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> Europeans love success stories as much as Americans, but we're too American-focused to notice our own success stories.

this.

Plus, to be fair, I have never heard of ONO, mostly cos no matter how much of a single European market we are, we are not a single European language, so we are not a single European news feed.

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Yeah, I think in Denmark the media mainly notices American and Danish business, and not as much those from rest of Europe, unless they do something that really impacts people. People definitely care about what Danish businesses are doing. It's true that monetary success isn't the only measure people care about, e.g. Copenhagen Suborbitals, a nonprofit, gets a ton of startup-like tech press. But people also care about monetary success of Danish businesses. If ONO were a Danish company, it'd be on front pages of newspapers. But it's a Spanish telephone company nobody's heard of, so people aren't really interested.

I think part of the WhatsApp news wasn't only the location but the "lightweight" aspect. There was a lot of, "wow a company sold for $16b just by making a phone app?!" By contrast people aren't surprised that classic capital-intensive, "heavyweight" infrastructure companies like telcos can be worth billions. Plus, nobody cares about infrastructure unless it's their own infrastructure. DONG Energy recently sold a minority stake to Goldman Sachs for $2 billion, which made huge news in Denmark, but did anyone else read about it?

The problem is that isn't making the news even in Spain..

When Tuenti (the Facebook of Spain) was sold it was very very covered in the press (in Spain and in all Europe) although it was “only” a 70MM adquisition, is not how big is the sucesss or how much money is done, is how boring or how popular the startup is what makes how much cover the news get.

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