5 ms·

Well, it does help when 320+ million people speak the same language. That's a huge consumer advantage that any US startup has.

0xfaded 6y ago
Translating and regionalization is cheap compared to adhering to 28 different sets of laws.
- mettamage 6y ago
  Fair point. With that said, both are expensive for lean startups without outside investment. Many Dutch startups always look at the Dutch market first, before they fan out to a few European countries and only then do they look at Europe. And if that all succeed, only then do they dare to look at the US and perhaps the world. Case in point: takeaway.com
  - weejewel 6y ago
    This is very true. On the other hand, The Netherlands is a country that easily adopts new tech ideas and products compared to other European countries.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  FWIW, you have to adhere to couple dozen sets of laws as well, on top of translation and regionalization, when building EU-wide products. The EU works to harmonize a lot of these laws, but it's still made of sovereign nation-states.
- matthewmacleod 6y ago
  Single market really makes this much less work than you’d expect.
- dgellow 6y ago
  It isn't that cheap if you have to consider different branding and marketing campaigns when you want to expand to neighbor regions. The cost of covering the EU market can increase really fast. Edit: it's also an ongoing cost, so the earliest you start to support additional locales the more expensive your general product development becomes. Once start to translate your UI you now have to keep it up-to-date all the time. The more translations you have the more expensive that process is when developing new features, both in actual time/energy to be sure that your UI/UX work well in your supported locales, and expenses for translators.
chrisseaton 6y ago
Doesn't almost everyone in Europe speak pretty good English in practice? Couldn't English become the language of business and tech?
- dgellow 6y ago
  To your first question, definitely not. Like, not at all. Generally speaking countries in northern Europe are very good at English, it's used often in cities and if you live in a major city you can do almost everything in English. I lived in Berlin for 3 years and you can do virtually everything (but administrative stuff) in English (in fact that makes it difficult to learn German by immersion, people switch to English as soon as they notice that you have a foreign accent or speak a bit slowly or with difficulty). But that's it. Local languages are dominant for any other situation. And while English is the main language used for business, the majority of people don't speak it fluently. That varies a lot per country, for example Sweden and Norway are really good at teaching English, Austria, Germany and Belgium are ok, France, Spain, and Italy are bad. You can see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index for some comparison between countries.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    Even in Germany. There's the "Berlin bubble" where (as you say) English is common. But go outside that, especially to areas like Bavaria or Saxony on the eastern side, and no-one speaks English at all. It'll be interesting to see what happens after Brexit. My guess is that English will remain as the common language in Europe. It's too entrenched now. And the Irish still speak it (for now).
    - dgellow 6y ago
      IMHO the fact that the EU doesn’t have the UK anymore is a very good reason to define it as our main working language. That will of course never happen, but it would make sense to have a language that doesn’t advantage one country member over others given that we all have English as our secondary language. In fact my personal wish would be the standardization on European English, at the same level as UK English, US English, Indian English, etc. and define it as our common EU language, bound to the pan-EU identity. But I’m dreaming :)

0xfaded 6y ago

Translating and regionalization is cheap compared to adhering to 28 different sets of laws.

mettamage 6y ago
Fair point. With that said, both are expensive for lean startups without outside investment. Many Dutch startups always look at the Dutch market first, before they fan out to a few European countries and only then do they look at Europe. And if that all succeed, only then do they dare to look at the US and perhaps the world. Case in point: takeaway.com
- weejewel 6y ago
  This is very true. On the other hand, The Netherlands is a country that easily adopts new tech ideas and products compared to other European countries.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
FWIW, you have to adhere to couple dozen sets of laws as well, on top of translation and regionalization, when building EU-wide products. The EU works to harmonize a lot of these laws, but it's still made of sovereign nation-states.
matthewmacleod 6y ago
Single market really makes this much less work than you’d expect.
dgellow 6y ago
It isn't that cheap if you have to consider different branding and marketing campaigns when you want to expand to neighbor regions. The cost of covering the EU market can increase really fast. Edit: it's also an ongoing cost, so the earliest you start to support additional locales the more expensive your general product development becomes. Once start to translate your UI you now have to keep it up-to-date all the time. The more translations you have the more expensive that process is when developing new features, both in actual time/energy to be sure that your UI/UX work well in your supported locales, and expenses for translators.

chrisseaton 6y ago

Doesn't almost everyone in Europe speak pretty good English in practice? Couldn't English become the language of business and tech?

dgellow 6y ago
To your first question, definitely not. Like, not at all. Generally speaking countries in northern Europe are very good at English, it's used often in cities and if you live in a major city you can do almost everything in English. I lived in Berlin for 3 years and you can do virtually everything (but administrative stuff) in English (in fact that makes it difficult to learn German by immersion, people switch to English as soon as they notice that you have a foreign accent or speak a bit slowly or with difficulty). But that's it. Local languages are dominant for any other situation. And while English is the main language used for business, the majority of people don't speak it fluently. That varies a lot per country, for example Sweden and Norway are really good at teaching English, Austria, Germany and Belgium are ok, France, Spain, and Italy are bad. You can see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index for some comparison between countries.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  Even in Germany. There's the "Berlin bubble" where (as you say) English is common. But go outside that, especially to areas like Bavaria or Saxony on the eastern side, and no-one speaks English at all. It'll be interesting to see what happens after Brexit. My guess is that English will remain as the common language in Europe. It's too entrenched now. And the Irish still speak it (for now).
  - dgellow 6y ago
    IMHO the fact that the EU doesn’t have the UK anymore is a very good reason to define it as our main working language. That will of course never happen, but it would make sense to have a language that doesn’t advantage one country member over others given that we all have English as our secondary language. In fact my personal wish would be the standardization on European English, at the same level as UK English, US English, Indian English, etc. and define it as our common EU language, bound to the pan-EU identity. But I’m dreaming :)