I agre with what you say except for the salary comparison with India. Even though salary are low in Italy compared to various other countries, in IT too, according to payscale[1] the average salary of a developer is 340k Rupie per year, that is around 4.7k Euro. The average salary in Italy for IT should be at least 25k-30k Euro. But to be fair it would be interesting to compare it to cost of living, because as Italian I know for sure that IT guys are not paid better than others in Italy, while I have no info about India (it could be that they are pay not too much, but really well compared to other workers and local cost of living).

Having said that, I agree with many others saying that it's not a great idea to go to Italy for startups.. things are moving and are improving compared to 5 or 10 years ago but in no way comparable to other places in UE (let's compare for example Berlin, London or Paris with Milan or Rome...)

[1] http://www.payscale.com/research/IN/Job=Software_Developer/S...

Yeah sure. Go open a startup company in Naples, wait for someone to ask you for /pizzo/ and let's talk again about this.

You know how much is the protection tax in zones controlled by organized crime? 3% of your profit.

You know how much the state takes from your (revenue - expenses)? At least 66%.

Yup, and those two sum up.

It's not State XOR Mafia. It's state AND Mafia. As if state alone was not enough.

Of course they sum up. My point is that there's a much bigger problem in the cost of doing business than the protection tax. About 22 times bigger.

Wait, why is that sad? Good for India. They actually have some great developers, despite the best leaving for the US.