, having a credible plan helps if you try to convince banks to loan you money or any such thing, but the act of registering a company requires no such thing.

Previous HN discussion about setting up a GmbH.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39959368

> business plan

This is the problem. Let me pivot. Let me fail. Let my investors (including myself) lose time and money in bad ideas.

All the bureaucracy in the world didn’t stop Wirecard, but it sure as heck demotivated people from trying something new in Germany.

There is no problem, because no business plan is required.

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