Being 'GDPR ready', 'privacy first' and putting our users in control of their data was a good selling point and important part of our story. It definitely made it easier for me as a tech guy in founding team to argue for reasonable privacy policy, avoiding data monetising revenue models and attention to security.
I can create a business model in the US market - in the vast majority of nations in fact - that can't exist in the EU, pay for it with targeted advertising in the US market and give the product away for 'free.' I can scale it with US ad practices, then move into the EU with full GDPR compliance and continue to fund that product with the vast, lucrative, targeted US ad market, doing things with customer data and generating margin that is impossible in the EU. The EU can't project its jurisdiction globally to prevent this approach.
GDPR is a massive win for US companies, it increases the already overwhelming US competitive advantage. The US tech giants can trivially comply with GDPR, and the EU ends up as more of a tech hermit kingdom with every restriction and compliance requirement they put into place.
Starting and building a company like Google or Twitter in the EU was very difficult before, now it's impossible. Every future Google in the West will be born in the US perpetually from here on out.