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Comment by tensor | Hacker News Reader

But it's still ultimately supporting a US company. The world needs a diversity of companies not just subsidiaries of the same few US companies.

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True. Someone should look into why all these companies tend to be started in the US, and not in the EU.

lol…try hire someone in Germany. You’ll get it in about 5 minutes.

Sincerely, someone in Canada who did this.

Hiring someone in Germany is dead easy (assuming the candidate is an EU/EEA citizen - foreigners from outside the EU/EEA are a nightmare because the immigration authorities are swamped in cases). You hand the candidate a contract, ask for a few informations (e.g. tax identifier code, health insurance code) and your accountant (or, if larger, HR dep't) deals with the rest.

The problem is firing someone in Germany, which can be pretty difficult once a company exceeds 5/10 employees. You basically need either cause (e.g. sabotage, theft, other criminal activity) or the company needs to be in dire economic situations.

Well much like I'd say to anyone considering marriage, don't do something you might want to undo later.

So hiring is dead easy, until you think through the commitment you're making - hence, hiring (imo) is far from dead easy to do in Germany.

I think that's pretty straightforward. The US VC funding is far greater and easier to obtain than in Europe or other western nations. But it's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. The US VC space exists partly because of the wild success of silicon valley. Once it got a significant lead it became a self re-enforcing system.

To compete, other countries need their own VC system which is a bit tricky. It requires likely a level of government funding or other incentives to get it off the ground and ramping up. Then also, you need to incentivize VCs to stay in your country.

At least my 2cents.

There’s a “EU Inc” initiative which is aiming to fix things. Fingers crossed.

https://www.eu-inc.org/

They would also need to reform other rules such as bankruptcy.

I don't think we should have so much VC anyway. Most of that is just basically gambling. Most of these startups crash and burn. Here in Europe we frown on that, just like we frown on taking out loans and credit cards.

Here in Europe the best credit rating is for the person who's never needed a loan or credit before. It proves they're smart with money. But US citizens have to roll money between credit cards monthly.

The VC in the US mainly existed because interest was so low that money was easy to throw around and see if it stuck. That's no longer the case but these companies are from the time it was.

I don't think we should try to become another America. We don't want unconstrained ratrace capitalism here. And we can never out-US the US (even though China does manage to do that). We should just make alternatives in our own way. Solid with good foundations, play the game by our rules not someone else's.

I left a comment fairly related to this a while back:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43465403

But there _is_ also an attitude difference. In terms of willingness to take risks and innovate, the USA does do very well for itself, and I think the UK does ok too. But that cannot be said for the EU countries I’ve lived in. Stable reliable long term safe jobs seem to be more the name of the game, and starting a company is seen as a big and risky commitment. Whereas in the US and UK you can start a company in your lunch break.

It is a generalisation, and I’m part of a wonderful entrepreneurial community here in Munich. But even there everyone says how risk averse European businesses are. I really really wish it wasn’t true.

The US has an excess of money due to the long-term consequences of the Bretton Woods system: it gets to export the externalities of its money printing to the whole world, so it gets to print a lot more money than other countries. That's combined with an amplification effect, because investor money tends to go to the places that have lots of money that could potentially be the investor's return.

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