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If market size is more important, we'd expect most European startups to come out of the largest countries, even after weighting by population, right? And if en
by jessriedel 10y ago
If market size is more important, we'd expect most European startups to come out of the largest countries, even after weighting by population, right? And if entrepreneurial culture or socialism was more important, we'd expect some metric for those to be correlated, right? Really curious as to whether this analysis has been done in an authoritative way.
- RivieraKid 10y agoMarket size enables huge companies. That's why Google isn't European. If you look at the list of largest companies by revenue, it's dominated by America and China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r...
- jessriedel 10y agoThe list would be dominated by American and Chinese companies even if each person on the planet had an equal chance of founding a huge company. The question is whether big countries like the US and China would be overrepresented per capita. And looking at that list, it's not at all clear. UK, Switzerland, Germany, and South Korea all have companies near the top.
- kalleboo 10y agoOne reason that's often put forward for why Sweden breeds a disproportionate amount of successful companies is that the Swedish market is so small that they have to quickly learn to expand and navigate the global market. Meanwhile in "big enough" markets like Germany and France there's enough room for expansion without going global. So it could go both ways.
- kaeluka 10y agoAnother reason that has been put forward is social welfare. It's easier to start a business if you can afford failing.