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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 non

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.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >I always cringe when I hear software execs talk of being a leader in their home country. Yeah, because making millions (or billions) in one's home country is cringe-worthy.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    It's OK, if you look at it as a cow to be milked until a multinational drives you out of business. From a business perspective there's nothing necessarily wrong with milking a cow until it runs dry, but you should have made a conscious decision to do it. The execs I'm talking about haven't.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >It's OK, if you look at it as a cow to be milked until a multinational drives you out of business. That's not a given. There are tons of entrenched companies, from web services to local restaurants, than no multinational managed to drive out of business. In many cases the multinational had to work with them or buy them to gain a serious share into a particular country.
kuschku 10y ago
> 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] If you don't count any German research institutions, and only count those releasing their results in US magazines. Sure. If I don't count for-profit universities, and only those releasing their results in Esperanto, I can also top my own ranking. Those rankings completely ignore that in Europe, research doesn't happen at universities - but at research groups where multiple universities come together. Think of the Max Planck Society (Wendelstein 7-X Fusion Experiment), or the Fraunhofer Society (they brought you mp3), or the Helmholtz Society (globally leading in Marine Research). But all that is disqualified from the rankings.
- LeanderK 10y ago
  while i think you're right, but these things are not always visible to an developer/foreigner. Fraunhofer is not as visible as they should, because they are conduction a lot of commercial research in joint ventures with local businesses and are not specialising into research areas where they are most visible. I recently read an interview with the director of an ivy-league university where he stated that they only finance research team that have an realistic shot at being leading, outstanding and visible in the research world. If you compare that to germany where you might end up in one of the countless mechanical engineering research groups it's way harder to be outstanding, just because it's more crowded. But that's not what the Fraunhofer Society is about, it's doing very practical research, mostly driven by local businesses and their needs.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Indeed. That's an issue Germany seems to have repeatedly recently: While the US went full on into marketing, we've never done that - and that's exactly what's missing, not the research, but the marketing and propaganda of being the #1. If we actually want that, though, is another question.
cyberpunk 10y ago
Hmm. I'd really like to hear more about how you see things if you've got the time.. I'm about to exit london for .de simply because of quality of life concerns; the 1000ft view I'm holding though is I'm pretty sure I'll be able to build a crew there which will have fun working on difficult problems, and hopefully even find a reasonable amount of 'stuff' to do (surely with internet access and some good staff picks that could be applied almost anywhere in the world?) -- while you're probably right in that the vast floods of VC cash won't be so available there (I don't think the situ in london is much diff anyway) or that things are more complex w/r/t markets; I'm not sure that I really care too much about "30+" target markets when we're talking B2B hardcore geekery stuff. We make an API to solve -some-random-hackernews_capable_consumer-problem- then I'm not sure having a few diff VAT rules around .eu is anything more than some extra time billed by my accountant.. What I'm more concerned about is the work/company culture differences there which will probably at a minimum will prevent me whoring myself out for some quick cash to fund my devs, should things get tight, and at a max make it much harder to sell to Gmbh's there... Are you in Germany? Ever worked with a German company or tried to integrate your product with theirs? The vogons have a quicker moving bureaucracy, I was really shocked. The crazy adherence to working hours, clocking in/out for breaks and such even for senior technical staff creates a really strange dynamic especially if you're used to letting your teams do whatever the hell they want as long as you're delivering. This kind of free attitude to work seems largely to only exist in London, at least to me -- and once you've walked on the wild side it's hard to accept a master.. shrug Germany may have excellent technical prowess in manufacturing and such; from our side of the perspective though, so far to me at de $bigcorp it seems like SAP, 2 week change windows, hour long discussions on what FTP client the customer uses, J2EE, Oracle, monitored lunch breaks and some very overqualified staff (call me 'dr') who aren't even interesting in moving faster... I guess there are a lot of startups there which follow a model more like what we're used to, but after so long you're not going to be able to avoid working with the vogons if you're selling them software they want to integrate with.. I'm not sure the majority view of big german businesses really even understood what agile was pushing for.. Hopefully I'm wrong, I'll find out soon anyhow, but things seem really fucking backwards compared to how we've been living even in the relative backwater that's London.... What's your view?
- exceptione 10y ago

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.

coldtea 10y ago
>I always cringe when I hear software execs talk of being a leader in their home country. Yeah, because making millions (or billions) in one's home country is cringe-worthy.
- tormeh 10y ago
  It's OK, if you look at it as a cow to be milked until a multinational drives you out of business. From a business perspective there's nothing necessarily wrong with milking a cow until it runs dry, but you should have made a conscious decision to do it. The execs I'm talking about haven't.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >It's OK, if you look at it as a cow to be milked until a multinational drives you out of business. That's not a given. There are tons of entrenched companies, from web services to local restaurants, than no multinational managed to drive out of business. In many cases the multinational had to work with them or buy them to gain a serious share into a particular country.

kuschku 10y ago

> 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] If you don't count any German research institutions, and only count those releasing their results in US magazines. Sure. If I don't count for-profit universities, and only those releasing their results in Esperanto, I can also top my own ranking. Those rankings completely ignore that in Europe, research doesn't happen at universities - but at research groups where multiple universities come together. Think of the Max Planck Society (Wendelstein 7-X Fusion Experiment), or the Fraunhofer Society (they brought you mp3), or the Helmholtz Society (globally leading in Marine Research). But all that is disqualified from the rankings.

LeanderK 10y ago
while i think you're right, but these things are not always visible to an developer/foreigner. Fraunhofer is not as visible as they should, because they are conduction a lot of commercial research in joint ventures with local businesses and are not specialising into research areas where they are most visible. I recently read an interview with the director of an ivy-league university where he stated that they only finance research team that have an realistic shot at being leading, outstanding and visible in the research world. If you compare that to germany where you might end up in one of the countless mechanical engineering research groups it's way harder to be outstanding, just because it's more crowded. But that's not what the Fraunhofer Society is about, it's doing very practical research, mostly driven by local businesses and their needs.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Indeed. That's an issue Germany seems to have repeatedly recently: While the US went full on into marketing, we've never done that - and that's exactly what's missing, not the research, but the marketing and propaganda of being the #1. If we actually want that, though, is another question.

cyberpunk 10y ago

Hmm. I'd really like to hear more about how you see things if you've got the time.. I'm about to exit london for .de simply because of quality of life concerns; the 1000ft view I'm holding though is I'm pretty sure I'll be able to build a crew there which will have fun working on difficult problems, and hopefully even find a reasonable amount of 'stuff' to do (surely with internet access and some good staff picks that could be applied almost anywhere in the world?) -- while you're probably right in that the vast floods of VC cash won't be so available there (I don't think the situ in london is much diff anyway) or that things are more complex w/r/t markets; I'm not sure that I really care too much about "30+" target markets when we're talking B2B hardcore geekery stuff. We make an API to solve -some-random-hackernews_capable_consumer-problem- then I'm not sure having a few diff VAT rules around .eu is anything more than some extra time billed by my accountant.. What I'm more concerned about is the work/company culture differences there which will probably at a minimum will prevent me whoring myself out for some quick cash to fund my devs, should things get tight, and at a max make it much harder to sell to Gmbh's there... Are you in Germany? Ever worked with a German company or tried to integrate your product with theirs? The vogons have a quicker moving bureaucracy, I was really shocked. The crazy adherence to working hours, clocking in/out for breaks and such even for senior technical staff creates a really strange dynamic especially if you're used to letting your teams do whatever the hell they want as long as you're delivering. This kind of free attitude to work seems largely to only exist in London, at least to me -- and once you've walked on the wild side it's hard to accept a master.. shrug Germany may have excellent technical prowess in manufacturing and such; from our side of the perspective though, so far to me at de $bigcorp it seems like SAP, 2 week change windows, hour long discussions on what FTP client the customer uses, J2EE, Oracle, monitored lunch breaks and some very overqualified staff (call me 'dr') who aren't even interesting in moving faster... I guess there are a lot of startups there which follow a model more like what we're used to, but after so long you're not going to be able to avoid working with the vogons if you're selling them software they want to integrate with.. I'm not sure the majority view of big german businesses really even understood what agile was pushing for.. Hopefully I'm wrong, I'll find out soon anyhow, but things seem really fucking backwards compared to how we've been living even in the relative backwater that's London.... What's your view?

exceptione 10y ago