Germany Sets New Six-Month Startup Record
gtai.de
gtai.de
* Employee share options are taxed when they sell the shares, not when issuing the option (regardless of strike price) nor when exercising it.
* Changes to the shareholder structure (e.g. raising capital) don't require visiting a notary
And I'm not sure if incorporating in a different EU country (while still looking just like a German EU Inc) would avoid some of the German pain points.
I'm pretty sure Germany is more than capable to negate all those. For instance it is inconceivable to imagine company law practiced in Germany without a notary speaking out loud the whole shebang.
Had to visit one of these every time we raised capital. He never did more than read the text aloud and perhaps correct a typo. I don't want to know how much the company paid for that privilege.
In Germany, innovation is defined and funded by grant agencies. The only projects that are deemed innovative are those that look like existing projects that are known to be innovative.
Not the sharpest minds. More bureaucratic than entrepreneurial. At the time, none of the C-suite had ever run their own company. Zero international experience. Complete mediocrity.
That might also explain part of the discrepancy in this thread: a count like this only captures what registers as a "startup" in the first place. If AI is mostly lowering the cost of getting to a working, revenue-generating product solo, a meaningful chunk of that activity may never show up in a founder database – it just looks like someone quietly running a small profitable thing.
Curious whether anyone here started something in Germany this year without going near a grant or VC process – and if so, whether that was deliberate or just never came up.