Entrepreneur

7.FOUNDING AND STARTING MY COMPANY

You have decided to create a company. But where should it be located? Should it be where you live today, or somewhere else? What kind of legal company structure should you choose? Which accounting system? And how do you quickly and cheaply make your logo and website, etc.? So many practical questions! This chapter brings some answers.

When you feel comfortable with your idea, vision, strategic set-up, etc., the next step is to start making it real. The first practical question is perhaps this: ‘Where should the company be located?’

Where should the company be located?

For practical reasons, most people probably locate their company roughly where they live – this is the easiest in terms of family, language, housing, colleagues, etc. And through this decision you have not turned your entire life upside down, should it go wrong.

However, there are often good reasons for locating the company elsewhere and we think these are the 10 most common:

Access to external financing Access to qualified experts Access to cheap labour for routine work (if you need it) Flexibility of labour laws Access to people who have tried to work in start-ups previously

Market attractiveness Attractiveness for staff and their spouses Local costs levels Tax environment Travel infrastructure.

Regarding external financing, this speaks for locating your start-up in an area where there are large concentrations of venture capital firms. The map shows the cities and regions ...