I recently spoke at a crowdfunding conference in Germany. One of the professors there made a comment about entrepreneurship in Germany that I thought was interesting.

He indicated that small business entrepreneurs in Germany avoid hiring any employees for as long as possible, to avoid all of the (expensive) rights given to employees under German law.

Another example of the possible unintended consequences of regulation. Regulations intended to protect employees actually keep them from being hired.

The title of my talk at the conference was Regulating Investment Crowdfunding: Small Business Capital Formation and Investor Protection. I discussed how crowdfunding should be regulated, using the U.S. and German regulations as examples. The talk will eventually be posted online; I'll supply a link when it's available.