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Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

It's cultural, Europeans don't believe in making something large from nothing. The idea of a kid with a laptop building an international business, as Zuckerberg was doing, is laughable to them. (And delusional.) They'd probably tell him to go back to school so he can get a real job.

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Do you have evidence for that at all? Because it sounds like bollocks to me.

The more obvious factors are almost certainly the case - more complex regulatory environment, smaller market, a lower concentration of capital sloshing around than in SV… and myriad other reasons.

Blaming this on an artificial 'European' culture is facile.

I would argue that it not only matters how large you build your ‘business’ and how many billions you make eventually selling it, but also how much you care for your employees, provide value to society and, most importantly, what sort of business you’re building. Instant success is also not necessary, instead, building your business over the course of 150 years is perfectly acceptable.

Facebook is essentially a marketing company and time-wasting website, both of which are not exactly highly regarded as businesses go. On the other hand, there are many highly successful and innovative European companies building actual stuff, often founded decades ago as small family businesses and growing slowly and steadily until they firmly occupy some niche on a global scale.

And, yes, if you don’t have a PhD, how exactly are you going to be different from your secretary?

You're just repeating old stereotypes.

Actually he is 100% right. It's a different cultural behaviour in Europe. In the last 15 years I visited most of Europe and major cities of the world and the mentality is definitely different. Americans are more optimistic than Europeans and they see risk differently. Also, take into account the past, the living standards during the course of history.

While americans were chilling in the 80s and 90s, many countries of Europe were facing communism. People had a harsh life, the parents-grandparents had it, so of course they're not gonna have a Peter Thiel mentality when they don't even know how to shut down a PC. Some countries have an avg. salary of 200$. What the hell are you gonna buy with that? And I'm talking 2013 not 1990. So it's not like they're gonna tell their kids "sure son, after I worked at a farm all my life for 200$/month I strongly believe you'll make an 80 bill.$ company out of a damn computer. Let me go grab my savings and good luck!".

Too much to talk about but europeans know what I mean.

I am European. It's a stereotype.

European from where?It matters...West? You obviously don't know what you're talking about.

I would trust him, someone from Europe, over a person who has "travelled" there. You really need to live in a place to get to know it's culture at anything more that a superficial level.

At a superficial level, for example, Americans seem to believe they are better (possibly due to genetics) than others. This kind of exceptionalism/patriotism is bad.

You've mentioned yourself why this whole article and comments are bollocks. Europe is is no way homogeneous and referring to startups in "Europe" is kind of pointless.

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