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London is a rather expensive place to be bootstrapping a startup. What would make it more appealing than Birmingham (nearby, pretty big), Edinburgh (medium-size city, with one of the best UK universities) or any other of the big cities with universities?

If you care for frequent flights to US/Asia, but don't mind the language barrier, Amsterdam or Berlin would be good choices as well. (Living cost in Berlin is relatively cheap yet it's attractive enough to live in for people - Amsterdam is expensive but small enough to commute if you want to live someplace cheaper).




Are there a lot of engineers or programmers in amsterdam? Web designers, or marketing people? I think that is the kind of infrastructure we need.

Amsterdam would be a very nice choice in many ways, and living in the country to save on costs would be a reasonable compromise.

Their residency permit requirements are reasonable as well.

I didn't think of Berlin as being cheap. Will have to look into that. Berlin is very appealing for a number of reasons as well.


Holland has some very good tax breaks for start-ups. To encourage innovations income from innovations is taxed at 10%. Also if you a foreigner living there, there are some over tax breaks. You can also get tax breaks on employing people.

Berlin is cheap, but hiring people is expensive, but there are loads of start ups there. German Tax laws account for 2/3rd of all tax laws in the world. Somewhere there are tax incentives for R&D investment.

For corporate structure you should look at using a Irish company, as this is far simpler than starting a company in the Netherlands or Germany.


Thank you. Good news.




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