Specifically to Switzerland, having lived there it has a problem more extreme than the US: it's very hard to work there. It's become easier for EU residents but harder for everyone else.
Switzerland is expensive but doesn't have the health insurance problems the US does (health insurance is mandatory and affordable) but labour laws are a bit of aroblem (in that it could be hard to fire someone).
The laws around company formation and financing I know nothing about there.
The cost of living is high but, in real terms, isn't that different to New York, even San Francisco.
If you compare Switzerland to its neighbors, Germany is much cheaper but far more restrictive on labour laws. France is expensive with similar problems. The UK is probably the freest in this sense but is expensive with huge infrastructure problems. Internet is probably cheapest in the UK (for Europe) and fastest to the US.
Setting up Mandalorian as a Limited company took me half an hour back in 2005. The VAT registration was a form or two and a postage stamp.
I'm not sure what infrastructure problems you're referring to, London's one of the most connected cities in the world as far as public transport goes and you can get pretty much from anywhere to almost anywhere on public transport. The roads are fine, the power grid is fine, Internet access is fine too.
I would venture to say close to all of the benefit of YC is its all-star cast.
There is certainly a need for this. Tech funding can be difficult to find I understand or of the "we'll invest in you once you're a safe bet" kind. Investing in biotech is much more developed, giving Switzerland's pharma industry, and there are signs that biotech investors are starting to show interest in tech startups but it's not there yet.
Would say what makes Switzerland attractive is being able to find highly educated engineers. While the ETH Zurich is highly respected, there are other less high profile schools turning out great hackers.
And there is enough experience around to get your startup off the ground and reaching a healthy turnover. What's lacking for web startups is experience scaling up to international markets; most of the successful startups I've seen tend to succeed only in local markets.
The money YC participants get is typically viewed as the least valuable part of participating in YC.
> Would say what makes Switzerland attractive is being able to find highly educated engineers
Having effective access to the engineering talent in the EU (now) is useful but also excludes Russia, Norway, Eastern Europe, North America, India, Asia and Australia.
> What's lacking for web startups is experience scaling up to international markets;
Part of this is the competitive advantage the US enjoys in the Internet for largely historic reasons: everyone pays to connect to the US. The US doesn't pay anybody. This (along with market size) is why hosting is cheaper in the US than anywhere else such that companies get more for their money in the US, helping companies both large and small.
Local hosting becomes far more important in content-driven businesses (Spotify, Youtube, etc) where you want to be as close to the customer as possible to not only save on long-haul bandwidth but also have lower latency.
That case aside, the economics really don't favour hosting a large-scale Internet startup anywhere other than the US (even if the company isn't in the US).
Actually there is another exception based on regulatory environment. Some companies (rightly) simply won't want to host in the US and be subject to US laws. The clearest example is online gambling, which is illegal in the US, but there are others (eg Swiss bank customer data can't leave Switzerland).
Well, if you're in the EU it's not just "easier", it's completely brainless. You just move there and start working. No visas, no nothing.
Which doesn't really take away from the misguided nature of this "venture".
Bootstrapping in Switzerland seems like an attractive proposition but does it make sense from a bootstrapper's point of view? Why not hop on a train and go to one of the cheaper countries next door?
