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No idea, but as an American who moved to Europe it's crazy how much ambition is casually discouraged ("the notions on him!") and investors are chickenshit scaredycats offering tiny numbers. Pathetic pay too.

But I still live in Europe because I prefer well designed cities and everyone (mostly) having ample vacation time.

That attitude can work in the post WW II world when Africa/Asian countries were too new to even work out their government structure. When most companies start making things, all the European policies seem like a recipe for accepting a much lower standard of living.

As a European who moved to California the societal stigma around young ambition in Ireland was brutal. When I started my first company in my 20’s and spoke to friends and family about it a phrase I frequently heard was “ah here, why would you stick your head above the parapet?”[0]

Having seen the kinds of Irish startups that get funding from Irish VCs they both tend to be run by Irish men in their 50’s/60’s who’ve been senior managers at big companies. Having reviewed a couple dozen Irish pitch decks it looks like funding flows based on who you know with little scrutiny given to ideas or even business fundamentals.

[0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/put-h...

Ambition has it's downsides. Risk does not always return with reward and often the reward has a high cost.

Such attitudes exist for a good reason. But at the same time the alternative attitude also exists for a good reason.

It was fun for a while but moving to Ireland was a mistake.

Reminds me of my homeland Sweden.

Having been in both the UK and Bay Area, I agree with your points about VCs.

However, the average age of tech founders in the US is older than you might expect, being well above 40yrs. Experience does count for something.

> Pathetic pay too.

If you're after better pay head to London, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, or Norway. You won't match those San Fran FAANG wages but they're still very good. I live a VERY comfortable life in Denmark and it's such a great place to raise a family.

Pretty much the instant I got the right to do so I started working remote for US companies. I have my own company and am working on moving to the Netherlands and talking to an accountant about how to ensure I can take advantage of the 30% ruling.

Would you mind if I drop you a line? We're pretty in love with NL and have a friend there who describes it as a great place to raise kids (unlike rural Ireland, which is terrible), but DK has come up as an option now and then. Would love to know any thoughts you have to share!

Email is in my bio if so.

The "massive influx of talented workers" and "the supremacy of the dollar" are not innate advantages, they are a consequence of the real underlying advantages.

Much of the difference is reducible to American risk tolerance. They accept higher average risk for higher average returns, which compounds over time. They also embrace individual ambition to do great things as a society.

While all of that is true, the supremacy of the US in the tech sector is entirely due to policy and culture, and has little to do with other factors, such as geographical wealth.

What is holding us back here in the EU, is bad leadership and lots of outdated corporate, financial and political traditions.

> What will the EU's comparative advantage be?

Europe is consolidating its position as the worlds museum.

Also regulation. Lots and lots of regulation.

/European dissident

Being from Europe, my perspective might be as biased as American fatalism but as the article says I think the key most important aspect is lacking a true single market and I'm sceptical of us ever achieving it.

The more we fall behind the more we'll cling to tradition and avoid further integration, a continuous cycle.

> we'll cling to tradition

I think this is mostly a matter of old voter bases.

Why can't an European company sell to the US?

They do, and unsurprisingly it's the relatively culturally-close countries of Ireland and the UK that sell the most to the US. But no European country has a free trade agreement with the US, and industrial standards are different because the EU is big enough to act as it's own trade centre.

> How would Europe even compete with America in the long run.

Via "Eurasian integration", specifically the development of transport and logistics megaprojects across the heartland of Eurasia, strongly linking Europe to East Asia by land. But conveniently timed geopolitical events have delayed that somewhat.

The said geopolitical events have shown that Eurasian integration is a pipe dream. Unless we see geopolitical surprises with the opposite sign analogous to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Let in a lot more immigrants, and not the refugee kind. Vetted, high skilled immigrants. Let those immigrants have something at stake i.e. provide a path to citizenship. Provide automatic citizenship to children of those immigrants born in Europe.

That is common sense, but saying that for some reasons gets lots of pushback from several people (both in Europe and America). People seem to forget that countries are only able to take modern moral stances due to their prosperity, and once the prosperity is not there, the voters forget morality in an instant.

America wouldn’t be nearly as entrepreneurial without immigrants. Something like 50% of all unicorns currently have atleast one Indian immigrant co-founder. Four out of ten unicorns have first gen immigrant founders.

https://m.economictimes.com/nri/invest/indians-top-the-list-...

In case anyone is curious, the source linked above states that 11% = 66 of 582 unicorns have an Indian immigrant founder.

Yeah it’s 50% of the top 50 unicorns

America takes in more poorer immigrants though

Poor but qualified? Unless it’s through the green card lottery I guess and I’m not sure what percent of new immigrants that makes.

Yes, America has a family based immigration system. My parents came to this country via family sponsorship, no jobs no money or anything. The H1-B system is over-represented on hacker news because of the industry we're all in. Most immigration to the US is family-based.

They don't compete. They reap the benefits of technological innovation without the need to push their own citizens to do the same.

It's a smart strategy. Smart phones , AI and Google come from the states, but that doesn't even matter given that Europeans have full access to everything.

It’s so damn American to dismiss any other way of doing things. No better way than the American way, am I right? Europe is sick and tired to be the sickly buddy of the world’s bully. And we don’t care about the wonderful ways the bully keeps finding to build his muscles and reinforce his attitude. You yankees will never really get it though, so I’m talking to the wind.

I’m American and I’ve enjoyed every country in Europe I’ve been to. As far as know, none of those countries would allow me the freedom to work as I do here and I doubt I could find a house large enough for my family of 6 or the 20 acres for my horses and other livestock. I’m open to any way of doing things, provided they give me equal or better results. My family left England for lack of opportunity in 1750 and we have done fine here since.

Could you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We particularly don't want nationalistic flamewar here, or ideological flamewar. You've been posting such comments repeatedly, unfortunately, and we have to ban accounts that do this.

I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended from now on, we'd appreciate it.

Can I have a strong dislike of how America conducts its business or is that not allowed? If anything all my comments are ANTI-nationalistic, where the nationalism is that sneaking in so many comments here that subscribe to an entitled, west-centric view of the world. The fact that an always civil -albeit confrontational- discussion is seen as inflaming is quite worrying.

Edit: the entire thread this was an answer to was dismissive and partisan about Europe.

Of course you can - plenty of HN commenters make such critiques. But you need to do it without swipes, snark, name-calling, or flamebait, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Every sentence in your GP comment was flamebait—exactly the kind of thing we're trying to avoid here. And yes, if you start a flamewar comment a la "It's so damn $country", that's nationalistic flamewar in the sense that we use the term, regardless of which nation you have a problem with.

This kind of thing ends up producing internet discussion that is equal parts inflamed, predictable, and dumb. We want curious conversation here.

ok, fair. will keep it in mind.