Ask HN: What's the best way to start a SaaS company for an EU citizen?
I'm an Italian citizen and I'm searching for the best way to start a SaaS company. I'm interested in the following features:
1. Minimal bureaucracy burden: I'd rather spend my time on improving the product than navigate a mountain of bureaucracy. Also the more that can be done online the better.
2. Tax efficiency: everything else being equal I'd prefer to pay less taxes, but achieving a 0% taxation via some shady practices is not of interest to me.
3. Future-proof structure: I'd like to structure the company in a way that's appropriate for when the startup grows beyond being just a one-person endeavor, basically I want to be able to hire somebody and issue shares to a partner or an investor in a relatively hassle-free manner.
I can consider relocating.
What's the best way to do this?
How did you open your SaaS company, and are you happy with your choice?
1 comment
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 15.9 ms ] thread- Italy: there are too many regulations and almost nothing can be done online practically. And the startup ecosystem is crap, ~60m people and 0 unicorns, the startup incubator in my city claims a 98% success rate or something like that. This is obviously not a good environment for starting a company.
- Estonia: I'm an e-Resident already but starting a company in Estonia as a foreigner requires going through a service provider, the most popular one seems to be leapin.eu and they don't support multi-shareholder companies, nor having employees outside of Estonia. Maybe there's a more appropriate service provider though. Plus Stripe is not available yet in the country, but I've heard the situation will change in 2019.
- US: it seems one needs somewhere between $500k to $1M to "buy" a green card, so relocating there could be challenging. And opening a company in a country to which I wouldn't be able to relocate to sounds like a dumb idea. There's Stripe Atlas which could be interesting though.
- UK: the startup ecosystem seems good, I've heard good things about the governmental websites, but I'd like to wait for the dust about brexit to settle before seriously considering this option.