I need help! (Part #3 by Jimmy Jackson)

Dear readers,

So if you’ve read my previous blog posts, you know that I’ve decided the time has come to expand my company into Europe. But where?

It’s a big, complicated place, Europe – am I right that there are more than a dozen countries?  Wait a sec… I can look that up… OMG, it’s 45!!  (I hope I won’t be tested on this.)  As a sophisticated globetrotter, I’ve already visited some of these countries – England, Paris, Oktoberfest – but now I realize there are many, many more nations than I imagined.  This is going to make the choice even harder, I suppose, since all of them will no doubt be crying out for my profitable little business to choose it as its new European home.

Hmm, I can see this decision is going to be even tougher than I thought.

I’ve started doing a little homework.  Thank you, Bill Gates, for inventing the Internet!  On that big beautiful WWW, I’m finding some pretty impressive stuff.  Like this article about “Europe’s new tech start-up capital”, or especially this one about a cool new institute in State of Geneve. Really loving that “Quantum” connection, by the way – it’s my company’s middle name!  I’m sure we’ll just naturally gravitate towards each other.

Both of those articles happen to be about Switzerland.  Never been there, but it’s obvious I need to put it on my list.  (Good thing I like cheese.)

Speaking of Switzerland, how on earth did such a small country get to speak so many languages?  Interesting video, About Switzerland – thanks for sending it to me, Serge Ballestraz!

But coming back to the need to do some homework.  What a Godsend it is to have so much information at my fingertips, everything from GDP growth to yesterday’s price for a gallon of gas!  Which appears to be sold only in the metric system over there – I’m definitely not too happy about needing to learn all that liters and meters stuff.  (Idea: I’ll get Bob, my Operations guy, to figure it out.)

The United Nations looks like a pretty good source of info for comparing countries as potential sites for Jackson Quantum Ventures’ new European HQ.  But gosh, do they ever produce a lot of data, though!  Not sure how relevant it is to compare things like literacy rates or daily caloric intake, since my plan is to hire only well-fed people who already know how to read and write.  

Frankly, I’m getting bogged down in the sheer mass of details to sift through – all this reading, comparing and contrasting!  It’s just overwhelming. 

And it’s not just because there’s a lot of country data out there.  Of course there is, and I do need a lot of data.  But there are so many other factors to take into consideration, too.  Things that might also affect my business, like regulations and #taxation… and things that could affect my employees, like schools and #healthcare and other quality of life issues.  (Which reminds me: Beauregard, my CFO, asked if we could prioritize countries where the food isn’t too spicy.  Good gosh, Beauregard, grow up!  I’m never going to promise that!) 

Bottom line: I’m worried.  Even if I jotted down every indicator I can think of that I should be looking at, I’m sure I’ll still miss dozens more that are also important – but I just didn’t think of them.  And it’s scary to imagine that the ones I can’t think of might be the most important ones of all.

I need some help!