I recently helped my friend (3rd country national) to open a new business in Czech Republic.

It took 3 months from registration to sending her first invoice. The longest wait was on the bank account: a very few places are willing to open company account if you don't have an EU residency. Without the bank account, she couldn't deposit founding capital (základní kapitál) which is required to complete the registration. It's even funnier cause the minimum amount to deposit is 1 CZK (5 cents).

Total cost to start business was under $8,000. The most expensive were legal services: writing down all contracts and customer agreements was around ~$5,000.

I feel like this is such an untapped market for getting digitilized. I was thinking to actually sit and vibe code it at some point but can't imagine doing this alone.

As others commented already - the author does not seem to understand principal idea behind running a business - a company is not something "yours", because you can just simply sell your shares or be moved out from the company by other partners.

Company is a state's legal entity given to designated people to manage (the forming person/partners) and profit from doing it successfully. If those people fail they have to follow strict rules (liquidation) or they will be sued personally for misconduct. That entity gives much more possibilities because it is limited liability - part of which is held by the state, and part by the running founders.

If you want something yours, you go with the sole proprietorship.

My friend bought an apartment. In February. Still in processing at the Amt (bureau). It's nightmare fuel. They are sending physical letters, and are hand-matching payments from banks. Apparently, they couldn't match a 53 EUR transfer last week, so a ~400k EUR payment is stalling.

The issue is, the people holding the stamps (and believe me, they ARE stamps, with ink and all) are in charge, and are VERY reluctant to give up that comfy job. Zero accountability, too, since once you are a government employee, it's incredibly hard to get fired. So they stall the process, forever, without any reprecussions.

I am all for having and caring about process and dealing with everyone equally. That's why I live in Germany and not in Eastern Europe where often some money under the table is the only oil in the machine. No such oil in the German machine, thankfully. But it's infuriatingly slow, because bureaucrats are in control and will never willing give up that control.

idk I founded a UG within a few weeks recently. Yeh it costs me maybe a thousand or so in notary fees but that's it.

"My German clients I could bill today. But a domestic invoice now would have to be reissued the moment the VAT ID arrives"

Not a good idea... Companies will have to re-enter their VAT reports in previous taxation periods. It will trigger even more hassle an pushback form payers...

While EU is big and welcoming family, nobody wants to deal with non-resident bank accounts and tax liabilities :)

German here. And this is just the standardized SETUP! Wait until you have an edge case or a complicated tax situation, or - dare you - you want to work from a different country.

Germany feels like the government tries to make everything as hard and complicated as possible, to block ANY steps forward. It feels like organized sabotage to me.

Wild that they had to pay >€1500 to have documents notarized. This costs USD$25 here in the US and can be done online (not sure if incorporation documents count).

I think most red tapes and bureaucracies have loop holes. For example, a different, simpler type of business type, then conversion to the actual desired type. At least, this has been my experience in a few countries I worked in. Sometimes it will cost more up front, but if the end result is significantly faster, maybe it is worth it.

I am sorry he has to go through this just to start a business.

Mh, seems to me about ranting as some things went wrong. With all due respect, founding a company shouldn’t be that easy; otherwise investors wouldn’t give you money for it. “UG” reads as “not serious” – no, that was in the past. Times have changed.

I’m not here to defend a big country that clearly has to do better, of course.

You can just buy a ready made GmbH.

This costs about 28k€, 25k€ are deposited in the company.

That is called Vorratsgmbh and takes very little time.