Worldwide, 4 of 5 businesses fail in the first five years.
In Greece, that same percentage is 9 out of 10. The ratio might not look all that different, but what it really says is that a business is twice as possible to succeed if it’s not based in Greece.
In the US, a friend founded a company by sending a fax and payment with Paypal. In Greece, it’s a process that takes up to 180 days. [1]
As for what follows, what can I say? You’re at the mercy of every authority that will want to ‘check up on you’, from corrupt taxmen who can order you to stop doing business for weeks while they check your books to any single licence-issuing organisation that may not want to issue you a licence for something that they think that you should not be doing.
Do we still wonder why Greeks abroad make so much money and only visit the homeland once every few years? Others call it Diaspora, but it’s nothing short of a Brain Drain.
