Europe – we need your help. Please sign this petition to create a pan-european legal entity for European Startups. The goal is to remove complexity & beaucracy for founders and investors across Europe. Effectively uniting the European ecosystems.
Hey folks
Andreas here, i was founding team of Product Hunt and its first CTO.
We are doing something special today - we launched a pan-european petition that aims to fix Europe for startups.
www.eu-inc.org
The very first step in fixing Europe for startups is to get rid of the national silos we all face in our ecosystem.
Ever wondered why it's so hard to raise money in your country in Europe? Because angels from neighboring countries would barely invest in your country - usually due to not wanting to deal with your local legal+tax systems. The outcome is that in Europe less than 18% of all early investments is pan-european, where-as in the USA coast-to-coast investing is super common.
But we can fix this.
How? By creating a shared legal entity as a standard across Europe.
Think US Delaware Inc + YC SAFE notes but for Europe - it's obviously more complex in practice but it's doable (see https://www.eu-inc.org/faq )
And even more rare - there is very strong political will to make this happen.
What we as the startup industry need to do is to show that this is a #1 priority.
We got 6 weeks until the work agenda of for the next Commission (think years of work) is defined. We need to make our voice heard and quite literally get everyone of the European Startup Ecosystem to sign this. You, me, everyone in your team, your investor, everyone in your portfolio's teams, the founders in your whatsapp, slack and discord groups.
Everyone.
If we speak up together. We can create a pivotal improvement for startups - quite like the biggest improvement for European Startups in our generation.
Among the first co-signatories are people like Patrick (Stripe), Taavet (Wise), Index Ventures, Sequoia, Atomico, and hundreds more - and we just started yesterday!
We have 6 weeks to make this happen!
This petition is for anyone who wants to make Europe more startup-friendly - hopefully you included!
Please go to www.eu-inc.org and sign now!
Regulation & Bureaucracy is destroying innovation in Europe.
Great to see someone is trying to fix this huge problem.
This is a much needed initiative in the EU, I completely agree. It's difficult to hit the right balance when it comes to bureaucracy, however as an ex-small business owner I can confidently say that there is waaay too much right now. Also, if this would incentivise more people to try their hand at entrepreneurship, then it would be a win for everyone.
I recommend supporting the EU-Inc initiative – the creation of a pan-European legal entity for startups! Join the signing of the petition and help create the future for European startups!
This framework came really unlock Europe’s full potential in tech. A single market would give startups the room they need to grow big.
love the focus on making employee stock options easier to manage. This would help share success more widely across teams!
🙏 please make a linkedin company profile so we can follow the progress on this. thanks
Congrats on launching the EU-Inc petition! A unified legal framework for European startups could revolutionize the startup ecosystem. How do you envision this impacting cross-border investments and collaboration in Europe?
Been through the pain, ended up incorporating in the US.
Following this initiative from very early on, and its made a lot of great progress
really hopeful this gets pushed all the way 🫡
Great initiative. EU is not mature for this, but it's worth a try. The reason of my concern is that I don't remember a single EU legislation that simplified things instead of complicating them, in the last 20 years, but for certain powerful lobbies. And creating a lobby of startups seems pretty difficult if not impossible, given the transitioning nature of a startup. Nonetheless, I've signed the petition. Gotta be optimistic, after all 😁
I'm a US citizen who has been living in Spain for several years, and now own a Spanish corporation. EU Inc would be absolutely amazing.
Even seemingly simple things like an Intra-Community VAT number has been a huge hassle to get. I love Spain and Europe, but there's a few things that the US does better, and corp bureaucracy is one. I have owned several businesses in the US, and the amount of yearly bureaucracy to maintain a Spanish corporation is extraordinarily high comparatively speaking.
Thanks for initiating this, let’s bring Europe back to the top.
Petition signed as a student.
This had me at "hello"! I'm a British citizen and to be clear, that means I live in Europe but not in a country which is a member of the EU (since Brexit). That distinction needs to be made.👍
I started a new business with my partners recently and as a team, we didn't want to incorporate in England as we wanted to be part of a bigger ecosystem so we used Stripe Atlas and set ourselves up in Delaware, USA.
The process was so simple even though none of us are US citizens. I'm imagining a European equivalent where business owners and investors alike can come together without barriers? If this is what EU Inc. will be like, even if it's close to what we experienced with Atlas, this could be the start of a brand new era for commerce in Europe as people flock towards it.
Petition signed, spreading the word, totally onboard.
Lets go! I hope this is a first step towards a brighter future for EU and startup founders alike! 🚀
