I think you are right in that it is cultural. Then, it could be less a matter of being risk averse or not, but more that people like independence, and the prefe

I think you are right in that it is cultural. Then, it could be less a matter of being risk averse or not, but more that people like independence, and the preferred status is not 'founder of a company' but 'self-employed'. There was this interesting survey: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Self-employment_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... a quote: > 1 in 2 self-employed persons highly satisfied with their current job Looking at the other numbers, around 2/3 of them don't have employees, so a large portions of them just don't want to grow beyond and take the full burden of managing a company.