Hello, this is my first post on here

My partner and I are currently university students in our early early twenties with a social networking startup which is fairly successful (We just made enough profit to buy a decent brand of ramen noodles ) and we have been debating moving the company to Switzerland for a while now. We both study French and have decent fluency in it, but we wouldn't mind learning German if we had to. So now that we will soon be gaduating, we have made up our minds to move the company from its current location.

So a couple of questions

1) Seeing as it's a technology company, do you personally think we'd be better of in Silicon Valley or Switzerland? I know it's subjective but I want to get everyone's honest opinion. (List reasons please, and take into consideration taxes, workforce, etc)

2) Should we move to Zurich or Geneva if we so move to Suisseland? I know Genevois seems more logical since we both speak French, but we're both looking to learn another language anyway so we wouldn't mind learning German if we had to. (Please give reasons for your answer on this also)

and 3) As it pertains to language, I heard that the German speaking Swiss aren't s linguistically unified, and speak Swiss German; and even within Swiss German, the dialects are incredibly different from one another to the point where people from different cantons may not be able to understand one another's dialect. Is this true? Is Swiss German really that diverse within dialects? And what about learning Standard German? I know it's more likely to be written than spoken but will people find it odd conversing with them everyday in High German?

Thanks in advance for the advice!

Neither, Zug or Obwalden, lowest tax rates and great incentives for companies. Obwalden (Sarnen) want to establish themselves as the new Zug so will probably be quite helpful. Find a local tax/company adviser there are probably other EFfers who can recommend and there have been other threads on starting companies and what to do.

Zug has very low taxes rates and is 30 min to Zürich and 30 min
to Luzern.....

The language is secondary to your business plans.

Thank you so much for the answers thus far

So Zug seems to be popular for starting companies in Switzerland. How would you say it compares to Silicon Vally out in Cali or Silicon Alley in NY? What are the Venture Capital prospects like in Switzerland, the technology scene? And I hear their most prestigious engineering school ETH is in Zurich; do you think it would put me at some sort of recruitment disadvantage starting up in Zug?

Speaking of Zug, can anyone tell me what life is like there, both as for a company and just personally, like is it somewhere you enjoy living, how are the people towards foreigners (I'm black, in case you were wondering). This is of special concern to me because I spent some months in Russia, in Sarapoul, and let's just say I didn't make any friends (Read: Them Slavs almost killed me)

@HolidayG
It's nice to know the language barrier won't be much of a problem in running the business, but I'd like to learn the language anyway and fully integrate into Swiss society and was just wondering. I'm looking into getting both German and Swiss German lessons while I'm there and am concerned primarily about learning Swiss at Zug for example and not being understood if I go to Basel or Zurich or something like that. Is that a thing? Do the Swiss German dialects differ that much?

Sorry if it seems like a lot of questions, it's a pretty major decision both business-wise and personally so I'm trying to get as much info as I can

Have you ever actually been to Switzerland? What are the advantages you see in setting up in Switzerland as opposed to where you are now? How big a company are you talking about exactly? How are you going to get a work permit?

Quite frankly it doesn't make any sense to me what so ever to move to a country you know very little about and start a company. Why are you adding additional complications to your venture? Just focus on growing your business then maybe one day visit Switzerland and see what it's like before you spend time planning to move here.

Hello MiniMia

First of all, thanks for replying

Moving to Switzerland is more of a personal decision for me rather than a business decision. I prefer to experience new things. And I do intend on visiting sometime this year (Happy New Year ), but as someone that has lived in about 4 countries in his lifetime I know visiting a country is never the same as living there.

To answer your questions,
I don't know what the advantages are, which is why I asked ^^

Hopefully we branch out into hardware at some point, I'm looking to run this thing for a long long time, hopefully become like a Google or a Microsoft

I already have the company up and running and it's a bit established so I don't think the Swiss government will mind me bringing employment and money(hopefully)

I'm not starting the company in Switzerland, it's already started. At first I ran it out of my dorm room, then we moved to a small office in NY. Now that we are graduating university we'd like to move to Switzerland not specifically for the company, but we'd just prefer a change in scenery. We personally like Suisse's neutral yet free economic/social policies and think it'd be an awesome place to run the company. Of course, we may be wrong, which is why we're here, asking questions that we don't know about to weigh our options.

Again, not thinking about moving looking for economic benefits, would just like to move to Switzerland, so moving the company with us seems logical, unless being in Suisse would absolutely kill our chances of being successful or we're somehow better off in the US. Our hope is to make Switzerland our global Headquarters and maybe at some point in time have a North American Headquarters. We are energetic guys and really really open to different things so it's not like we'll move and start moaning about how different everything is

Thanks again

My 2 cents.

If you are technology space and primary need as I understand is manpower and capital. Switzerland is certainly not the place in whole planet for both these things. The good technology experts in Switzerland is a rare and expensive commodity. Unemployment overall is low and practically the kind of profile you are looking at will be difficult to find. On top of that the places where you find these kind of people like US, India or China is also very difficult from work permit prospective.
At the same time Bay Area / California in General is great for you. As you said you already had a startup and it is Cash Positive, you will have lot of people to talk to to raise money. You will find people at every level, tech, management, marketing etc in bay area for a social networking company.
Even in terms of market for anything social you need to be popular in the large society like US, U and Asia. So in term of market as well it will suit you. I am sure at this important stage in your company's building phase you don't want to bother too much apartment to rent even after paying USD 35K a year on apartment, learning a new language which is not spoken in the language it is taught (German, Swiss German), people to find (pay USD 120K and no good people to be found).

I wonder what is your real motivation to come to CH with a startup. Please don't get me otherwise but if you said you want to start a nice eating joint or a new fund management then the view would have been different. Technology and CH in current scenario and costs, not viable.

Zug is more cosmopolitan than Sarnen, the Swiss are relatively liberal in terms of foreigners if you start to work on fitting in, however central Switzerland is more conservative than the bigger cities of Zurich, Basel and Geneva. You should sign up for German language lessons ASAP so you can at least show you are making the effort. Racism can be an issue in Switzerland but many blacks, Asians etc. Seem to manage. Zug is the official/tax base for an enormous number of global companies so there are many ex-pats there and international schools etc. You will find a lot of people who speak English.

I think, as HollidayG mentioned, location is secondary to your business plans. That said, if you are thinking of the Geneva area, a great group of facilitators to ping on is alpict. They speak English, part of their website is in English, and are a good place to start out. www.alpict.com

What @timpy said plus ...

Zong

Paper.li

Fontself

Webdoc

Somehow, anything is possible from here and the quality of life is great, but you'll spend much time on a plane to SFO.

FWIW, Geneva.

Lastly, this may help.

Zürich is a much more interesting city than Geneva, has more technology firms and startups and places like

http://www.technopark.ch/start.cfm?lc=1

with infrastructure and support for startups. People from ETH and Uni can be found for collaboration. But forget hiring people instead of making them partners, it will very likely be much too expensive for you. Expect to pay 90'000.- even for a recent IT graduate.

I think you will have to answer some questions for yourself like

-Is local market access important?
-How global is your product and its marketing?
-Is the further development of your product labor-intensive (i.e.: employees)?
-Can your current income cover the basic costs of living in Switzerland?
(roughly 60'000.- including a basic office per person)

Switzerland offers great infrastructure, good quality of life but is expensive! 49% of startups are still alive after 5 years, so conditions aren't that bad. But you need really high margins if you want to hire people and still make money here.

Zurich and Geneva are extremely expensive, difficult to find property, and can be frustrating. They pretend to be a big city but usually behave like a village.

As you do not speak German, and would like to move here, but not pay too much in taxes and rent, I would suggest Fribourg. It is an ancient bi-lingual university town with good transport connections good tax and employment possibilities,

www.fribourg.ch

Difficult to give answers without full background information on your intentions. But here are some guidelines from my perspective:

1) stay geographically close to your investors.
2) if you plan to hire skilled people: Switzerland is expensive and people difficult to find. Unless you outsource (for IT/softw. dev) to eastern europe (poland, romania, bulgaria, ukraine).
3) if privacy is important for your business (i.e in social networks) Switzerland has very good laws and, compatible with EU.
4) I'd choose Zürich over Geneva in all cases (infrastructure, workforce, administration, work mentality, etc..).
5) other cities possible like Fribourg/Bern if you don't mind being 90min away from an international airport.

Oh... you will. Don't worry.

but I am curious about one thing that I don't think anyone has thought to inquire about.

You mentioned you were interested in Switzerland because of "neutral" economic and social policies. I also picked up on the use of the word "partner" which in an established business venture/investment would make sense, but isn't a word commonly used by young twenty-somethings.

So, I am curious... is your motivation to move the business to Switzerland more about enterprise, or more about social freedom?

One year on and no reply! Looks like you put your finger on something hot there.

My suggestion is either move to Silicon Valley untill your company is really big and then for tax reasons and change of scenery move to Switzerland or if you really are desperat for a change of scenery and still want a very good and strong work enviorment move to Israel.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...m_business_pop

Apparently they have the nr 1 amount of start up companies in the entire world after america and according to this link google is pooooring money into them and so is apple focusing on Israel and opening there first work house outside of america there,

I know allot of people wont like this and might have allot of comments to share but i still think its a good idea.

Errrr....one year on what?

Well, the thread was started last year, dontcha know! :P

Define a "neutral yet free" economic / social policy framework.

If you did make a move, it is better to focus on German and later on
learn a little Swiss German. It will be much easier this way.