3 (or possibly 4 - I didn't ask) of the speakers I invited started companies, with zero funding or with a bit of F&F, that have revenues from nearly-$2 mil/yr to more than $2 mil/yr.
Maybe you should write them to tell them that it's not possible without $5,000 of funding for a summer.
On the balance, if you can't manage to figure out ways to save $5k for a summer yourself, you should seriously question whether you have the ability to run a business.
If you can't figure out how to pay for 250 euros a month - which you could earn each week as a dishwasher in Vienna, so it's not as if it's some vast sum - then you are similarly ill-equipped.
If you can't bear to give up one week of your time in order to spend the other 3 weeks on your huge future business, ditto.
By the way: I wrote an ebook to self-fund our work on Freckle and it earned us over $40k. It was sooooooo haaaaaaard. But even then, it was cream - not necessary. We could have kept working on it after hours for free, as we had been doing. It would have taken a bit longer, but so what?
I'm not saying that paying 250 euros into a social security system each month makes it impossible to start a startup. I am the last person to discourage anyone from starting a startup. I've never been employed in my entire life.
What I'm saying is that paying 20 is more attractive than paying 250. And indeed, I cannot bear to give up 25% of my time just because some socialist government has decided to force me to save for retirement. I do not intend to retire. Ever.
So you're a dishwasher then? It would take you 25% of your time to earn 250 euros?
If you don't want to support the socialist government, you should really move to the US.
Your argument has swung from "can't pay the costs" to "hate socialism," while also loving that you can only pay 20 euros a month for basic healthcare.
Which is it? Do you want a very socialist govt to pay 20 euros to? Or do you want none? Do you want health insurance? Or do you want none? Do you want funding so you can live off somebody else's investment in your business, or do you want to not have to pay anything?
In case you really don't understand what I'm saying and your questions are not just rhetorical point scoring I'm going to try to make it clear once again:
a) I think low cost of living is important in the initial stages of a startup. The lower the better. Spending time on anything other than the startup is bad. Dishwasher or other salaries in Vienna are not particularly relevant to understand this principle. Therefore, the UK and Ireland are better places to start a startup than continental Europe.
b) If a significant part of the cost of starting a business comes from mandatory contributions to something I don't want and will never consume (i.e pensions), I get annoyed. You may not know that half of those 250 euros go into pensions and not health care. I want the health care part but I don't want to be forced into a pensions scheme. All contributions should be a share of the income people generate, not a set minimum fee. I have no idea whether that is socialist or not.
c) I'm not as anti-socialist as you might think. My opinion is that society needs to catch people who fall, for practical reasons as well as human dignity. Some things like health care, basic shelter and access to information need to be available to everyone. I don't believe that abject poverty makes people more entrepreneural. The biographies of successful people just don't support that claim. I am willing to pay a share of my income to cover the cost of helping those who cannot help themselves. Unfortunately, in Europe, the people who are best protected by this odd form of socialism are not the ones who have fallen but rather those close to government and traditional trade unions. They don't just cause unnecessary cost, they also create very inflexible rules that discourage self-employment and make it very expensive to hire people.
Having said that, I totally agree with you that none of that should deter anyone from starting a business wherever they may be.
Maybe you should write them to tell them that it's not possible without $5,000 of funding for a summer.
On the balance, if you can't manage to figure out ways to save $5k for a summer yourself, you should seriously question whether you have the ability to run a business.
If you can't figure out how to pay for 250 euros a month - which you could earn each week as a dishwasher in Vienna, so it's not as if it's some vast sum - then you are similarly ill-equipped.
If you can't bear to give up one week of your time in order to spend the other 3 weeks on your huge future business, ditto.
By the way: I wrote an ebook to self-fund our work on Freckle and it earned us over $40k. It was sooooooo haaaaaaard. But even then, it was cream - not necessary. We could have kept working on it after hours for free, as we had been doing. It would have taken a bit longer, but so what?