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> If anything, Europeans appreciate cultural differences more than people from the US. Maybe a bit too much. Sitting in Austria I've less worries about getting
by creshal 10y ago
> If anything, Europeans appreciate cultural differences more than people from the US.
Maybe a bit too much. Sitting in Austria I've less worries about getting customers from Texas (US is US) than about getting customers from France (oh god, the language barrier, the red tape, …) or Poland (I don't even know who to hire for translations!).
And it really bogs you down. The US is one unified market, for software vendors at least. The biggest single-language market in Europe is Germany (coincidentally? its economic powerhouse), but tapping in Germany + Austria + Switzerland already means dealing with two currencies and three different legislations. And everything past it will have diminishing returns. Another language, another set of red tape to deal with, for a handful million potential customers… Why even bother? US startups won't have to deal with any of that until they want to expand internationally, and even then they can skip half the pain (l10n) if they focus on other English-speaking markets.
> Sometimes this leads to hard work (80+ hour weeks), other times to unfair play (Uber licensing and traditional taxis come to mind)
That's a bit naïve, European businesses have no problems with fighting dirty (we invented cartels, dammit, and 80 years later people still think light bulbs only last 1000 hours!), and entrepreneurs will bust their asses either way. It just doesn't get them as far.
- gjolund 10y agoIsn't this the reason the EU exists?
- creshal 10y agoOh, it's definitely helping, no doubt. But it can't just wish away language barriers and sovereign nation states.
- erichocean 10y ago> But it can't just wish away language barriers and sovereign nation states. It's telling you think that's the goal of the EU (especially the "sovereign nation states" part). And people wonder why Brexit happened…
- skrebbel 10y agoDrifting off topic, but, no. The EU exists to prevent war between European countries. The rest is bonus, or a means to an end, if you will.
- MLR 10y agoThat's absolutely not why the EU exists, come on.
- roel_v 10y agoI wouldn't say it the way the gp does either, but the predecessor to the EU was indeed founded for economic integration with the goal of making that integration prevent ww3.
- rebolek 10y agoAbsolutely not? Interesting, tell me more what is the real reason (also, it works, even if it absolutely not is why).
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoOnly somewhat. The Euro solves the currency issues, except that Switzerland doesn't use it. The EU has some unifying regulation, but (so far as I know - I'm not in the EU) it covers less than Federal regulations do in the US, which leaves more to the discretion of the individual countries. The US constitution has a clause that says, in effect, "if it covers interstate commerce, the Federal government gets to regulate it, not the states". If you're doing business across state lines in the US, well, that's interstate commerce by definition. States do get around that with health regulations and taxing requirements and such, but as I said, I think the situation in Europe is considerably worse.
- chris_7 10y agoAlso, Switzerland isn't a member of the EU anyways.
- jasonjei 10y agoWith respect to your point about different legislations, some states in the US have extra regulations and consumer rights. That's why you often see state-specific fine print in purchases. In the case of California, environmental regulations are stricter than many states, and CA market requires product modifications for cars and motorcycles. Sometimes these stricter regulations result in product modifications nationally.
- creshal 10y agoI'm aware of that, but very little of that applies to software and services, which IIRC is most of all startups. And the situation for physical goods is worse in Europe still.
- jasonjei 10y agoI agree with you, but I still think there are some special cases for software. If I understand correctly, privacy implications in EU states may be stricter than that of the US. I can only imagine this makes coding harder for user data (if user.country != "special snowflake").