Entrepreneurship should be a central plank of every country’s economic development. Indeed, the currently sluggish global economic outlook, which has seen both slow financial development and massive lay-offs, means that entrepreneurship has become a vital survival option, both for individuals and for entire nations. In this context, the steady pace of middle-class consumption in Indonesia, as well as the country’s impressive and vibrant e-commerce penetration, has created one of the most promising potential marketplaces in Asia.
 
Furthermore, after a recent visit to Silicon Valley earlier this year, the President of the Republic of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, outlined his far-reaching ambition to transform Indonesia into, “The digital energy of Asia”. In order to support the president’s exciting ambition, the Ministry of Communications and Information has now joined hands with KIBAR — a local startup incubator company — in a bid to create 1,000 digital startups (Gerakan Nasional 1000 Startup Digital), which should be worth some $10 billion by 2020.[1]
 
However, starting up a business is not merely a matter of injecting capital and then turning a profit. Legal compliance is also vital during the establishment and running of any business. And so, in order to reflect the current sense of euphoria that surrounds the development of startups across Indonesia, this week’s Indonesian Law Digest (ILD) will address several key issues relating to the establishment of startup companies here. Our discussion will confine itself to the following topics: