I'm very suspicious that study after study keeps ranking US, Canada, UK among the best countries for ease of conducting business. I'm not referring to the economy, I'm referring to labor laws, regulatory compliance, forms, wait times, hassles, and anxiety about having your business confiscated or loosing a court case because you forgot to post some obscure poster as required by some federal agency, state agency, county agency, city agency or god only knows who.
Does anyone have entrepreneurship experience in one of the above countries plus any other country?
I'd love to hear your comments.
I've started two successful companies in the U.S. so I feel I have some standing to comment on this question. Without meaning any disrespect to you, it's clear that you have not. The reason it's clear is because I worry about hundreds of things about my business, and spend time on hundreds of things and I can honestly tell you I haven't spent a single second worrying about my business being confiscated and about 2 minutes worrying about posters, which is the time it took me to print and post them. What I do worry about is finding high quality employees, with the right mix of education, creativity, and productivity to grow my business. In any industry I'd ever want to be part of that exists predominantly in the developed world. I worry about infrastructure that allows me to deliver my product, in my case I need my customers and I to have solid, reliable internet, others may need physical infrastructure. I've traveled a lot, and even in developed but not quite first world places (i.e. the more developed countries in Central and S America) they're just not there yet on either. I worry about they counterparty risk of my key suppliers and customers, because they all have to deliver per the contracts we all signed or else it all falls apart. That rule of law seems to be what you want to escape, and believe me the law is far more likely to enable and help your business than hit you for a fine. I worry about having access to venture funding if I need it, something that's very accessible for most well planned and executed companies here in the U.S., and completely absent in the kind of places you describe, for reasons described above among others. I want to live in a place I want to live in with my family, where it's safe everywhere, not just on our compound, we can go to a world class concert or play when we want, eat at world class restaurants, enjoy the outdoors...I spend 40 hours a week at work and 128 not at work. I'm not about to sacrifice the 128 hours just to avoid having to track down what posters I need to display!
These are just a few examples, I'll sum it up to say that I average fewer than a couple minutes a week worrying or spending effort on the things you seem so afraid of, less than 1% of my time. Of the problems an entrepreneur faces, this is so far down on the list as to be irrelevant. On the flip side, the problems I'd face if I lived in a place where these regulations you are so anxious to escape didn't exist would probably be so great I couldn't even start my business.
If you want to become an entrepreneur I applaud you. Come up with a good product or service, built it, do some sales, get some customers, find good people to work with you....those are the key things you need to worry about when you're building a business not this nonsense about regulations.
To be frank you sound like you've been listening to too many right wing talk shows populated by talking heads who've never started a business or run one, who are sure regulations are killing 'Murica. I work with and am friends with a large number of actual entrepreneurs and we talk about our businesses and the challenges we face all the time. I have literally never, not once, heard the concerns you listed as a real issue an entrepreneur faced. So if you really want to be an entrepreneur and you're not just trolling (which frankly it sounds like you are), then become an entrepreneur. Get out of your armchair, turn off the AM talk radio, get your hands dirty and build something. You may find you'll have so much fun you forget to be bitter about all those "job killing regulations" that exist mostly in the collective imagination of a bunch of people who've never actually built anything.
I'm more than happy to help you if you really are interested in this, really have an idea you'd like to implement, and really do have a regulatory challenge you're concerned about. Post it here or IM me.