Ehh, I thought I was negative about Italy, but seeing what everyone else is saying, I'm probably the most positive person here.
The pros:
- There are some absolutely excellent open source developers who can be hired much more cheaply than the US.
- Life is excellent. Italy is a really beautiful country.
- Lots of incredibly low hanging fruits. Italy has a lot of great companies that makes excellent products the entire world wants, but have absolutely pathetic IT departments. This is also true in the public sector - several regions of Italy have amazing touristic attractions with pathetic marketing/web presence. This is probably the best reason.
The cons:
- As a corollary to the last pro (about low hanging fruits). Public sector contracts are given to people who are completely incompetent but well connected, who then sub contract it out. The technocratic/political class, especially at the local level, is almost always old, and has gotten their positions because of connections.
- Moreso than outright corruption (unless you live in the South), red tape can be a massive issue.
- This does not affect start ups, but once you grow to more than 15 employees, staff hired full time is basically impossible to fire. This is very slowly getting changed.
I don't think it makes sense to move to Italy if you want to work on the next chat/social media application, but if you have a great idea on how to use web to improve tourism/market high end goods, or you have excellent SaaS software for medium-large sized companies, you could probably do very well, and live very well too.
Basically, this is sort of an interesting (but old) summary of an interesting case study: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121969807244970447 - there were lots of resources, lots of low hanging fruits, and yet due to political squabbling, total ignorance of technology and nepotism the project was a huge waste. Given how low the bar is, it's very possible to do much better.
Small edit:
There is a huge generational gap between the 50+ year olds that run the country, and the kids graduating now from University, in terms of attitude towards technology, meritocracy, and entrepreneurship.
I can comment on this, being from Oregon and living in Italy:-)
Basically, this kind of thing happens everywhere. It just happens more in some places.
Back to this:
> - There are some absolutely excellent open source developers who can be hired much more cheaply than the US.
I can confirm this. I think a valid strategy would be to open up the main office somewhere else, and do some R&D in Italy. There are good developers who don't cost as much as elsewhere.
Yes I confirm this. I live in Italy but the company I co-founded in San Francisco runs thanks to Italian engineering talent. And that's good for starting, not so sure when you raise round A - a good one. If you have money to spend it's probably better to move everyone to California. Don't you think?
However it's true that the quality of life in Italy is a lot higher than the Bay Area, but you need to stop fighting the system or be part of it if you want to have a really good life.
About your "this kind of thing happens everywhere", I'm not sure you are right. At least not in the high tech hubs around the world.
And again, do you think that Portland is like Italy? I've been there just a few times but my perception is completely different from the business point of view. When you are a tourist though, everything is fine pretty much everywhere.
What I'm saying is that corruption is everywhere, just in very different quantities. Truth be told, I think Oregon is generally a bit less corrupt and a bit more egalitarian than California is, but that's just my impression.
> If you have money to spend it's probably better to move everyone to California. Don't you think?
Not really - it's cheaper to hire someone in Italy, so with a given amount of money, you have more runway, or can hire more people. Also, the US immigration stuff sucks pretty badly and is not easy.
> And again, do you think that Portland is like Italy
I lived there a year. It's a nice place in a lot of ways, but not where I want to be. The weather ( http://forecast.io/#/f/45.5118,-122.6756 ) is very, very tiring for someone who likes the sun. You think it's bad in northern Italy... hah! It's a little bit bigger than I happen to care for (I like the size of Padova a lot), but without all things a really big, important city has. De gustibus... though, as they say. It's worth checking out in January to see if you can handle the weather, because it's a lot cheaper than the bay area. Oregon is a beautiful place to visit in August.
Feel free to send me email if you'd like to know more about Oregon!
Don't make me wrong davidw, Italy is one of the best countries on Earth to live with your family, but from the business point of view it's a nightmare. It's cute, unbelievably cute, but sometimes it's not enough to live a happy life.
R&D in Italy it's one of my dreams and remote working tools are out there to help, but in my experience it is very complicated to make it working in the long run when the company scale. You save money, but not that much. On the other hand you slow down a little bit the execution. It's just my own experience.
> once you grow to more than 15 employees, staff hired full time is basically impossible to fire.
This has been a myth for a long time now. Unless your business is heavily unionised and full of 50somethings hired back in the '80s, there are umpteen ways to fire people, some of them even paid-for by the State. Not that anyone needs to actually fire anybody: most people nowadays are just contractors from day 1 and never really "hired" in the first place.
Recent changes in employment laws were introduced so that very large firms with a long-established unionised workforce (FIAT etc) will find it easy to break the unions' back for good. They will do nothing for medium and small firms, who will just keep using the contractor model.
(Of course, if you pocketed your workers' pension contributions for years, or did similar shenanigans behind their back counting on them behind happy to just get a paycheck month-in month-out, then you can't fire them, because they will sue you and get a huge payout. But you would never do that, right?)
> This does not affect start ups, but once you grow to more than 15 employees, staff hired full time is basically impossible to fire. This is very slowly getting changed.
The pros:
- There are some absolutely excellent open source developers who can be hired much more cheaply than the US.
- Life is excellent. Italy is a really beautiful country.
- Lots of incredibly low hanging fruits. Italy has a lot of great companies that makes excellent products the entire world wants, but have absolutely pathetic IT departments. This is also true in the public sector - several regions of Italy have amazing touristic attractions with pathetic marketing/web presence. This is probably the best reason.
The cons:
- As a corollary to the last pro (about low hanging fruits). Public sector contracts are given to people who are completely incompetent but well connected, who then sub contract it out. The technocratic/political class, especially at the local level, is almost always old, and has gotten their positions because of connections.
- Moreso than outright corruption (unless you live in the South), red tape can be a massive issue.
- This does not affect start ups, but once you grow to more than 15 employees, staff hired full time is basically impossible to fire. This is very slowly getting changed.
I don't think it makes sense to move to Italy if you want to work on the next chat/social media application, but if you have a great idea on how to use web to improve tourism/market high end goods, or you have excellent SaaS software for medium-large sized companies, you could probably do very well, and live very well too.
Basically, this is sort of an interesting (but old) summary of an interesting case study: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121969807244970447 - there were lots of resources, lots of low hanging fruits, and yet due to political squabbling, total ignorance of technology and nepotism the project was a huge waste. Given how low the bar is, it's very possible to do much better.
Small edit: There is a huge generational gap between the 50+ year olds that run the country, and the kids graduating now from University, in terms of attitude towards technology, meritocracy, and entrepreneurship.