Doing business in Italy
Italy Startup Visa adventure
Doing business in Italy has some specifics. First of all you will need to find a commercialista. This is some kind of government regulated accountant and lawyer in one person. The better your commercialista, the more time you will spend on your startup instead of learning legislation. Ask anyone Italian whom you know at least a little bit for recommendations. As advice — Italian bloggers and journalists might recommend one.
Office
I can’t imagine myself working from home, especially in Italy, as I feel like I’m on vacation everywhere. I needed an office. Working with other startups is a good way to get into the Italian startup community and getting into the Italian way of working. That’s why a co-working center or technological park might be the best work space option for you. Here you will find most of them. I was lucky to find ComoNEXT (to be honest, it is the only technological park in the Como province but they are awesome). Typical terms of office rental are quarterly payments, a 6 month security deposit and insurance (several hundred euros).
The biggest startup communities (and simpler talents access) are in Milan, Turin and Rome. Best beaches are in Sardinia. You’ll have to decide… BTW, if you use Routes.Tips you might find the best walks in both places :-)
Founding a company
This is the part where you should already start getting a lot of help from your commercialista. She (or he) will schedule a meeting with a public notary where you can register your company and spend 2000 euros for the 15 minutes service. Also, not being able to speak Italian you will have to pay for the certified translator which is an extra 200 euros… But I have good news for you too. At the moment you reading this you’ll probably be able to register a company online for free, without notary fees.
In Italy the minimum company capital is almost like in Russia — ten thousand. In Russia you pay in Rubles, in Italy you pay in EUROs. You should have the whole sum on your bank account on the day of company registration (you issue a cheque and hand it over to the public notary). Taken into account that you already need ~8,000 EUROs on your bank account for your long term rental agreement, you might feel some uneasiness. I spent a week withdrawing cash from my visa platinum card and putting money into Italian bank account. I wasn’t able to do a SWIFT transfer from my Russian account remotely via internet or mobile banking, only in person, only from Russia. Sberbank told me that if I need my money, I should just get back to Russia. That’s the true love! So don’t forget to check SWIFT transfer availability at your bank or you might end up in a bit of a tight spot.
Corporate bank account
After your company is registered you can then go to the bank, open a corporate bank account and put ten thousand euros on it. It depends on the bank but usually you can get a simple corporate account with internet banking for free. You should get used to banking system specifics. Money transfers, for instance, aren’t immediate, they take several days (3!).
It took slightly more than three weeks for me to move to Italy, settle there and found a company.
For all other questions you can get help from the people in the Ministry of Economic Development. They do their best to help startups.
Finally, If you do any kind of budgeting then a good Taxation map is on this infographics from DailyInforgaphics.eu. Can you see how cheap Austria, Bulgaria and Russia are? My commercialista suggested to me to buy a car and have a partial tax deduction. If I was’t planning to cycle I would have done that immediately.
That’s it. Now you are ready to get some traction for your startup!
PS
Interestingly, after I reread what I wrote down, the process doesn’t look so complex and bureaucratic as it seemed at the moment it was happening. If you are a startup-er and are thinking of moving to Italy, feel free to get in touch. I’ll be happy to help.
