4 ms·

> why is there not a single European company in the top 15 internet companies? I'm curious about that too. Anyone have a good answer as to why there isn't at l

by Reedx 8y ago

> why is there not a single European company in the top 15 internet companies? I'm curious about that too. Anyone have a good answer as to why there isn't at least 1 by now?

gaogao 8y ago
The US is a good market to start in. Large, most people speak a common language (English), tons of people on the internet. Additionally, many of these internet companies are formed from the ashes and exiles of older companies in the US. Valve is founded by former Microsoft employees, Google got Jeff Dean and Sanjay from DEC, etc. Also, a bunch of money flows from investors who profited off early internet companies in the US, such as the Paypal mafia and Netscape. Investors who want their startups nearby.
sbacic 8y ago
Besides what gaogao mentioned, I'd like to mention one other thing - salaries. Just do a comparison between, say, London and San Francisco. And that's before we take into account high taxes most Europeans have to pay on their salaries.
- Hamuko 8y ago
  Are you comparing salaries or purchasing power?
  - sbacic 8y ago
    There is not much difference between the two. Sure, healthcare is a lot cheaper than in the US, but most other things are a LOT more expensive in Europe.
    - Hamuko 8y ago
      Renting a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco costs $3560 per month. I paid around 800 euros per month for a one bedroom apartment when I moved into the capital region in my country. I've since moved and now I own my own apartment. About 900 euros a month for living expenses and it's 10 m^2 bigger. I also graduated without any debt, so that's not an expense I have to deal with. To me, it really seems like US is the expensive option unless I'm buying phones and computers.
      - sbacic 8y ago
        Even the most expensive of European cities are cheaper than SF or NY. That's scarce comfort when the difference in rent is 30% but the difference in salaries is 2-3x.
balabaster 8y ago
You can't have a top internet company without top notch developers. You can't have top notch developers without paying them what they're worth. The best developers know what they're worth and know what they can get paid in just about every country on earth. I know that right now there's 3 places on earth that I will get paid what I get paid just now for what I do and have a high quality of life - Switzerland, Canada and the United States. Without top quality developers, you're not going to have a top internet company.
repolfx 8y ago
Seems like a mix of things: • The culture of incentivising employees with equity stakes is mostly a US thing. It's not widely practiced outside the USA. ARM is a rare example of a British tech firm that gave out equity to early employees, and not coincidentally, ARM was (up until it got bought by the Japanese) one of Europe's tech success stories. • Lack of a comparable venture capital ecosystem of the type that came out of the success of Silicon Valley. • The EU single market is (a) relatively new and (b) overhyped. It's still much easier to sell across state lines in the USA than it is to sell to the EU market, for all kinds of reasons. Of course the single market made it a lot easier but still not as easy as when there's a single language, a well established federal-level trading code that's been around hundreds of years etc. • During the time the big US tech firms were establishing themselves and taking off (the 1980s), Europe was riven with hard socialism and even dictatorships. Spain was a dictatorship up until 1982, and they then elected socialists. France has famously strict labor laws that make it extremely risky and hard to try and grow a startup (which is already risky and hard). Italy was bogged down from the 70s-90s and arguably still today by heavily broken interventionist labour market, and terrorism/political instability. Germany didn't liberalise its labour markets to something approximating US standards until the Hartz IV reforms in the early 2000s and of course was split in two with one half being another dictatorship until 1991. During the 1980s the UK was busy recovering from a near-fatal economic meltdown caused by confrontations with hard left unions, that had rotating power cuts, three day weeks, garbage piling up on streets and an IMF bailout. Thatcher spent the whole of the 80s trying to bring the UK back to western liberal standards of growth and prosperity, so it wasn't an environment conducive to making a Microsoft or an Apple. So it's a combination of US style VC fuelled tech ecosystems taking decades to grow, lack of equity-based incentives, most of Europe not having had sufficient political stability during the time companies like Apple, Microsoft, Intel etc were becoming established, and large parts of Europe even today still having radically more socialist governments and economies than the USA with the concomitant difficulty of growing any kind of startup at all, let alone high risk/high reward tech startups.
- sbacic 8y ago
  The EU single market is not over-hyped - it's basically non-existent. Of the 28 member states, about 10 or so are actually worth the trouble to do business in (taking into account regulations and taxes, local language and customs, etc). Most of the rest are more trouble than they're worth and in the best case will merely be a blip on the radar of any business big enough to move into them.

by Reedx 8y ago

> why is there not a single European company in the top 15 internet companies? I'm curious about that too. Anyone have a good answer as to why there isn't at least 1 by now?

gaogao 8y ago

The US is a good market to start in. Large, most people speak a common language (English), tons of people on the internet. Additionally, many of these internet companies are formed from the ashes and exiles of older companies in the US. Valve is founded by former Microsoft employees, Google got Jeff Dean and Sanjay from DEC, etc. Also, a bunch of money flows from investors who profited off early internet companies in the US, such as the Paypal mafia and Netscape. Investors who want their startups nearby.

sbacic 8y ago

Besides what gaogao mentioned, I'd like to mention one other thing - salaries. Just do a comparison between, say, London and San Francisco. And that's before we take into account high taxes most Europeans have to pay on their salaries.

Hamuko 8y ago
Are you comparing salaries or purchasing power?
- sbacic 8y ago
  There is not much difference between the two. Sure, healthcare is a lot cheaper than in the US, but most other things are a LOT more expensive in Europe.
  - Hamuko 8y ago
    Renting a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco costs $3560 per month. I paid around 800 euros per month for a one bedroom apartment when I moved into the capital region in my country. I've since moved and now I own my own apartment. About 900 euros a month for living expenses and it's 10 m^2 bigger. I also graduated without any debt, so that's not an expense I have to deal with. To me, it really seems like US is the expensive option unless I'm buying phones and computers.
    - sbacic 8y ago
      Even the most expensive of European cities are cheaper than SF or NY. That's scarce comfort when the difference in rent is 30% but the difference in salaries is 2-3x.

balabaster 8y ago

You can't have a top internet company without top notch developers. You can't have top notch developers without paying them what they're worth. The best developers know what they're worth and know what they can get paid in just about every country on earth. I know that right now there's 3 places on earth that I will get paid what I get paid just now for what I do and have a high quality of life - Switzerland, Canada and the United States. Without top quality developers, you're not going to have a top internet company.

repolfx 8y ago

Seems like a mix of things: • The culture of incentivising employees with equity stakes is mostly a US thing. It's not widely practiced outside the USA. ARM is a rare example of a British tech firm that gave out equity to early employees, and not coincidentally, ARM was (up until it got bought by the Japanese) one of Europe's tech success stories. • Lack of a comparable venture capital ecosystem of the type that came out of the success of Silicon Valley. • The EU single market is (a) relatively new and (b) overhyped. It's still much easier to sell across state lines in the USA than it is to sell to the EU market, for all kinds of reasons. Of course the single market made it a lot easier but still not as easy as when there's a single language, a well established federal-level trading code that's been around hundreds of years etc. • During the time the big US tech firms were establishing themselves and taking off (the 1980s), Europe was riven with hard socialism and even dictatorships. Spain was a dictatorship up until 1982, and they then elected socialists. France has famously strict labor laws that make it extremely risky and hard to try and grow a startup (which is already risky and hard). Italy was bogged down from the 70s-90s and arguably still today by heavily broken interventionist labour market, and terrorism/political instability. Germany didn't liberalise its labour markets to something approximating US standards until the Hartz IV reforms in the early 2000s and of course was split in two with one half being another dictatorship until 1991. During the 1980s the UK was busy recovering from a near-fatal economic meltdown caused by confrontations with hard left unions, that had rotating power cuts, three day weeks, garbage piling up on streets and an IMF bailout. Thatcher spent the whole of the 80s trying to bring the UK back to western liberal standards of growth and prosperity, so it wasn't an environment conducive to making a Microsoft or an Apple. So it's a combination of US style VC fuelled tech ecosystems taking decades to grow, lack of equity-based incentives, most of Europe not having had sufficient political stability during the time companies like Apple, Microsoft, Intel etc were becoming established, and large parts of Europe even today still having radically more socialist governments and economies than the USA with the concomitant difficulty of growing any kind of startup at all, let alone high risk/high reward tech startups.

sbacic 8y ago
The EU single market is not over-hyped - it's basically non-existent. Of the 28 member states, about 10 or so are actually worth the trouble to do business in (taking into account regulations and taxes, local language and customs, etc). Most of the rest are more trouble than they're worth and in the best case will merely be a blip on the radar of any business big enough to move into them.