Dead Duck Law
September 2nd, 2026 • Eduard Míka
When I read the information about the new startup law in the media, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at first.
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When I read the information about the new startup law in the media, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at first.
To the credit of the current government, it is at least trying. That – if we ignore the several attempts to create a meaningful legislative framework for ESOPs that have gone nowhere – for the first time in the history of this country, there is actually a government that has noticed that there is such a thing as a startup or an angel investor. That someone may have finally realized that supporting an innovative domestic startup ecosystem can be better than attracting just more multinational corporations that will create jobs here where any creativity is undesirable or buy the created intellectual property for a wage that is an order of magnitude lower than in their homeland. So far it seems great, fantastic, terrific … but …
When I read the information about the new startup law in the media, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at first. But since we know that journalists can distort even the un-distortable, I also read the recording of the government press conference where they announced the news, just to be sure. This time – unfortunately – the journalists got it right.
Our dear friends in the government, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave Straka Academy (building where the government is located) for a while and visit the Karlín or Holešovice quarters (it is not that far). You would learn a lot of surprising things there … such as:
And the icing on the cake: what is an innovative and scalable plan will be decided by an official in a newly established government agency, the appeal body will be the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and the whole thing will be governed by the Administrative Code, which state authorities often do not comply with. But who alone has the supreme authority to decide what is an innovative and scalable plan? … the market. I imagined Elon Musk asking this agency for a tax break for investing in launching a Mars flight project, where the first stage of the rocket will be captured by kind of pincer on the launch pad, so that it can take off again in a few minutes after being refueled.
So … nothing again. The problem of a suitable legal form for startups … nothing. The problem of unbearably high labor taxation in startups … nothing. We will just create a new government agency with a few dozen civil service positions, the state will lose a few billion CZK in taxes by granting tax breaks to pointless projects, and otherwise nothing will happen.
But let’s not give up. We’ve already tried the ESOP three times and haven’t given up yet either. And as Jan Werich (20th-century Czech playwright, actor and philosopher) said: “The war against human stupidity cannot be won, but we cannot run away from it, because stupidity would flood the world.”
September 2nd, 2026 • Eduard Míka
When I read the information about the new startup law in the media, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at first.
May 28th, 2026 • Eduard Míka
Almost every successful startup that is created in the Czech Republic ends up in another jurisdiction. Most often, ownership is transferred to a holding company in the USA, the Netherlands or elsewhere. In the startup community, this is called a “flip of ownership” or “flip-up” for short.
December 15th, 2025 • Ondřej Fryc
Recently, I spotted a founder on social media lamenting that the majority of VC funds he contacted didn’t even reply to the email where he introduced his project. Underneath, there were plenty of comments about how typical this is—that VCs whine about having nothing to invest in, yet they don’t reply to emails. Ugh.
November 26th, 2024 • Zdena Macháčková