by Guest Blogger - March 26, 2010 -
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I promised to write some thoughts on how to select a location for your company. This is not a scientific or detailed analysis but my personal framework; how I try to conduct this process and also how I have done it in practice.
First, it is not about one location but many. You need to consider your company's structure. You can have the holding company, head office, R&D unit, sales offices, etc in different places. For each of these you can take into account several different factors, e.g., taxes, costs, salary levels, local support, customers, funding, needed resources etc. But as an entrepreneur you can also factor in your personal preferences and how the location will affect your quality of life.
I cannot analyze all the factors relevant to all the different types of companies here; I will just give a few examples. Each individual or the founders together can have a holding company that owns an operative company. Taxation is one important matter to consider for the location of the holding company. Some offshore locations have very low taxes but they can easily raise some negative issues, such as credibility. However, there are also European locations (e.g. the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Estonia, Cyprus) that have quite friendly tax systems as well as Singapore and Hong Kong in Asia.
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by Miikka Kukkosuo - June 30, 2009 -
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Venture Capital 2.0: Grow VC Launches Private Beta (We Have Invites)
Grow VC launches today an invitiation-only private beta of their "Venture Capital 2.0" service. Grow VC aims to better enable early stage funding for mobile and web 2.0 startup companies by community-based approach. The investment size Grow VC is looking to facilitate ranges from USD $10,000 to $1M. Grow VC has been founded by Finnish serial entrepreneurs Jouko Ahvenainen and Valto Loikkanen.
The problem Grow VC is trying to solve is the traditional venture capital said being too locally-focused, and difficult and cumbersome to obtain for many new web and mobile startups needing smaller investments. The founders state that VC firms do nowadays not need or want to get involved with smaller investments, though web and mobile 2.0 startups do not need big funding in the early stage. Another problem Grow VC is looking to solve is the difficulty of attracting angel investors outside the entrepreneurs' local network and on the other hand angels' lack of a structure for global diversification of risk.
The plans for the service are big. Valto Loikkanen, Co-Founder and CEO, explains that they want to establish the first truly transparent, international, and community-based approach to early stage funding. The service allows entrepreneurs and investors to find and connect with each other globally. It also provides tools for facilitating the process, and information is shared transparently in the community, offering interactive approach to funding instead of the traditional one-sided VC process. The public launch of Grow VC will follow later in 2009, and is said to include "more innovative investment methods", whatever it means.
The service seems like a quite normal web community in that entrepreneurs and investors create profiles of themselves and their businesses. Everyone's profile will be open for community comments to allow for reputation building. During the private Beta one can join free with an invitation, but later on Grow VC will collect membership fees starting from USD $150, based on the size of the funding. Part of the private Beta is already a partner program, in which different local or regional incubators, event organisers, law firms, and similar service providers can make themselves known to the service community.
If you want to try out the service, we have 50 invitations for ArcticStartup readers: the code is AS50.
Grow VC launches today an invitiation-only private beta of their "Venture Capital 2.0" service. Grow VC aims to better enable early stage funding for mobile and web 2.0 startup companies by using a community-based approach. The size of investments Grow VC is looking to facilitate ranges from USD $10,000 to $1M. Grow VC has been founded by Finnish serial entrepreneurs
Jouko Ahvenainen and
Valto Loikkanen.
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