7 ms·

This reminds me of the Estonian business startup thing that BBC covered, has anyone actually used this to a success? What would be the point of starting a busi

This reminds me of the Estonian business startup thing that BBC covered, has anyone actually used this to a success? What would be the point of starting a business in countries like Czech and Estonia vs the US?

atlasunshrugged 7y ago
Do you mean e-residency (https://e-resident.gov.ee/ https://e-resident.gov.ee/)? I work there, happy to answer questions if you have them. The value of starting a business in Estonia vs. elsewhere depends on a number of factors - we mainly focus on folks from outside the EU (or citizens of the EU but living outside it) who want an EU based company they can run remotely in English which is tough in some jurisdictions
- scrape_it 7y ago
  Ah yes! Pleasantly surprised you'd follow up on here. Does Estonia offer any anonymity through its e-residency program? A lot of us have stereotypes towards EU regulations as being restrictive, wonder if you could address this one glaring fear in the back of our minds (ex. GPDR). What should folks on HN know a thing or two about Estonia? I've literally only heard of the country 4 years ago when I played Arma: Cold War with an Estonian gamer, which ironically is a military simulation of gorilla warfare against a USSR invasion of the Baltics..... (see OF: Resistance)
  - atlasunshrugged 7y ago
    Haha I'm a big HN reader so I was happy to jump in :) Sorry for the delay, I'm actually on vacation back home (I'm an American from SF) It depends what you mean by anonymity - if you're just an e-Resident (eg. you've applied for the status and gotten the card) then it's not public to anyone except you and the Estonian government. If you open a business however, then there is a large amount of transparency. Estonia is very very transparent, I can even see things like the age of the owner of a company if I'm so inclined to look it up. To be honest, I haven't seen much in terms of restrictive policy in Estonia specifically with the exception of banking - Estonia is a small country of just 1.3m and most of the banks are foreign owned. That means there's not much sway we have domestically over policy and it's dictated from outside (mainly from the parent banks in the Nordics) and it can be tough to open a bank account as a foreigner if you don't have strong ties to Estonia. That said, this is getting tighter just about everywhere as banks try to comply with Know Your Customer regulations (however, my impression is that this is mainly brought on by the US rather than the EU and banks are so stringent because they don't want to lose their US dollar payment capabilities from correspondent banks) There are a lot of interesting things about Estonia - I'll skip the Googleable things and say that from living there the most interesting thing is on one side how closed and yet how open the people are. To give an example, in my apartment complex I don't believe I ever spoke one word to any of my neighbors in a year, but for the people I met via some group activity or was introed by Estonians I knew from work, they are incredibly open and friendly (basically if you don't have a reason to speak with an Estonian they think you're incredibly strange if you try to initiate a conversation, but if there's a reason, they're very friendly people). The other really interesting thing I've found is the Russian/Estonian dynamic. There's still a large Russian minority of people in Estonia from the Soviet days and some communities are not integrated at all, there are constant political debates about forcing schools to only teach in Estonian (there are currently ones that have all Russian courses). So you have a situation where there are people born and raised in Estonia but who don't speak the language and live pretty much only in Russian communities and have a different worldview of many Estonians.

atlasunshrugged 7y ago

Do you mean e-residency (https://e-resident.gov.ee/ https://e-resident.gov.ee/)? I work there, happy to answer questions if you have them. The value of starting a business in Estonia vs. elsewhere depends on a number of factors - we mainly focus on folks from outside the EU (or citizens of the EU but living outside it) who want an EU based company they can run remotely in English which is tough in some jurisdictions

scrape_it 7y ago
Ah yes! Pleasantly surprised you'd follow up on here. Does Estonia offer any anonymity through its e-residency program? A lot of us have stereotypes towards EU regulations as being restrictive, wonder if you could address this one glaring fear in the back of our minds (ex. GPDR). What should folks on HN know a thing or two about Estonia? I've literally only heard of the country 4 years ago when I played Arma: Cold War with an Estonian gamer, which ironically is a military simulation of gorilla warfare against a USSR invasion of the Baltics..... (see OF: Resistance)
- atlasunshrugged 7y ago
  Haha I'm a big HN reader so I was happy to jump in :) Sorry for the delay, I'm actually on vacation back home (I'm an American from SF) It depends what you mean by anonymity - if you're just an e-Resident (eg. you've applied for the status and gotten the card) then it's not public to anyone except you and the Estonian government. If you open a business however, then there is a large amount of transparency. Estonia is very very transparent, I can even see things like the age of the owner of a company if I'm so inclined to look it up. To be honest, I haven't seen much in terms of restrictive policy in Estonia specifically with the exception of banking - Estonia is a small country of just 1.3m and most of the banks are foreign owned. That means there's not much sway we have domestically over policy and it's dictated from outside (mainly from the parent banks in the Nordics) and it can be tough to open a bank account as a foreigner if you don't have strong ties to Estonia. That said, this is getting tighter just about everywhere as banks try to comply with Know Your Customer regulations (however, my impression is that this is mainly brought on by the US rather than the EU and banks are so stringent because they don't want to lose their US dollar payment capabilities from correspondent banks) There are a lot of interesting things about Estonia - I'll skip the Googleable things and say that from living there the most interesting thing is on one side how closed and yet how open the people are. To give an example, in my apartment complex I don't believe I ever spoke one word to any of my neighbors in a year, but for the people I met via some group activity or was introed by Estonians I knew from work, they are incredibly open and friendly (basically if you don't have a reason to speak with an Estonian they think you're incredibly strange if you try to initiate a conversation, but if there's a reason, they're very friendly people). The other really interesting thing I've found is the Russian/Estonian dynamic. There's still a large Russian minority of people in Estonia from the Soviet days and some communities are not integrated at all, there are constant political debates about forcing schools to only teach in Estonian (there are currently ones that have all Russian courses). So you have a situation where there are people born and raised in Estonia but who don't speak the language and live pretty much only in Russian communities and have a different worldview of many Estonians.