How long should a citizen have to wait before being allowed to create a firm? The question sounds administrative, but it is fundamentally economic and political. A new firm is not merely a registration in a government database. It can become a workplace, a source of income for a family, a competitor that forces established firms to improve, or the first opportunity for someone who has been unemployed to enter the labor market. When the state makes entry unnecessarily slow, expensive, or uncertain, the cost is therefore borne not only by the entrepreneur standing at the administrative counter. It is also borne by people whose jobs, wages, products, and opportunities may never come into existence.