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This. In addition, an American startup has a starting potential consumer market of 300mil people speaking the same language, facing the same laws, government, c

This. In addition, an American startup has a starting potential consumer market of 300mil people speaking the same language, facing the same laws, government, customs. That's an easier starting point, while the average European country has less than 60. (Germany has 80)

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
It really depends on what market you're targeting, but having to deal with 50 states' worth of law is usually not that easy unless it's an already well established segment. For example, even calculating sales tax and shipping costs online used to be considered a fairly complex problem until stuff like Stripe and friends took off.
giobox 8y ago
> Facing the same laws, government, customs Except the US is a federal system, so one can argue that rather than facing the same law, you actually have 51 legal systems (states + federal government) and 51 different legislatures - most certainly not universally the “same government”. As another commenter pointed out, this rears it’s head for US startups all the time, with many different sales tax implementations, drug policy (marijuana legaliszation) etc etc. Even while at work the law varies enormously - my paternity leave rights as a father in California are vastly different than many other states. The US isn’t as obviously simpler than the EU than one might expect in this regard, ~28 legal systems (if we ignore pseudo-federal arrangements like the U.K. etc) with a common core of business law established via EU statute, not 100 miles away from the common body of federal legislation found throughout the 50 states. Cultural, language and custom differences can certainly be argued to be simpler in the US though.
- adventured 8y ago
  > one can argue that rather than facing the same law, you actually have 51 legal systems (states + federal government) and 51 different legislatures - most certainly not universally the “same government”. That's not remotely close to being accurate. If I start an image sharing service, an Instagram, and I'm based in Ohio, I have extremely few considerations about the state governments of Alabama, Florida, Maine or Arizona as it pertains to launching and operating the service. For most Internet businesses, you can tilt up a start-up tomorrow morning and access all 50 states and never give a single thought to the individual states. If there's a regulatory issue, it's usually only going to be an issue later with scale. It's radically easier to launch across the whole of the US than it is the four dozen countries in Europe, or 28 countries of the EU. It's not close to comparable. You do not deal with 51 legal systems to launch start-ups in the US, unless you're operating in a very narrow set of industries with very high amounts of regulations (and even in that case, you're still not dealing with 51 different legal systems, there's overlap and commonality in regulations state to state).
  - giobox 8y ago
    > that’s not remotely close to being accurate I’d argue it’s damn close to a statement of fact rather than an opinion; there are 51 legal systems and legislatures at work here whether one likes the fact or not - that one State’s statute is not enforceable in another is prima facie evidence of this. Whilst the impact of this is of course variable, there are concrete examples of the issues that can arise. Heck even the income tax we pay as citizens isn’t the same accross all states.
    - charlesdm 8y ago
      However, you don't have 25+ different languages

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago

It really depends on what market you're targeting, but having to deal with 50 states' worth of law is usually not that easy unless it's an already well established segment. For example, even calculating sales tax and shipping costs online used to be considered a fairly complex problem until stuff like Stripe and friends took off.

giobox 8y ago

> Facing the same laws, government, customs Except the US is a federal system, so one can argue that rather than facing the same law, you actually have 51 legal systems (states + federal government) and 51 different legislatures - most certainly not universally the “same government”. As another commenter pointed out, this rears it’s head for US startups all the time, with many different sales tax implementations, drug policy (marijuana legaliszation) etc etc. Even while at work the law varies enormously - my paternity leave rights as a father in California are vastly different than many other states. The US isn’t as obviously simpler than the EU than one might expect in this regard, ~28 legal systems (if we ignore pseudo-federal arrangements like the U.K. etc) with a common core of business law established via EU statute, not 100 miles away from the common body of federal legislation found throughout the 50 states. Cultural, language and custom differences can certainly be argued to be simpler in the US though.

adventured 8y ago
> one can argue that rather than facing the same law, you actually have 51 legal systems (states + federal government) and 51 different legislatures - most certainly not universally the “same government”. That's not remotely close to being accurate. If I start an image sharing service, an Instagram, and I'm based in Ohio, I have extremely few considerations about the state governments of Alabama, Florida, Maine or Arizona as it pertains to launching and operating the service. For most Internet businesses, you can tilt up a start-up tomorrow morning and access all 50 states and never give a single thought to the individual states. If there's a regulatory issue, it's usually only going to be an issue later with scale. It's radically easier to launch across the whole of the US than it is the four dozen countries in Europe, or 28 countries of the EU. It's not close to comparable. You do not deal with 51 legal systems to launch start-ups in the US, unless you're operating in a very narrow set of industries with very high amounts of regulations (and even in that case, you're still not dealing with 51 different legal systems, there's overlap and commonality in regulations state to state).
- giobox 8y ago
  > that’s not remotely close to being accurate I’d argue it’s damn close to a statement of fact rather than an opinion; there are 51 legal systems and legislatures at work here whether one likes the fact or not - that one State’s statute is not enforceable in another is prima facie evidence of this. Whilst the impact of this is of course variable, there are concrete examples of the issues that can arise. Heck even the income tax we pay as citizens isn’t the same accross all states.
  - charlesdm 8y ago
    However, you don't have 25+ different languages