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> The study about VC having dropped by 50% in the EU because of the GDPR sounds pretty weird to me. Unless of course there’s selection bias and we’re talking Ad
by dmoy 7y ago
> The study about VC having dropped by 50% in the EU because of the GDPR sounds pretty weird to me. Unless of course there’s selection bias and we’re talking AdTech companies mostly.
Could just be noise in the data?
Could be VCs determining that fewer products are actually worth pursuing if the main monetization model for everything is ads?
I dunno.
- rootusrootus 7y agoOne thing my company did (we are US-based, but have an international operation as well) to try and mitigate the volume of compliance work to be done was section off software that would be used in the EU from everything else. Previously we had been working on making all of our software 100% internationally universal, but GDPR made that difficult, going forward we're kinda cutting loose the guys in the UK (there's some irony, I guess) to keep up the code that has to be GDPR compliant while the rest of the company focuses elsewhere. So... anecdotally, I'm not at all surprised if the increased compliance cost made some people reconsider investments in EU businesses, even if they don't rely on ad revenue as a business model.
- looeee 7y agoPersonally, I'm totally fine with that lost investment. Especially since it's likely to be temporary.
- return1 7y agoFunny to read this in a US VC investment forum.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThis isn't a US VC investment forum. This is a US forum subsidized by a startup accelerator, but otherwise quite generally about tech and geeky stuff, and frequented by lots of people from outside US.
- distances 7y agoIndeed. I'd even wager that a considerable portion of the userbase here has no idea what Ycombinator in the address stands for.
- dhruvrrp 7y agoOnly around 50% of the people in this forum are from the US. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521