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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

Hear hear - Utrecht might be the finest city in the world, too.

And Europe is missing a gigantic opportunity right now. The fact that talent is cheap, there's a strong social safety net, and we don't have enormous amounts of entrepreneurship is really strange.

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It's easier to run a startup in the US, so why do it anywhere else? The financing is easier, the labor laws more business-friendly, and the native market bigger. And that's how it's going to stay for the foreseeable future. EU internal market integration has been paused for decades, weakening labor laws is a non-starter in any European country, and European pension funds are generally not allowed to invest in index funds, let alone something as risky as VC. If you think the EU will ever catch up, think again. The political will to do so is just not there.

Yeah, but I like that my kids can bike around and not get run over

From my PoV, the EU doesn't need to catch up. The US will be the one crashing down. There is an ocean in the middle but I can still see Americans digging their hole deeper and deeper.

I'm more worried about the US conquering Europe.

Maybe because the "greed is good" thesis of America really is "correct" with respect to geopolitical competition?

This might be the sad truth. Good morals don't look like a winning strategy

safety and trust are hard to sell. it is widely known. What you say shows that "immediate gains always win" with no context.. It is literally unwise over time.

It is better that we not fight wars and that we endeavour to increase the quality of life for all then we win some made up game of geopolitical competition.

I agree, but does EU via NATO not fight or encourage wars? And is encouraging or sending weapons but no soldiers to proxy war morally better? Ukraine?

Yeah I don't get it. I know that Cherry Ventures just raised another 500 million euros but that is really nothing compared to what is in America. I think there is really a missed opportunity both from the government side of things and VC side of things. The government could relax restrictions on small businesses, hand out more tax credits, make it more beneficial to move here (e.g., my understanding is netherlands has a small business visa but it only lasts a year and you have to prove you are making money which is hard for a startup to do after a single year), more government money for research and more money to bring research results to market. Like the european research council (ERC) has a program called something like proof of concept where you get add on funds to an existing ERC grant to produce a proof of concept that could be taken to market but you are required to be the PI on the original grant to apply for the proof of concept. If instead you let anyone apply like the way NSF grants for startup work that would be better. for example postdocs that worked on the original ERC cannot apply for the follow on proof of concept money to try and make a startup that commercializes the research. only the PI of the original ERC grant can apply. That seems silly to me since probably the postdocs are better positioned to be startup leaders than the PI since the PI is more likely to have a permanent academic job and be uninterested in leaving that job to start a company out of one of the research agendas they are pursuing. you probably would get way more results out of the program than it generates now. I think from the VC side of things they could simply try and recruit more of these people who are working on such grants to become founders. In america there is a more clear MIT/Stanford/Caltech pipeline into silly valley and VC offices than there is in europe. VCs are responsible, imo, to create such a pipeline not academics. Anyways, if you are VC reading this feel free to reach out if you think that I am making sense. If I am not making sense feel free to tell me why. I am, of course, just some guy on the internet.

I have a proptech webapp that I built for myself but now gets several signups per week and has active users, yet nobody wants to invest. My last job was for an idiotic startup that had literally three dozen users at its peak yet was able to get over $2 million in VC, perhaps because it was in the US.

I really don't see why Europe can't figure this out.

yeah one thing VC is about the startup but the founders. if you went to the wrong school, got the wrong parents tough luck.

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