5 ms·

You're right, and I'm glad I started by saying that I'm German because lots of smaller European countries run circles around us in terms of tech adoption. I do

by heipei 6y ago

You're right, and I'm glad I started by saying that I'm German because lots of smaller European countries run circles around us in terms of tech adoption. I don't underestimate the value of quality of life, and I don't blame anyone who knowingly works for a stable, "boring", old-school German company which has been the world-leader in its niche for the past 100 years. But I think many people here are not aware that there even is a radically different approach to building up a business (the US/VC/growth model), and that this might be the only model to create modern tech companies to rival the US players. You won't compete with AWS by creating a family-owned business over a few decades where your primary objective is to provide stable and fair employment to people, often for their entire working lives. I'm not saying either one is better, just that I think that's the reality.

davedx 6y ago
Yeah in the Netherlands here, and I’ve spent some time recently integrating a German fintech vendor. The cross of new and modern and old beurocratic way of doing things has been almost dystopian and really slowed everything down. Contrast to similar vendors in the UK is quite something.
- dukeyukey 6y ago
  Can you go into more details on this? I've only worked closely with UK/USA companies and I'm really interested how they compare to German/French ways of doing things. Does the Netherlands more closely align to the Uk/USA on this?
  - j4yav 6y ago
    In my experience the Netherlands is quite a bit like the US. Not as much VC available, but businesses tend to be pretty agile and willing to pivot to get results. All normal day to day government interaction is digital and works well. ING is a good example of a very big Dutch company that seems to do pretty well with innovation.
  - davedx 6y ago
    Germans have a lot of legal requirements, red tape, old ways of doing things. Netherlands and UK are more streamlined, more parts of govt and daily life are digital, bank systems are more modern.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  When Europe does do fintech it’s just really sleazy and exploitative, like Revolut, so better off without. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23416169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23416169
joelbluminator 6y ago
There's a lot of criticism of the US/VC model, sure it brought tremendous success stories but it's not clear if the model actually works.
- bergstromm466 6y ago
  According to some: "It works great!" Thanks to Intellectual-Property-Monopoly Valley the US government has access to all computers all over the world (Intel ME etc.), as well as backdoor access into Google, Facebook etc. [1] [2] [3]. And Palantir works to 'support Homeland security'. [1] https://books.google.nl/books?id=9aamDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT142&dq=%E2%80%9CIt%E2%80%99s+not+just+the+Internet%E2%80%99s+infrastructure+that+I%E2%80%99m%22 https://books.google.nl/books?id=9aamDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT142&dq=%E... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-cia-bnd-germany-intelligence-report https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-ci...
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Ye I’m not a fan. All it does is entrench existing inequality. A few new millionaires are minted but I’m interested in solutions that provide an economic floor for everyone so we can all bootstrap if we want to instead.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    The distribution is a result of VC being a lotto that pays out well enough that not only is it not a bad idea to play it in terms of return on investment. Unfortunately it takes a lot of money to "buy every ticket". Which means to "win" for a VC they need to win big enough to outweigh their massive pile of failures. Except instead of a lotto board paying out it is growth of a successful company. The second desire? Prepare for disappointment as it isn't a goal. A goal implies a workable path even if it is far fetched like "try to research a way to become immortal". Providing an economic floor is not only not a strategy for advancement (let alone a workable one) it would fail even if you had a magical no knowledge or possession prerequisite requirement provider of infinite "basics" to be unscarce like air or file bit combinations. Economics deal with the scarce - while rendering things irrelevant would be good a floor implies an actual use to build upon into the scarce.
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>family-owned business where your primary objective is to provide stable and fair employment to people, often for their entire working lives Maybe that was the case in the '50s to '80s but I recently worked at two small family owned German companies that were leaders in their niche and their primary objective was to make their owners rich, not their employees happy(Kununu employee reviews reflected that). After that, I learned my lesson and moved to $BIG_CORP where at least I know it's all about the profits and they don't pretend to be your family as an excuse to pay you peanuts.

by heipei 6y ago

davedx 6y ago

Yeah in the Netherlands here, and I’ve spent some time recently integrating a German fintech vendor. The cross of new and modern and old beurocratic way of doing things has been almost dystopian and really slowed everything down. Contrast to similar vendors in the UK is quite something.

dukeyukey 6y ago
Can you go into more details on this? I've only worked closely with UK/USA companies and I'm really interested how they compare to German/French ways of doing things. Does the Netherlands more closely align to the Uk/USA on this?
- j4yav 6y ago
  In my experience the Netherlands is quite a bit like the US. Not as much VC available, but businesses tend to be pretty agile and willing to pivot to get results. All normal day to day government interaction is digital and works well. ING is a good example of a very big Dutch company that seems to do pretty well with innovation.
- davedx 6y ago
  Germans have a lot of legal requirements, red tape, old ways of doing things. Netherlands and UK are more streamlined, more parts of govt and daily life are digital, bank systems are more modern.
goatinaboat 6y ago
When Europe does do fintech it’s just really sleazy and exploitative, like Revolut, so better off without. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23416169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23416169

joelbluminator 6y ago

There's a lot of criticism of the US/VC model, sure it brought tremendous success stories but it's not clear if the model actually works.

bergstromm466 6y ago
According to some: "It works great!" Thanks to Intellectual-Property-Monopoly Valley the US government has access to all computers all over the world (Intel ME etc.), as well as backdoor access into Google, Facebook etc. [1] [2] [3]. And Palantir works to 'support Homeland security'. [1] https://books.google.nl/books?id=9aamDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT142&dq=%E2%80%9CIt%E2%80%99s+not+just+the+Internet%E2%80%99s+infrastructure+that+I%E2%80%99m%22 https://books.google.nl/books?id=9aamDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT142&dq=%E... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-cia-bnd-germany-intelligence-report https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-ci...
rorykoehler 6y ago
Ye I’m not a fan. All it does is entrench existing inequality. A few new millionaires are minted but I’m interested in solutions that provide an economic floor for everyone so we can all bootstrap if we want to instead.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  The distribution is a result of VC being a lotto that pays out well enough that not only is it not a bad idea to play it in terms of return on investment. Unfortunately it takes a lot of money to "buy every ticket". Which means to "win" for a VC they need to win big enough to outweigh their massive pile of failures. Except instead of a lotto board paying out it is growth of a successful company. The second desire? Prepare for disappointment as it isn't a goal. A goal implies a workable path even if it is far fetched like "try to research a way to become immortal". Providing an economic floor is not only not a strategy for advancement (let alone a workable one) it would fail even if you had a magical no knowledge or possession prerequisite requirement provider of infinite "basics" to be unscarce like air or file bit combinations. Economics deal with the scarce - while rendering things irrelevant would be good a floor implies an actual use to build upon into the scarce.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

>family-owned business where your primary objective is to provide stable and fair employment to people, often for their entire working lives Maybe that was the case in the '50s to '80s but I recently worked at two small family owned German companies that were leaders in their niche and their primary objective was to make their owners rich, not their employees happy(Kununu employee reviews reflected that). After that, I learned my lesson and moved to $BIG_CORP where at least I know it's all about the profits and they don't pretend to be your family as an excuse to pay you peanuts.