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Comment by paulluuk | Hacker News Reader

It could be that legal requirements are a constraint, but I think that the lack of investors is the real issue. Because we're not really comparing Europe to "all of the US", we're comparing all of Europe to Silicon Valley -- I doubt Europe is a worse place to start a tech company than, say, Nebraska.

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It is, though. The EU has a unified single market for goods, but not for services. And since most software tries to provide a service, or integrate with businesses that do, EU software companies often struggle to expand to other member states than their native one. There are legal and lingual differences, obviously, but also different ecosystems of private entities that you're expected to integrate with. The EU is really good at making stuff that goes in boxes, though.

Insightful, thanks. Answers a ton of questions swirling around my noggin for ages.

> The EU has a unified single market for goods, but not for services.

It's definitely possible and easy for a company in EU country X to provide a service to individuals or companies in another EU country. What makes you think otherwise?

Language, for one. Legally it might be one market but having to translate your service in well over two-dozen languages is a bit of an entry barrier.

The EU itself admits that. Their attempts at a digital market for services never really went anywhere. It's one reason the UK left and economic impact was less than some people claimed it would be. A services heavy economy wasn't benefiting from the EU single market so much to begin with. For example trying to sell legal or financial services across the EU is painful.

US investors will invest in an idea to see if it works.

EU investors will invest in a working idea.

We have far fewer ridiculous startup ideas or companies that can't scale, but the flip side is that we have fewer winners too.

Yeah, this is it right here. EU investors are terrified of risky bets, or throwing a lot of money at untested business ideas to see if they'll catch on.

Investors in the US will throw millions or even billions of dollars at an innovative new business, even if it doesn't make that money back for years. They'll invest in consumer facing businesses, like consumer tech products, apps, social media sites etc.

EU ones won't do that. They'll invest fairly tiny sums in safe, conservative businesses with a proven (but arguably limited) business model, and that won't be enough to get the kind of unicorns Silicon Valley specialises in.

I think it's a fairly deep cultural difference. In the US there's a cultural sense that anyone can make it, that if you just put in enough effort it'll work. Arguably there's even a culture of it being your right to try anything to make money, there are very few businesses that the US would disallow. The former is obviously hubris, and the latter creates some of the worst exploitation in the US, but sometimes these factors create hits.

In the EU the culture is much more cynical, and the belief in individual impact is much lower. There's also more of a sense of there being things that one just does not try to exploit, types of business that could be considered morally distasteful (see the healthcare industry for the clearest examples of what I mean).

These are very broad generalisations, they don't apply evenly across the US or the EU, and while they all sound quite negative they are really trade-offs and it's up to individuals to decide where they prefer to sit on these trade-offs.

> Nebraska is an at-will employment state. This means employees can be dismissed for any reason at any time and without notice when an employment contract or other governing principle is not in effect.

https://www.mightyrecruiter.com/recruiter-guide/at-will-empl...

Almost any american state is a vastly better place to start a company than almost any european country.

Do you really think Lincoln, Nebraska is automatically a better place to start a company than, say, Stockholm?

Talent availability and local startup ecosystem don't count for anything? All that matters is that you can dismiss employees for any reason at any time?

It's 2023, best talent in tech works from home anyway. A developer in Stockholm would rather work for a corp from Delaware for $200k as a contractor than for a local company where he would be lucky to make $70k post-tax.

Is this something you have first-hand experience of? I'm in Copenhagen and that's really not what it looks like.

The first part, yes. I'm currently in Israel, and although tech salaries here can be quite high, the overall comparison with remote US positions still works the same way.

It's not hard to find contractor jobs making $200k in the Netherlands; that's about 100 EUR per hour, which is mid-market.

The average non-contractor salary is much lower and it's rare to find startups hiring contractors, I assume since they don't have as much money.

Is 100 EUR per hour mid market for contractor jobs that keep you in full employment for years, offer stock options and PTO and are actually a regular job in everything but the name and taxes? Because that's what I meant by “contractor” in my original comment. Should have explained it right away, my bad.

All of that except stock options.

Lincoln? Probably not. But I'd definitely rather start one in Omaha, Nebraska than in Stockholm.

There's a lot more to running a business than how easy it is to fire people.

For all that America likes to proclaim how varied it's culture is from state to state, I'm a 2 hour train ride from switching currency and language, in addition to substantial cultural norms.

Such things seem much more significant to me than notice periods.

You only have to look at Snapchat's slap on the wrist for wilfully mis-informing its customers about the ephemerality of messaging to show the difference between the two places.

The USA is a much more attractive environment for investment and hence startups and the EU would struggle to offer the same without losing its soul.

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