La Dolce Vita
The story of Italy Startup Visa adventure
I started my first business in Russia, 2008. It was a year of world crisis. Truth they say — an economic crisis is the best time for a new start. I got a huge contract on a video portal development (they wanted something like Hulu.com). So I quickly grabbed a team of talented developers around and we started working hard. Since then we were dreaming of creating a product which would be used by people all over the world and make their lives a little bit better. It is the year 2014 and the major national crisis has hit Russia. Luckily, the business works well, we have great Customers all over the world, our products are starting to get some traction. But the crisis is the best time to move forward and I do the next step.
I love traveling and learning new cultures. In my opinion there’s no way to make something world wide without getting deeper into the cultures. Your chances of hitting EU market without people there, without talking to EU citizens are next to zero. So, traveling and learning new cultures is almost work for me. The work I love. Being outside of EU and having to get travel VISAs almost every time is a pain. I always thought that that would be great to spend more time in EU.
Thinking about making a business in EU I wanted to be closer to the EU’s center. That would assure the easiest way of working with EU companies and individuals. The northern part of Italy is probably one of the best geographical places to be in the center. Nearest seamless borders with France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Greece (available via a ferry) make it a great central EU hub.
When I started looking for a place where to start a EU business there was not many countries offering a startup visa (a.e. The Netherlands unveiled plans to introduce it in 2015). Italy is one of the first movers in this sense. Another major advantage was a relatively simple and well defined process of the application. There is a contemporary stylish web site covering all the aspects of the process (Italy Startup Visa). It was quite simple for me to get a good understanding of the steps I needed to undertake. Another surprise was that people behind the program are very active on social media and I got a great understanding of the progress.
Every startup should get as close to its Customers as possible. Creating a product isolated from the end users might be one of the biggest reasons of failure. I wanted to make a travel startup, the place where people could share their travel experiences, travel journals and get inspiration for their adventures in particular location according to their interests. Have a look at the Routes.Tips and get into the prerelease program. Obviously I needed to get closer to the users which are tourists in my case. Well, Italy is in the TOP-5 tourists countries worldwide. Taken into account all mentioned above advantages it was a simple decision to apply.
The application process was quite simple. I needed to show 50.000 EUROs on my bank account and fill the application form (describe the business idea). It took me just a couple of days to do so. There are alternatives available for ones who not posses spare 50 thousands (a.e. accelerators, VC funds, etc.). So, I prepared all the papers and waited for a little bit more than one month (due to my mistake in the documents). Normally, it should be slightly faster. The decision was positive and I received a Nulla Ousta (you may think of it as a green light to get a visa). After that I scheduled an appointment to the General Consulate in my city (Moscow, Russia). It took three weeks waiting for the appointment. The Consulate staff was quite surprised with my application and welcomed me with«Hey, you’re the guy with something like art & culture invitation». You know, startup is the art! Nevertheless, everything went fine. It took 3 weeks to get a VISA in the passport with a valuable word «STARTUP». All I had to do is to pack the baggage, start searching for a house and learn Italian (you really should do so).
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Feel free to learn more about me by following me on Twitter or having a look at my travel startup.
