Spotify was only available in Sweden for the initial 3 years, and after that they launched in the UK as well. 5 years after the local launch, they expanded into the US.
It's complicated but I do feel like, at least comparing Ireland and California, there's a lot of tall-poppy syndrome going on. I told some Irish friends I wanted to build my own house and they thought I was crazy and said it was a terrible idea. I told some Californian friends* and they thought it was awesome and wanted to come help build it.
Learned helplessness is bad enough but we're outright _teaching_ helplessness to young people.
*disclaimer: they live in Oregon now
And I'll give it to you that the Irish are one of the least DIY people around Europe.
(though I can totally understand being enthusiastic about building a house in California weather vs. Irish)
FWIW a lot of what US tech companies were doing was actually illegal or at least very dark grey in the US too. Skirting taxi regulations (Uber), hotel regulations (AirBnB) or employment law (all of the "gig economy" startups), everything done under "better ask for forgiveness than for permits"... the problem is twofold:
For one, personal liability of corporate executives has fallen out of favor. Unless you're ordering the outright murder of someone, the "corporate veil" will protect you. That means, as long as you budget in the correct-ish amount of fines, you can do whatever the fuck you want with impunity.
But the main problem is that the political system as a whole isn't very agile to react - it takes years for binding court orders if the opponent has good lawyers, the legislative branch is even slower to react, and both the legislative and the executive branch is often enough either too incompetent or outright bought off. And the "fourth branch" aka media isn't much better either - most media is under the control of big conglomerates or oligarchs.
The arm of the law might not catch everything, and when it does work, sometimes it works slowly.
Companies like Uber and AirBnb got ahead by skirting the law, and had to change their products in some European countries (like Spain) because lawmakers eventually saw what they were doing. AirBnb are now required to ask for tax ID, and Uber had add artificial delays in order to fit within the law that existed. But when they initially launched, they didn't do these things, it was only after pressure that they changed.
But that was not the only use of AirBnb, tons of properties were bought and used only for driving what essentially is a hotel in those properties, without registering with the proper entity and paying the appropriate amount of taxes. This was not legal, and never was, as hotels need to have a license, yet AirBnb allowed those entities to continue running on the website until the courts got involved. If that's not skirting the law, I don't know what is.
Now of course, AirBnb requires its users to specify their tax ID before they can let out their places on AirBnb, as the law (already existing since before AirBnb) requires.
"Lack" is a bad word but everything that's not around SV gets less funding. Yes, even in the US
> is that all the things US tech companies do to get ahead are illegal in Europe
So maybe don't do illegal BS and it will work out. In fact I'd say there's a huge market to be explored but enterpreneurs try the same stuff that works in the US without thinking about the market characteristics
> it turns out Netflix were impractical in the EU due to challenges both regulatory and linguistic
Netflix works just fine in Europe.
maybe instead of focusing why others are successful just go out and do your own thing? at the end Europe is full of unicorns and more startups are coming out of their teams.
The only thing I really see missing in Europe is the lack of dream / vision / going after big goals and having others believe that's possible. but even that gets easier each time you look around and spot a unicorn.
so just go build something