What can the Dutch do to boost entrepreneurship? #5 suggestions by startup expert Steve Blank

Steve Blank, the father of Customer Development and celebrated author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, visited Rockstart Accelerator on July 6th 2012 and had a all-around session with the 10 startups of Class 2012. Large part of the conversation occupied the topic of what makes Silicon Valley the capital of the tech startup world & what can the Dutch and other Europeans do to boost entrepreneurship and create a more startup-friendly environment. Steve Blank gave them five valuable and -for some- provocative suggestions. Find what Steve proposed in the following video:

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  • Arnaud Massé

    Great video,
    Steve Blank is absolutely right about everything he said. I’m particularly happy to hear that the reason why the US teams are so hardworking is because of stock + ability for founders to remove someone from the team if he doesn’t fit the team spirit…
    I live in France where labour code is very protective of employees… It makes it nearly impossible to get rid of someone in your team unless he makes a fault. So I can only imagine how great it would feel to be able to preserve a team spirit by getting rid of the one who’s spoiling it (bad spirit is contagious).
    Also I don’t know how it is in the Netherlands but in France, taxes kill a lot of small companies before they get a chance to break even…

  • Claudiu Gedö

    Actually I was very close this month to move to the Netherlands with my family and my start-up. What stopped me was the high level taxation. All the money I count for financing my start-up would have been gone as tax payments. So we decided to stay.
    I think this should be one of the first things to be addressed (some fiscal facilities for start-ups) so people can move and develop in the Netherlands.

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