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.