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Comment by jjallen | Hacker News Reader

Yes as an American who’s loved in Europe for six years or so the risk taking and desire to start and do things a little differently is just night and day more than it is in Europe, generally speaking.

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I'll never forget how jealous the Dutch coffee shop owner I met was of Americans.

Dude worked at a bank - respectable white collar job acc. to his Dutch friends and family. He picked up a passion for coffee and wanted to open his own shop. His loved ones all thought he was nuts to leave a stable job for a maybe.

I'm sure there's a degree of that in the US, but we have a lot more "just try stuff" in our cultural myths than the Europeans tend to. Guy felt like his options were keep a job he hates or be disowned by everyone he knows.

Perhaps his friends and family were just being reasonable? Leaving banking to start a coffee shop is a drastic, risky move. Passion doesn't pay the bills or fund retirement and I'd legitimately wonder if someone was having a mental health crisis if they told me that was their plan.

> Passion doesn't pay the bills or fund retirement and I'd legitimately wonder if someone was having a mental health crisis if they told me that was their plan

We're still on a startup board, correct?

That's not what I thought HN primarily was.

It's advertising, outreach, and public relations for a startup incubator company. There aren't ads here, because the website is the ad.

What's the point of working in finance if you don't make enough money to quit and try something new for a couple of years? You make it sound like his job only pays a little more than flipping burgers.

New coffeshop owner most likely pays less than flipping burgers. I'd imagine for the first three years at least, it's going to be a loss, especially on a cash flow basis. If the business can survive long enough, it might work out.

OTOH, if it fails, you just go back to banking, right? No big deal; hopefully you had fun.

> I'm sure there's a degree of that in the US, but we have a lot more "just try stuff" in our cultural myths than the Europeans tend to

Myth is the important word here for most people in the US. Unless you are already fairly wealthy or have wealthy parents your options are incredibly limited in the US because of the lack of a social safety net.

Where in the US? In California if you quit your job you'll get free healthcare and ~$300/mo in food on your EBT card. You only have to be wealthy enough to pay rent. Median net worth in the US is $200k which can last quite a while.

The vast majority of people in the US don't live in California, and even those who do might be slightly better off in terms of healthcare and food, but given that CA has the second highest cost of living behind Hawaii and >25% of the country's homeless population I'm not sure it's considerably better.

Net worth is a poor metric for this, it includes a lot of illiquid assets. You can't eat your car if you lose your job. On the other hand the median savings account balance is $8k which isn't going to last very long at all

Live in a college town. Either do contracting, or work at eg CVS/Walgreens/Sam's Club/Costco etc for $16-$20 per hour. Pay your bills with that. Work on your start-up ambitions. It will provide you a forever runway. Is it easy? Of course not, it's very long hours. It's very viable however. I did that path at one point so I wouldn't need VC while I hacked away at ideas, wouldn't have any contracting conflicts, and wouldn't have to touch my investments to sustain myself. And those businesses will also give you decent health insurance (worth $8k-$10k in terms of if you had to foot the bill solo).

> You can't eat your car if you lose your job.

No, but you can live in and save rent. Gotta be able to move it, at least every once in a while, though.

Very anecdotal and stereotypical, of course. Doesn't quite paint the whole picture, though I agree there's usually a sentiment of risk aversion in the _conservative_ part of any population, perhaps more so in countries where employment for anything beyond SMEs is more normalized, like Germany and Austria that have adopted a "Rhine capitalism" model that is much more constrained.

Just to give some counter-weight to this, the Netherlands has a self-employment rate that is significantly higher than the EU average [1], one of the higher EU rates of high-growth micro/small enterprises [2], a whole array of tax benefits for the self-employed and SMEs and a relatively fast moving law system that makes it increasingly easier for SMEs to be founded. And let's not forget a bunch of capitalist/financial scoops (first stock market, 1602; first investment banking, 1700s; first investment fund, 1774; etc.) some of which still have a presence today. Needless to say my experience is quite the opposite.

[1] https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/tools/skills-intelligence/s... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Meh - this isn't a Europe thing. That same sentiment of their friends and family would be even much stronger in e.g. Korea or India.

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