Speaking for Germany, which is probably the "best" country after the UK, here are a few reasons 1. Almost no investors who have built a tech-company before 2.

Speaking for Germany, which is probably the "best" country after the UK, here are a few reasons 1. Almost no investors who have built a tech-company before 2. Investors are very risk averse and want business models that monetize from day 1, because that's what a business is and those are good German values. This way, there is a strong incentivization by investors of e-commerce businesses and strong disincentivization of startups that want to build a great product first and focusing on scale. 3. In the same vein, investors simply don't know the idea of growing first and delaying monetization, which is what made the majority of "unicorns" possible. This is because there are no German examples for that, so they could not experience it themselves and German investors don't know or don't care about what happens in the U.S. 4. Fundraising takes double the amount of time here at half the valuation. I have seen 3 companies of close friends shut down after having raised Series A, because of exactly this. 5. Because of all that, there is little courage or idealism of the generation of first-time German entrepreneurs left. We have enough talent, there is just not the mindset baked into our ecosystem what makes the U.S. so successful. That's why most founders have to revert to building copycat e-commerce shop, but very few of the founders (maybe 3% of those that I have met) have the goal and the idealism to build something new that can really improve our world. However, that's why there is a big opportunity to take the market of early stage seed investments that is focused on high risk bets only. If you want to do it really well, you announce that e-commerce ideas are not allowed.