I run a tech company in the Netherlands. I can corroborate most of this.
Giving employees equity in the Netherlands is nearly impossible without getting taxed to death. The position of the tax authority is that the sole reason you get equity, is because of your relationship as employee, and therefore the "gift of equity" is actually a form of salary, and therefore salary tax must be paid based on the value of the equity. In the Netherlands, this tax is around 50%.
Worse: depending on the exact legal implementation of the equity, you may end up having to pay the tax, based on its value on paper, before actually selling the equity, whose actual market price may be far lower. One could end up losing money just by having equity.
In the Netherlands, having a bankruptcy on your name makes you an ecomonic pariah. The process of going through a bankruptcy is not pleasant and comes with many responsibilities. Starting another company will be difficult. You will not be able to get a loan anymore. Oh, and your phone bill counts as a loan.
There is also a very weak culture of venture capital investment. There are very few such investors, and where they exist, the amounts they offer is tiny (like 10x lower) compared to US VCs, even though they ask the same amount of equity.
I am also not very impressed with the amount of advice/expertise VCs can offer over here.
The Dutch government likes to talk about how much they stimulate the tech and startup scenes. But when capital is concerned, their default answer is that you're supposed to get a loan. Lenders, unlike venture capitalists, are risk-averse (which they have to by law), meaning that they MUST get their loan paid back no matter what, which means that your business plan MUST be profitable, guaranteed, and that you must provide some sort of personal collateral, such as your savings or your house.
The sort of companies the government is thinking of, is for example a factory, where you need capital up front in order to buy machinery. The demand is known, so you know what profit you will roughly make. But this sort of thinking doesn't work for areas with high risk or a high degree of unknown.
For example let's say that you want to make a Twitter. You need money to pay for developers' salaries. But what will your profit be in year 3? It could be 1 million, or 0 (because nobody wants it). When banks hear this, they want a collateral equal to the loan amount. Why would I even get a loan then?
The best thing I can say about the Netherlands is the WBSO subsidy. When you do tech research and development on an area with risk (where risk is defined as being risky to you, e.g. because you have no experience with a particular topic or technology), then the government provides a subsidy for the amount of man-hours spent on this R&D. R&D includes software development too. This subsidy is implemented as a salary tax break.
Plus, when it turns out that your WBSO-subsidized product actually generates profit, then you get a corporate income tax break on the profits generated by that product. This is called the Innovatiebox.
WBSO and Innovatiebox are really nice once you have initial capital and have taken off. They won't help you when you start with near €0.
I"ll echo VC scarcity in NL as a main problem. Coming from Israel I really notice in NL bootstrapped Dutch companies of high quality that are quite happy serving the local market and maybe Belgium and that's about it. No expansion planned, or if one is planned it could take years and years. I read once its due to lack of ambition by Dutch entrepreneurs, but that isn't it. Without VC money its simply realistic to stay local; how are you gonna compete with U.S companies without money? Even the big names in NL like WeTransfer, Mollie, Bux, Bunq etc would have raised way more in Israel or the US. It's quite enough to raise a sizable 1st round in Israel, use connections + acquire traffic and customers to show growth, and then raise enormous subsequent rounds because you showed growth. I'm sure many Dutch entreprenuers could have done the same thing but it isn't possible for them without funding. So they "dream" small.
There are probably a lot of missed chances in NL. On the other hand if the tech VC market implodes again Dutch companies won't be hurt as bad.
>The position of the tax authority is that the sole reason you get equity, is because of your relationship as employee, and therefore the "gift of equity" is actually a form of salary
But they are correct in saying this. You wouldn't give equity to random people would you? And is it not worth money? You might not agree with the tax rate but the two reasons you mentioned are irrefutably true.
Do you really have a problem of obtaining good devs? Seems to me you can get good personnel in a bargain price in NL. It's also super easy to bring people from outside the EU. That's the main reason I think software devs are so cheap in the EU.
Giving employees equity in the Netherlands is nearly impossible without getting taxed to death. The position of the tax authority is that the sole reason you get equity, is because of your relationship as employee, and therefore the "gift of equity" is actually a form of salary, and therefore salary tax must be paid based on the value of the equity. In the Netherlands, this tax is around 50%.
Worse: depending on the exact legal implementation of the equity, you may end up having to pay the tax, based on its value on paper, before actually selling the equity, whose actual market price may be far lower. One could end up losing money just by having equity.
In the Netherlands, having a bankruptcy on your name makes you an ecomonic pariah. The process of going through a bankruptcy is not pleasant and comes with many responsibilities. Starting another company will be difficult. You will not be able to get a loan anymore. Oh, and your phone bill counts as a loan.
There is also a very weak culture of venture capital investment. There are very few such investors, and where they exist, the amounts they offer is tiny (like 10x lower) compared to US VCs, even though they ask the same amount of equity.
I am also not very impressed with the amount of advice/expertise VCs can offer over here.
The Dutch government likes to talk about how much they stimulate the tech and startup scenes. But when capital is concerned, their default answer is that you're supposed to get a loan. Lenders, unlike venture capitalists, are risk-averse (which they have to by law), meaning that they MUST get their loan paid back no matter what, which means that your business plan MUST be profitable, guaranteed, and that you must provide some sort of personal collateral, such as your savings or your house.
The sort of companies the government is thinking of, is for example a factory, where you need capital up front in order to buy machinery. The demand is known, so you know what profit you will roughly make. But this sort of thinking doesn't work for areas with high risk or a high degree of unknown.
For example let's say that you want to make a Twitter. You need money to pay for developers' salaries. But what will your profit be in year 3? It could be 1 million, or 0 (because nobody wants it). When banks hear this, they want a collateral equal to the loan amount. Why would I even get a loan then?
The best thing I can say about the Netherlands is the WBSO subsidy. When you do tech research and development on an area with risk (where risk is defined as being risky to you, e.g. because you have no experience with a particular topic or technology), then the government provides a subsidy for the amount of man-hours spent on this R&D. R&D includes software development too. This subsidy is implemented as a salary tax break.
Plus, when it turns out that your WBSO-subsidized product actually generates profit, then you get a corporate income tax break on the profits generated by that product. This is called the Innovatiebox.
WBSO and Innovatiebox are really nice once you have initial capital and have taken off. They won't help you when you start with near €0.