Sole proprietorship doesn't have liability protection. That's not a small thing.
>You shouldn't (and cannot) go all the way to the complexities of a GmbH (LLC) if your company is that tiny.
"[Thing] is too complex, don't bother with it" is not an argument against making [thing] less complex. It's actually just a restatement of the problem!
Other countries make it easy to set up a limited company. UK, US, Singapore, they're all just a token fee and a handful of forms. I see no reason for Germany to make it so difficult as described in the article.
A lot of successful companies were started by broke college grads out of their dorms; they would never have gotten off the ground if they had to scrounge together the equivalent 25k euros before even getting started. Hell, I don't have a spare 25k lying around and I've been working full time for 4 years.
With this mentality, it's actually a miracle a German startup scene exists at all.
The _last thing_ a founder wants is to wade through useless bureaucracy when there's a product to push and Vacs to talk to.
But Germany never really was a founder's country, and much more ruled by big conglomerates it seems or small family business who did non-innovative things (the bakery at the corner - necessary&nice, but not innovative), than startup culture.
They can open an Einzelunternehmen (sole proprietorship) instead. You shouldn't (and cannot) go all the way to the complexities of a GmbH (LLC) if your company is that tiny.
> But also many ordinary inexperienced people can have that amount of money up front, yet still be deterred by the complexity of a 6 week long incorporation process as described in this article.
Back to my point then. If they're not ready to put up with okay-ish bureaucratic friction in the founding phase, they're not ready to open a company. Because if you think opening the company is hard, wait until payroll or tax season is upon you.
> I am generally suspicious of rhetoric like "you're a little well off, so we can heap arbitrary amounts of bullshit on you and you shouldn't complain".
You're completely mischaracterizing what I said. Don't do that.