Great country to live, awful country to start/host any kind of company. Unfriendly tax climate, lack of startup infrastructure, lots and lots of bureaucracy.
Their (national association of road transport) next step is trying to get Uber to pay up for missed income - or as they state it "compensation for damages to the industry" [1].
Things are better on the company/bureaucracy front. Not as good as US/UK where you can do everything online, but it is 90% there. As for the tax climate, corporate tax has come down quite a bit (and is quite low compared to rest of Europe) but personal tax is a pain.
I think the main issue with Portugal, startup wise, is the people. We (as a nation) are very risk adverse and scared. There are many logical reasons for that that I won't get into the details here, but on the technical level, our graduates are quite good and salaries/cost of living are low. A typical YC investment on a Portuguese company would probably give them about one year of runway without any further investment.
Well, Uber has issues here in The Netherlands as well. Here it's also illegal to run your own taxi company. It's a very regulated business.
I don't think legislators would have a problem with Uber per se, it's just that they cheerfully ignore the existing legislation (and pay the fines incurred by the drivers) and basically just try to force themselves onto the market. If they would take the time to get proper legislation passed it could end up fine.
But why would governments that explicitly forbid illegal taxi services start making an exception for Uber?
If they would take the time to get proper legislation passed it could end up fine.
Except that doesn't work (with a few exceptional countries/cities), because the incumbents have massive political capital and Uber doesn't, and it's very hard to get popular support for something people haven't experienced.
I don't like Uber for other reasons, but regarding this tactic, I'm fine with it.
Even if we agree that these laws are important, surely there's no short term harm in having Uber around - it's not like they're dumping waste or performing unlicensed surgery - the courts just have to issue a ruling and everything can go back to normal in a week.
I would love to know who these "incumbents with massive political capital" are. Where i live most licensed taxi firms are small businesses run by local people providing local jobs.
Uber are now stomping these small companies by ignoring local law because they can afford the fines or just don't care.
I agree they are being allowed to do this in many places, and that it the fault of the government -- but i am certainly NOT fine with it.
They want to be the taxi service for the world which is a fast track to disaster for everyone except Uber.
I would love to know who these "incumbents with massive political capital" are. Where i live most licensed taxi firms are small businesses run by local people providing local jobs.
Yes they are. And they group themselves (here in Portugal we have a single, national association of taxi companies, which was the organization that got the court to ban Uber) and have long standing relationships with local parties and politicians.
The fact that they're small business is irrelevant; we're talking about political capital, ie., influence, not money.
A good example is how the Portuguese court ruled without even hearing Uber.
Uber are now stomping these small companies by ignoring local law because they can afford the fines or just don't care.
As a German myself, I'm still amazed by the existence and nature of SoundCloud. Doing a music sharing startup in the land of GEMA takes a lot of bravado. Or money.
Their (national association of road transport) next step is trying to get Uber to pay up for missed income - or as they state it "compensation for damages to the industry" [1].
[1]: http://www.publico.pt/sociedade/noticia/uber-proibida-de-ope...