Starting a Startup: The Biggest Obstacle Isn't Taxes
- Leyla Marie Hazim Bahssa
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
After an hour spent talking about taxes, business structures, entrepreneurship, and regulation, the conversation ended up revolving around something entirely different.
It wasn't really a conversation about taxes.
It wasn't about corporate structures.
It wasn't even about tax optimization.
It became a conversation about why some people build things while others spend years thinking about doing it.
And perhaps that's one of the most interesting questions today.
Because it's never been easier to start a business.
Yet most people still don't.
We've Never Had More Tools. We've Never Had More Excuses.
For years, entrepreneurship meant overcoming very real barriers.
Access to information was limited.
Starting a company required significant capital.
Building technology demanded specialized teams.
Launching a product meant months of work before receiving the first piece of market feedback.
Many of those barriers still exist.
But they're dramatically smaller than they were a decade ago.
Today, one person can design a brand, build a website, create content, develop functional prototypes, and even launch digital products without a full team behind them.
What once required an entire company can now be done from a laptop.
Paradoxically, that hasn't triggered a massive wave of new entrepreneurs.
If anything, the opposite seems true.
It feels as though technology has advanced much faster than people's willingness to take action.
Information is no longer scarce.
Execution still is.
The Myth of Being Ready
There's a common image of the entrepreneur.
Someone with a clear vision, a detailed plan, and a deep understanding of the market before they ever begin.
Reality is usually very different.
Most startups are born in uncertainty.
Without enough data.
Without guarantees.
Without knowing what the next six months will look like.
What's interesting is that many people interpret this uncertainty as proof that they aren't
ready yet.
They tell themselves they need to learn a little more.
Save a little more.
Plan a little more.
Understand the market a little better.
But experience shows that almost none of these things actually eliminate uncertainty.
They simply move it further down the road.
Because the most valuable knowledge rarely appears before you start.
It appears afterward.
When you speak with real customers.
When you try to sell.
When you launch something that nobody buys.
When you discover the problem you thought you were solving wasn't actually important.
Or when an idea you considered mediocre generates far more interest than expected.
None of those lessons can be learned from reading alone.
The Difference Between Builders and Observers
There's an interesting tendency throughout the startup ecosystem.
People often overestimate the importance of ideas while underestimating the importance of execution.
Yet when you look at the history of most successful companies, you'll find that their original ideas rarely survived unchanged.
They evolved.
Adapted.
Pivoted.
Improved.
The advantage rarely comes from having the perfect idea from day one.
It comes from starting the learning process sooner.
While one person is still refining a pitch deck, someone else has already spoken with twenty potential customers.
While one person is comparing tools, another has already launched a first version.
While one person is waiting for certainty, another is accumulating experience.
And experience has one characteristic that no amount of content can replace.
It builds judgment.
Comfort Can Become a Problem Too
When people talk about entrepreneurship, they usually focus on the obstacles.
Bureaucracy.
Taxes.
Funding.
Regulation.
All of those matter.
But there's another factor that receives far less attention.
Comfort.
Comfort has an extraordinary ability to delay decisions.
If your current situation is good enough, there's always a reason to wait a little longer.
Wait until the market improves.
Wait until you have more experience.
Wait until you've saved more money.
Wait for the perfect moment.
The problem is that the perfect moment rarely arrives.
Not because better opportunities don't exist.
But because the clarity we're waiting for is usually the result of taking action—not the prerequisite for it.
Many of the people who now seem confident once started exactly where everyone else starts.
With doubts.
With fear.
With uncertainty.
The difference is that they moved forward before resolving all of it.
AI Has Changed the Rules, Not Human Nature
Artificial intelligence inevitably became part of the conversation.
Not as a threat.
But as a tool.
Technology is reducing the cost of building almost anything.
It allows people to work faster.
Automate repetitive tasks.
Prototype ideas.
Generate content.
Analyze information.
Increase the output of a single individual.
But it's also revealing something important.
Many of the barriers we thought were technical were never truly technical.
They were psychological.
Because even when tools become dramatically more accessible, people still need to make decisions.
Take risks.
Face rejection.
Launch something imperfect.
And no AI system can do that part for us.
The Real Bottleneck
Perhaps that's why the conversation ended so far away from taxes.
Because taxes are rarely a startup's first problem.
Neither are contracts, legal structures, or tax optimization.
Those challenges come later. Much later.
The first obstacle is much simpler.
It's the inability to act before guarantees exist.
It's the need to feel like everything is under control before getting started.
It's the belief that risk must be eliminated before action can begin.
When in reality, the process works the other way around.
First, you move.
Then, you learn.
Then, you develop judgment.
Only then do you begin to truly understand what you're building.
Perhaps that's why the most important question for someone who wants to become a
founder isn't which tax structure to choose, which technology stack to use, or which
growth strategy to follow.
The most important question is far more uncomfortable.
How much longer are you going to wait before finding out whether your idea actually works?
LinkedIn of Beni: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beni-sanchez/
LinkedIn of Juanma Sáez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanmasaezdrr/
Nomu Labs Website: https://www.nomulabs.com/
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