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Comment by adev_ | Hacker News Reader

Pretty good summary yes.

The idea itself of supporting Europeans alternative to face American and Chinese tech giants is by itself noble (and I think necessary).

However, the usual way it is done is a disaster: top-bottom, funding some existing behemoth company that will have no capacity whatsoever to innovate, nor will to do so. But they will get the money because they have good connections.

If you think about it, it is not very different of the American military-industrial complex and the way the DoD/Army/DoE fund their programs (F-35 ?).

Creating a good environment for startups and giving grants to several ones in parallel to create an internal competitive market would be both cheaper and more effective.

But that would imply first a generation switch....

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> However, the usual way it is done is a disaster: top-bottom, funding some existing behemoth company that will have no capacity whatsoever to innovate, nor will to do so. But they will get the money because they have good connections.

That's the tragedy of the government-backed tech in France. You also have a lot of very skilled tech companies there, but they are not the ones getting government support to grow further.

>That's the tragedy of the government-backed tech in France. You also have a lot of very skilled tech companies there, but they are not the ones getting government support to grow further.

That's almost an universal tragedy.

The good techies, the innovative engineers or the avant-garde researchers... Typically, the one doing the work... are generally not the one doing outreach, going around in convention, networking, making connections with politicians.... And getting Grants.

On the other side, many conference/convention/"one-man-show" dudes are generally much better to talk than to produce anything useful.

Their is a million of example of that, in both side of the Atlantic ocean.

I would say it is less tragic in America, mainly because there is a Venture Capitalism culture there that Europe do not have.

I is too easy to attribute this to some „culture“ that randomly formed and which did not happen in europe. I mean how likely is that? I believe there is a much more structural thing to it

> to some „culture“ that randomly formed and which did not happen in europe

Because when WWII ended and Europe was rebuilding, in some low-key corner of the West Coast of the US, some military contractors were trying to figure out what would their next projects look like (and getting more money from the US Gov. to fight the Russians, of course)

Then these guys became the best (read, selling more) in one thing called semiconductors then the best at this other new thing that was called computers and that's how it went.

And I might add that being the junction of tech and (accidentally) some weird hippie corner of the US might have helped in some aspects.

It is also a matter of culture. For example cutthroat capitalism is not really a thing in Europe, social capitalism (or soziale Marktwirtschaft) is. Culture plays a huge role in this. Most Europeans have a lower risk appetite since it's not like Europe is swimming in successful, well funded, well advertised startups to set an example for a new generation of entrepreneurs. Most also value personal life too much to be willing to make all the sacrifices a startup would require.

But one of the biggest issues in Europe is that it's not very unified yet. A French startup will launch a French product, not a "European" product. The only way to get buy-in from enough people is to have a multinational startup and product. An initiative promoted by both Germany and France has a better chance since it may appeal to ~150 million citizens.

France has been world-leading in verification, e.g. CompCert and Coq come from INRIA, model-checking was co-invented in France. This stuff is largely language independent. Yet the big sellers of this kind of stuff (e.g. EDA software from Synopsys, Cadence, and Mentor) is in the US.

That doesn't invalidate my points. SAP is a market leader and comes from Germany. A lot of leading finetch also comes from Germany or UK. A lot of major antivirus vendors in the Czech Republic or Romania, etc. Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, London are all big IT tech innovation and startup hubs in Europe.

Yet the overall scene is not quite as dynamic as the one on the other side of the Atlantic. Startups never seem to be as well funded or advertised. People take fewer risks here, there's no obvious culture of risking it all to found a startup. The whole ecosystem is not designed around this. Maybe this is changing now but today the market really isn't flooded with local products but rather with products of Silicon Valley. A lot of investments in European startups still come from SV instead of being local. There are some products that are big in one European country but don't really seem to make it over the border and it's probably because Europe is not as unified a marked as it could be.

I agree with most of your points, and the huge unified, and rather homogeneous market is a core advantage of the US in certain product categories. Since you mention SAP: clearly, SAP is successful in a space where Europe's heterogeneity should be a problem -- different legal systems, different accounting rules etc ... and yet SAP succeeded. Maybe it was because SAP was founded in 1972, half a century ago, when European decline was not as pronounced as it is in today?

I deem you ready for a re-read of _Atlas_Shrugged_ :D

Well, I think we have no choice in Europe even if it looks weird and too late. Keeping on depending on the US or China for vital infrastructures such as cloud would be a suicide for Europe. US and China cannot be trusted as they only think business and tech in terms of predation and domination. And their tech companies have too many bonds with their intel agencies. This move should be seen as another evidence of the growing atlantic rift.

You said "competitive".

You must understand that in Europe, using such language in good company is considered rather rude, or at the very least, irresponsible.

Europe is the place where there are still strongly held belief that proper centralized planning will beat market forces every time.

The fact that this mental model doesn't fit reality is considered a minor detail, it's just that the plan needs a little bit of refinement.

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