8 ms·

The State of European Tech 2016

98 points by mxschumacher 10y ago

swampthinker 10y ago
Would be great if this was legible on mobile... Does anyone have a good summary?
- deepnotderp 10y ago
  First sentence is a great summary...
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > We’re excited to share the second edition of The State of European Tech report with you. Ah, so they are excited.
    - deepnotderp 10y ago
      I meant the first sentence of OP's comment lol. "not visible on mobile"
- bergjs 10y ago
  Even on desktop it's hardly readable. The resolution of the slideshare slides is terrible.
PunchTornado 10y ago
why the need for bs like this in a study: I see no limits to the ambition of young Europeans. We've broken the glass ceiling etc. Looks dumb to me. Just show me the data compared to American tech.
- throwthisawayt 10y ago
  Wait...there was a glass ceiling preventing Europeans from creating companies ?
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Well, there were actual problems preventing people from creating companies. Such as the 10'000€ minimum assets that were required for an Ltd. in Germany until a few years ago. (The problem was basically: How do you handle a company going bankrupt? The legislators said that any company should always have enough assets to cover its liabilities. Obviously not compatible with the snowball-scheme based startup scene).
    - matt_o 10y ago
      It's actually 25000 euros. This was somewhat fixed with the introduction of the mini-GmbH (GmbH - something like Ltd.), but a mini-GmbH comes with some extra strings attached, so it's still very far from a UK Ltd. or a US LLC in terms of ease of setting up. This is indeed an obstacle to creating a company, but there are quite a few more, all having to do with just plain ol' bureaucracy (handling monthly tax reporting, interacting with the tax authorities, handling insurance, etc.) The previous issue of The Economist made a case that these bureaucratic problems are even bigger in Italy. I've recently been kicking around the idea that it's kind of weird that some hard-hit places in the EU like Spain or Greece sport up to 50% unemployed young folks (18-35) - these people are highly educated, just out of college, eager to build/work and yet they are economically inactive. My theory is that this is because it's hard to set up any sort of business activity due to the bureaucracy. It's also socially discouraged because it's risky.
      - matt4077 10y ago
        There have always been options to start without capital requirements, usually at the price of personal liability. The idea is that you need a bit of "skin in the game" to protect vendors. If you're in something like software and have no immediate plans for employees or large investments you can get the bureaucracy done in 30 min. It's literally a one-page form with address, name, purpose.
        matt_o 10y ago
        Well, my "self-employement" form was actually 8 pages long and it featured a lot more items than address, name, purpose and processing it took about 4 weeks. To be fair, I could start my business as soon as I sent that out, but I could not invoice clients until I got the reply, which included my new tax number. This is how it works in Germany. Add on top of that the mandatory monthly VAT tax reporting. That is a significantly higher cost of entry when compared with an Ltd/LLC, not to mention a sole proprietorship.
PunchTornado 10y ago
why the need for bs like this in a study: I see no limits to the ambition of young Europeans. We've broken the glass ceiling etc. Looks dumb to me. Just show me the data compared to American tech.
wrong_variable 10y ago
(cough cringe PR cough) You could create similar optimistic charts for US, China, India, etc. The EU ( 550 million ) tech industry is dwarfed by the US ( 350 million ) Looking from a higher abstract plane, EU produces the least new entrepreneurs and innovative companies compared to the beast that is US and Asia. The EU also has the most unstable political and financial system globally with entire countries on the verge of defaulting on their sovereign debt. The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent. Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach. (.. Money Talks .. ) You can see how much value that tech is given in europe by just looking at the salaries in europe vs N.A - so much for valuing hard tech. Seeing that both the US and Europe have similar numbers of developers (~ 3 mil) - how is european tech industry 1/8 the size of the US ?? Oversupply of developers due to better engineering school ? ( my sides ) More like MBAs from Cambridge are not as smart as their counterparts graduating from Sloan in creating value out of tech. -- Not an American --- Direct experience with London and Berlin tech scene ---
- jfaucett 10y ago
  Completely agree. I live in Europe, am a part of the tech scene, and am sitting in the contitental craziness you speak of in Germany. This report is largely nonsense. It talks about "top research institutions" are in Europe, neglecting the #1,#2,#4,#5, and #6 in the world are in the USA. [1] Honestly, I have no idea why an investor would want to try to tackle this nightmare of 30+ target markets, especially when you have huge homogeneous markets in the USA and Asia. 1. http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2016/computer-science-information-systems http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/universit...
  - tormeh 10y ago
    >Honestly, I have no idea why an investor would want to try to tackle this nightmare of 30+ target markets, especially when you have huge homogeneous markets in the USA and Asia. One would hope they would have the sense to go global. You have to to survive in most software. Where the HQ of the company is doesn't matter. I always cringe when I hear software execs talk of being a leader in their home country. Well, some company who actually went global and therefore have a lot less development cost per user will eat any local leader for breakfast. Companies that care about their home markets are dead men walking.
kriro 10y ago
Regarding salary. I think 45-50k Euro is a pretty decent entry level salary in Germany if you're coming out of university (debt free) depending on the region. That may look shocking compared to the SV numbers but you can live a good life off 50k and a lot of the stuff will be taken care of (education of your children, healthcare) which reduces the stress level quite a bit. If you want to start a company, you'll face some social issues (failure is considered failure) but the infrastructure is decent enough. The social issues have changed a lot in recent years though. Anecdotally I feel like recruiting good devs right out of universities is a lot easier if you're a typical startup because many of the good developers will have fought the standard curriculum of the java-bot and be rather happy to work in a more agile setting (but still want to stay in their home country).
- superuser2 10y ago
  Healthcare is absolutely taken care of for American six-figure tech workers. My premium is $2.50/mo and all my care is free or for a nominal fee, like $20. US healthcare is systemically broken, but not for people who command high wages. Having kids in college is at least 30 years out. Knowing that an expense 30 years away will be taken care of is better than the alternative, but would do nothing for my stress level in the next ~20. I don't buy that either of these things make any actual difference for an early-career programmer. Probably the most important thing is rent. I suspect most European cities can offer a 1-bedroom apartment within 30 minutes of work by foot/public transit for a much lower proportion of a developer's salary than SF can, even when developer salaries are much lower. And in places not SF, $50k USD is not particularly low for a developer salary.
  - selestify 10y ago
    > Having kids in college is at least 30 years out It takes 18 years for kids to grow up and go to college right? Do you mean that you know you won't have kids for at least another 12 years?
    - s_kilk 10y ago
      Well, if theyre ~20 right now, and don't want to have kids until their 30s, that sounds about right
freekh 10y ago
Yeah, so this is a pr stunt. However there are many really good startup scenes here in Europe in my experience. Stockholm is one of them: "everything" in the heart and kids departments taken care of. Lots of ambition and talent. Comparatively low vagues so less burn. Lacking VCs, but the startups that have made it invest a lot here (time and money and mentoring). Compared to the craze in sf, i would say this is the perfect place to start a small and successful business. In particular in the b2b domain. So, if you can live with being well off and not insanely rich, and looking to move out of the us - you should give Stockholm a chance.
- expertentipp 10y ago
  Sweet, how's the apartment rental market in Stockholm?
lucaspiller 10y ago
Direct link to PDF: http://www.atomico.com/downloads/state-of-european-tech/atomico-state-of-european-tech-2016-full-report.pdf http://www.atomico.com/downloads/state-of-european-tech/atom... The slideshow won't go full screen for me, so it's next to useless.
nec4b 10y ago
You can ask yourself how many big companies that came into existance for example in last 20 years are from the USA or from the EU. That tells you a lot how vibrat the industry is on either side of the atlantic.

98 points by mxschumacher 10y ago

swampthinker 10y ago

Would be great if this was legible on mobile... Does anyone have a good summary?

deepnotderp 10y ago
First sentence is a great summary...
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > We’re excited to share the second edition of The State of European Tech report with you. Ah, so they are excited.
  - deepnotderp 10y ago
    I meant the first sentence of OP's comment lol. "not visible on mobile"
bergjs 10y ago
Even on desktop it's hardly readable. The resolution of the slideshare slides is terrible.

PunchTornado 10y ago

why the need for bs like this in a study: I see no limits to the ambition of young Europeans. We've broken the glass ceiling etc. Looks dumb to me. Just show me the data compared to American tech.

throwthisawayt 10y ago
Wait...there was a glass ceiling preventing Europeans from creating companies ?
- kuschku 10y ago
  Well, there were actual problems preventing people from creating companies. Such as the 10'000€ minimum assets that were required for an Ltd. in Germany until a few years ago. (The problem was basically: How do you handle a company going bankrupt? The legislators said that any company should always have enough assets to cover its liabilities. Obviously not compatible with the snowball-scheme based startup scene).
  - matt_o 10y ago
    It's actually 25000 euros. This was somewhat fixed with the introduction of the mini-GmbH (GmbH - something like Ltd.), but a mini-GmbH comes with some extra strings attached, so it's still very far from a UK Ltd. or a US LLC in terms of ease of setting up. This is indeed an obstacle to creating a company, but there are quite a few more, all having to do with just plain ol' bureaucracy (handling monthly tax reporting, interacting with the tax authorities, handling insurance, etc.) The previous issue of The Economist made a case that these bureaucratic problems are even bigger in Italy. I've recently been kicking around the idea that it's kind of weird that some hard-hit places in the EU like Spain or Greece sport up to 50% unemployed young folks (18-35) - these people are highly educated, just out of college, eager to build/work and yet they are economically inactive. My theory is that this is because it's hard to set up any sort of business activity due to the bureaucracy. It's also socially discouraged because it's risky.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      There have always been options to start without capital requirements, usually at the price of personal liability. The idea is that you need a bit of "skin in the game" to protect vendors. If you're in something like software and have no immediate plans for employees or large investments you can get the bureaucracy done in 30 min. It's literally a one-page form with address, name, purpose.
      - matt_o 10y ago
        Well, my "self-employement" form was actually 8 pages long and it featured a lot more items than address, name, purpose and processing it took about 4 weeks. To be fair, I could start my business as soon as I sent that out, but I could not invoice clients until I got the reply, which included my new tax number. This is how it works in Germany. Add on top of that the mandatory monthly VAT tax reporting. That is a significantly higher cost of entry when compared with an Ltd/LLC, not to mention a sole proprietorship.

PunchTornado 10y ago

why the need for bs like this in a study: I see no limits to the ambition of young Europeans. We've broken the glass ceiling etc. Looks dumb to me. Just show me the data compared to American tech.

wrong_variable 10y ago

(cough cringe PR cough) You could create similar optimistic charts for US, China, India, etc. The EU ( 550 million ) tech industry is dwarfed by the US ( 350 million ) Looking from a higher abstract plane, EU produces the least new entrepreneurs and innovative companies compared to the beast that is US and Asia. The EU also has the most unstable political and financial system globally with entire countries on the verge of defaulting on their sovereign debt. The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent. Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach. (.. Money Talks .. ) You can see how much value that tech is given in europe by just looking at the salaries in europe vs N.A - so much for valuing hard tech. Seeing that both the US and Europe have similar numbers of developers (~ 3 mil) - how is european tech industry 1/8 the size of the US ?? Oversupply of developers due to better engineering school ? ( my sides ) More like MBAs from Cambridge are not as smart as their counterparts graduating from Sloan in creating value out of tech. -- Not an American --- Direct experience with London and Berlin tech scene ---

jfaucett 10y ago
Completely agree. I live in Europe, am a part of the tech scene, and am sitting in the contitental craziness you speak of in Germany. This report is largely nonsense. It talks about "top research institutions" are in Europe, neglecting the #1,#2,#4,#5, and #6 in the world are in the USA. [1] Honestly, I have no idea why an investor would want to try to tackle this nightmare of 30+ target markets, especially when you have huge homogeneous markets in the USA and Asia. 1. http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2016/computer-science-information-systems http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/universit...
- tormeh 10y ago
  >Honestly, I have no idea why an investor would want to try to tackle this nightmare of 30+ target markets, especially when you have huge homogeneous markets in the USA and Asia. One would hope they would have the sense to go global. You have to to survive in most software. Where the HQ of the company is doesn't matter. I always cringe when I hear software execs talk of being a leader in their home country. Well, some company who actually went global and therefore have a lot less development cost per user will eat any local leader for breakfast. Companies that care about their home markets are dead men walking.

kriro 10y ago

Regarding salary. I think 45-50k Euro is a pretty decent entry level salary in Germany if you're coming out of university (debt free) depending on the region. That may look shocking compared to the SV numbers but you can live a good life off 50k and a lot of the stuff will be taken care of (education of your children, healthcare) which reduces the stress level quite a bit. If you want to start a company, you'll face some social issues (failure is considered failure) but the infrastructure is decent enough. The social issues have changed a lot in recent years though. Anecdotally I feel like recruiting good devs right out of universities is a lot easier if you're a typical startup because many of the good developers will have fought the standard curriculum of the java-bot and be rather happy to work in a more agile setting (but still want to stay in their home country).

superuser2 10y ago
Healthcare is absolutely taken care of for American six-figure tech workers. My premium is $2.50/mo and all my care is free or for a nominal fee, like $20. US healthcare is systemically broken, but not for people who command high wages. Having kids in college is at least 30 years out. Knowing that an expense 30 years away will be taken care of is better than the alternative, but would do nothing for my stress level in the next ~20. I don't buy that either of these things make any actual difference for an early-career programmer. Probably the most important thing is rent. I suspect most European cities can offer a 1-bedroom apartment within 30 minutes of work by foot/public transit for a much lower proportion of a developer's salary than SF can, even when developer salaries are much lower. And in places not SF, $50k USD is not particularly low for a developer salary.
- selestify 10y ago
  > Having kids in college is at least 30 years out It takes 18 years for kids to grow up and go to college right? Do you mean that you know you won't have kids for at least another 12 years?
  - s_kilk 10y ago
    Well, if theyre ~20 right now, and don't want to have kids until their 30s, that sounds about right

freekh 10y ago

Yeah, so this is a pr stunt. However there are many really good startup scenes here in Europe in my experience. Stockholm is one of them: "everything" in the heart and kids departments taken care of. Lots of ambition and talent. Comparatively low vagues so less burn. Lacking VCs, but the startups that have made it invest a lot here (time and money and mentoring). Compared to the craze in sf, i would say this is the perfect place to start a small and successful business. In particular in the b2b domain. So, if you can live with being well off and not insanely rich, and looking to move out of the us - you should give Stockholm a chance.

expertentipp 10y ago
Sweet, how's the apartment rental market in Stockholm?

lucaspiller 10y ago

Direct link to PDF: http://www.atomico.com/downloads/state-of-european-tech/atomico-state-of-european-tech-2016-full-report.pdf http://www.atomico.com/downloads/state-of-european-tech/atom... The slideshow won't go full screen for me, so it's next to useless.

nec4b 10y ago

You can ask yourself how many big companies that came into existance for example in last 20 years are from the USA or from the EU. That tells you a lot how vibrat the industry is on either side of the atlantic.