I have very poor understanding of all of this, but
I think that EU tech hubs focus on some ~~bullshit~~ not shiny industries like banking/financials, insurance and generally those very mature.
I think that EU tech hubs focus on some ~~bullshit~~ not shiny industries like banking/financials, insurance and generally those very mature.
Decades of "infrastructure and community" is not easily copied else where and is a real advantage for the US. Europe had lot's of "Facebooks" but non grew out of the local market to be able to gain a global advantage.
Silicon valley is not easily reproduced elsewhere in the US either.
And it's not bigger because there are trade barriers between countries, for services. It's far from trivial for a UK company to sell stuff in the US.
I imagine the timezone difference also doesn't help.
If a company headquartered in the UK wants to sell to the US they need to deal with a whole new set of regulations, bureacracy, marketing etc.
In the meantime, any SV startup can grow in a huge market and only then bother with crossing the ocean.
Of course that is only half the equation -- better and cheaper labour (than in Berlin or Paris, say) brings you halfway there, but the language barrier for customers in the EU as well as regulatory hurdles still make massively harder to scale to the whole of the EU than to the whole of the US.