I agree that the process is unnecessarily complex, but I also think hiring someone for that would be the wise choice in most places anyway.
And even in Germany hiring someone for that would probably amount to paying 500-1000€ for the whole registration of the company instead of doing everything yourself and only paying the 100-200€ notary fees. It's not as bad as you might think.
> I will never try it in my home country.
May I ask, where would you try it? As I understand it, it's not really possible to found in a different European country while you're still living in Germany.
I may be misunderstanding, is this statement suggesting that the advice to use lawyers in Germany is simply standard op procedure, and not even remotely necessary? As it really isn't necessary in the US, especially with how easy it is to change or update later if it gets to that point.
I have incorporated (s-corp), created a couple LLC's and briefly used a sole proprietorship with a DBA filed in my county - this one was by far the most annoying, time consuming, and confusing one. The state filings took maybe 10-15 minutes of filling out straight forward online forms, $1 (at the time for a name search) and $300 to file. Soon after I was the paper owner of a legal corporation (or LLC's). The most complicated part was understanding taxes, but the application of taxes is separate from starting the company (assuming you understand the best tax structure for what you are doing). If anything, an Accountant is way more important imo.
In the US, getting a lawyer just to incorporate is flushing money down the drain. At best you can do it yourself (and in most states it's not particularly complex), at worst there are cheap online services to help you.
There's a lot of small, one-person shops that manage to make LLC's and stuff in the U.S.. There's books on how to do it yourself. In my state, there's little paperwork, too.
Why should there be a globally relevant software company? How about locally relevant software companies? If it is successful enough to pay for its own expenses and decent income for the employees/founders, it is a good business.
Because software has enormous fixed costs and low marginal costs, so spreading the fixed costs across more users improves the economics, often by a large factor.
It’s not that it’s strictly required, but it’s so beneficial that it’s often chosen.
> The company is the largest non-American software company by revenue and the world's third-largest publicly traded software company by revenue. As of December 2023, SAP is the largest German company by market capitalization.
SAP is kinda of a monopoly no ? The software is bloated and complex to use. The UI is dated but everyone still uses it because it is so embedded into the core arteries of businesses.
It's not a monopoly if it is hard to migrate from. SAP doesn't go out of its way to prevent you from migrating out of the HANA database. It's just that by the time you need a software like SAP, whatever you're buying becomes business critical and hard to migrate from regardless. And SAP is good enough to handle all kinds of edge case scenarios reasonably strongly. SAP doesn't even engage in monopolistic practices like what Microsoft or Apple do.
SAP and Salesforce are pretty much in the same bucket imo. The reason there is no Hubspot for SAP is that most smaller companies don't really need an ERP system.
true. SAP is more of an entrenched SaaS. Once you have it, the switching costs are too high later on. What an amazing kind of biz. The stickiness is crazy.
AUTOSAR alliance is an organization based in Germany defining automotive ECU software architectures. Most automotive SW development is happening in Germany.
I’m from Sweden and live in Switzerland. I know many people who have their own companies, and I was looking to start one myself before moving to Switzerland. It is SUPER EASY.
I’ve helped my wife become self employed in Switzerland. I do most of the admin work for her. Again, very straight forward.
I think Sweden is one of the very most entrepreneur-friendly EU countries. It's got a big safety net, but doesn't impose much bureaucratic or financial burden on new businesses or even solopreneurs just getting started out.
It's so easy (relative to this) to just go grab a SAFE. No strings, no bureaucracy. You can structure your endeavor however you want. And you can sometimes do it with just a conversation.
I never thought about founding my own company while living in Germany. I hate this countries bureaucracy to the core. If I ever wanted to found one, I'd first move out of Germany.
And even in Germany hiring someone for that would probably amount to paying 500-1000€ for the whole registration of the company instead of doing everything yourself and only paying the 100-200€ notary fees. It's not as bad as you might think.
> I will never try it in my home country.
May I ask, where would you try it? As I understand it, it's not really possible to found in a different European country while you're still living in Germany.