Why Greece is a great place to start a company(drachmastartup.wordpress.com)
drachmastartup.wordpress.com
Why Greece is a great place to start a company
http://drachmastartup.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/the-good-guys-win-in-the-end/
3 comments
Mixture of both is the key. Inc/business in the Valley, R&D in Gr
It is just as cheap to put my R&D in Berlin as Greece (especially somewhere like Athens). It is cheaper to put my R&D in a place like Albania. Hybrid developed/developing is a great model, but you want your dev center to be cheap for opex, have a large number of skilled people available, probably a place where you have a personal connection, and such. University towns in the midwestern USA, Eastern Europe, Israel, India all make sense for people for that.
Greece has high unemployment, undeniably, but also has both high costs and high risk, and a really small technical workforce. That's not great for a startup.
I don't disagree that if I were Greek and in Greece, a startup would be a lot more attractive than remaining unemployed or trying to get a government job, but it's inaccurate and unhelpful to say Greece is objectively a good place to do startups vs. practically anywhere else. One of the keys to doing a startup successfully is to be honest with yourself about unpleasant things.
Greece has high unemployment, undeniably, but also has both high costs and high risk, and a really small technical workforce. That's not great for a startup.
I don't disagree that if I were Greek and in Greece, a startup would be a lot more attractive than remaining unemployed or trying to get a government job, but it's inaccurate and unhelpful to say Greece is objectively a good place to do startups vs. practically anywhere else. One of the keys to doing a startup successfully is to be honest with yourself about unpleasant things.
In general I agree. Note that this is only one post of a blog about the difficulties of starting up in Greece, and it's the post that lists the positives to draw upon. It does not claim that someone from Germany should move to Greece to start his company. It claims that despite the difficulties, there are upsides one could take advantage of, and they are not negligible.
I agree 100%
One could make the same argument about Detroit.
lol
Greece is all risk and downside, zero startup culture, no professional services, expensive capital, and not actually terribly cheap.