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Comment by StreamBright | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. If you live in a safe and secured society why would you want to do something risky like creating a startup. One of the biggest success for the EU startup scene was just copying what is done in California, avoiding the risk of trying out new ideas.

On the top of that, regulation in the EU is much worse than in the US. This does not help either.

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People in European societies still feel need for some thrill. I think the problem is a bit different. Language and cultural barriers are still meaningful. I am a Czech and I know shit about selling to Romanians or Portuguese customers; even if I was able to pay for professional translation of my products AND customer support in 20-25 languages, my cultural ignorance would be still a significant hurdle.

USA and Anglosphere in general is HUGE. China is HUGE. The closest thing to that in the EU is DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), about 100 million rich people speaking the same language.

But precisely Germany is a fairly technologically conservative country with median age close to 46, where people are much less keen on new technology than in, say, Estonia; ironically, the fact that older systems work reliably reduces the drive to adopt new ones.

And smaller markets like Estonian or Danish one will not provide you with as much growth opportunity.

If you're selling a technical solution, why would you even touch cultural differences? I bet you'd be successful if you could afford the extra costs of translation/marketing.

Cultural differences hugely affect the marketing, and in some cases the market; you couldn't sell a tipping management app to somewhere without a tipping culture, for example.

Another example - a friend of mine tried to expand to Poland and was surprised that using payment cards significantly reduced appeal of his solution.

eBay was also a spectacular failure because they disregarded local competition.

Well that is why Linux is successful around the planet. It really does not touch any soft cultural differences. Geeks and their needs are similar everywhere.

Something like a food delivery corp. on the other hand must know precisely what to expect from which holidays etc. There is a fairly successful Czech startup called Rohlík that expanded to Hungary, Austria and Germany, but every added country is a challenge.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/30/rohlik-raises-119m-at-a-1-...

BTW Translation is probably cheaper than support. Customers will often demand support in their native language.

Takeaway.com is a Dutch company operating in half of Europe including Romania and Poland.

I do not claim it is outright impossible. The hurdles are higher, though.

The Polish one was an acquisition of a local company which knew the market, which further proves that penetrating new markets in the EU is difficult.

See this article:

https://www.pulshr.pl/wywiad/arkadiusz-krupicz-wspolzalozyci...

Much of their expansion was through mergers and acquisitions of locally founded companies.

"Extra costs of translation/market" you're saying it like it's a byline

It is more complicated than that for things moderately complex.

Yep that same scary regulation that is intended to hinder businesses from selling me food with hydrogenated fats, overloaded with sugar or salt, that same regulation that forces auto manufacturers to not create exclusive overpriced repair consortiums for basic parts, and that generally makes life a bit less corporately tyrannical.

Shareholder value is only nice if you're a significant shareholder, and it is disproportionately nice to those shareholders at the cost of others, when lobbying overtakes regulation.

> that same regulation that forces auto manufacturers to not create exclusive overpriced repair consortiums for basic parts

My diesel jetta would like a word with you and your picky-choosy.

Just kidding, America cracked down and forced VW to buy it back with a penalty kicker.

Point is - these sorts of arguments are silly.

>> overloaded with sugar or salt

I think you live in a different region.

https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/a_spoonful_o...

https://corporateeurope.org/en/pressreleases/2016/07/food-lo...

https://www.livestrong.com/article/464851-why-is-high-fructo...

https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/default/files/nutrition_ph...

> If you live in a safe and secured society why would you want to do something risky like creating a startup

Safe and secure unlike... California? The founders of US startups are already in very advantageous positions in life. In fact that security helps with taking business risks which is the opposite of what you're claiming.

It seems to me that this article is saying exactly the opposite of what you say.

The article is about how Europeans, that live in that "safe and secured society", are creating more startups than before.

>>"On the top of that, regulation in the EU is much worse than in the US. This does not help either. "

If you check those start-ups you can see that most of them are joining Y-combinator but they stay in Europe. So, also the opposite of what you are implying.

>> "safe and secured society"

What is the distribution of Eastern vs Western Europeans in the sample?

==Cyprus== Malloc

==Denmark== Gamerpay , Female Invest , Zoios

==Estonia== Membo

==France== Whaly , Carbonfact , Numary , Café , Hera , Crew , PaletteHQ

==Finland== Kapacity.io

==Germany== Snowboard Software , Moving Parts , QOA , HeyCharge

==Ireland== Luminate Medical , Noloco , Protex AI

==Netherlands= Quest , Orderli , Echoes HQ

==Poland== Enso

==Romania== Archbee

==Spain== Solarmente , Payflow , Arengu

==Switzerland== Pabio , Adaptyv Biosystems

==UK== Appollo , Shopscribe , Digistain , Abatable , Heimdal , StudyStream , Teamspace , Genei , Sitenna , Onfolk , SigmaOS

==USA== Beau , Iona Mind , Synder , Awesomic

> On the top of that, regulation in the EU is much worse than in the US

Worse as in better for consumers and citizens, but more costly for companies that can't do exactly what they want?

EU regulation generally doesn't have "de minimis" exemptions. If you have something that takes a flat cost of €10k or €100k to comply with, that burdens small businesses much more than large businesses, and a startup is a small business in the beginning.

Theoretically if you want to build an electronic product and sell one (1) unit of it in the EU you need to give it the full works of CE compliance. I don't believe UL/FCC are quite so onerous? And certainly this doesn't apply to random items in unmarked packages from China.

I was curious about this so went to Google. https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/product-requirements/l...

So it seems it's not that clear cut that you need it (and it can be self assessed). But yeah, if it's an electronic device that plugs into the wall or connects to WiFi probably yes - or at least the modules that do that)

People creating startups in the US aren't those who are in unsafe / insecure environments. It's those who can afford to fail.

The difference isn't having a huge market with a more-or-less homogeneous culture on consumption and language, it is that Europe is a safe and secured society, completely different than fucking California.

Not sure what is your point here, you brush off a lot of the real nuances of the problem to throw an overgeneralising jab onto 27 different cultures...

"If you live in a safe and secured society why would you want to do something risky like creating a startup."

Isn't that just another way of saying "quality of life"?

Depends what you are looking for. If you are in your 20s / 30s you might want to have higher salary and less social safety. Later in your life this changes. Many Europeans (including myself) went to work in California for higher wages and less taxation. Some of us wanted to have family and moved back. Quality of life is subjective above a certain threshold.

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