Registering a private limited liability company in the Netherlands costs around 400 euros. If you can file all of the taxes and other legally required paperwork yourself, you can be set up in a week or two. You will be a salaried employee of your own company, though, with a minimal salary you will need to rake in.

The combination of "no personal risk whatsoever, minimal funds/risk coverage, maximal profit extraction" doesn't lend itself well to places with basic regulations.

Capital investments in Europe are definitely not as easy to obtain as in the US for various economic, cultural, and historic reasons, which all led to some pretty weird laws here and there, but the extra week it takes to set up a business isn't the cause.

The reason this all took so long and was so expensive is simple. As the author states:

> I wanted real limited liability

They wanted two different companies with different setups to get out of having to save up the funds or find investors while also paying the least amount of tax possible. They set up a two-company system with all the risk in one and all the earnings in the other. It's like one of those tax dodging schemes the multinationals like, except within a single country. That comes with overhead.

Funnily enough, they then end with:

> Which leaves the only real question. Why 25,000 at all? It is my company and my risk.

Weird to think it would be their own risk if they spend so much time, money, and effort setting up a system that explicitly removes all the risk from them.

All of this feels like it was based on a business plan generated by some over-eager AI that tried to optimize to tick as many boxes as possible, ignoring the real-world consequences of those choices.