4 ms·

Silicon valley has the benefit of long term investment and also being a single centre for all of the US market. EU single market is not nearly as well integrate

by jerven 6y ago

Silicon valley has the benefit of long term investment and also being a single centre for all of the US market. EU single market is not nearly as well integrated as the US in practical terms e.g. basic language barriers. Decades of "infrastructure and community" is not easily copied else where and is a real advantage for the US. Europe had lot's of "Facebooks" but non grew out of the local market to be able to gain a global advantage. Silicon valley is not easily reproduced elsewhere in the US either.

throwaways885 6y ago
If it's about language, then why isn't London a huge tech hub (order of magnitude bigger)? They can sell to the US the same way SV exports back to the rest of the world, no?
- MagnumOpus 6y ago
  London as a tech hub does punch above its weight, mostly because the language makes for a very deep pool of labour -- people from all of Europe plus Russia/India. Of course that is only half the equation -- better and cheaper labour (than in Berlin or Paris, say) brings you halfway there, but the language barrier for customers in the EU as well as regulatory hurdles still make massively harder to scale to the whole of the EU than to the whole of the US.
- oblio 6y ago
  London is a huge tech hub :-) And it's not bigger because there are trade barriers between countries, for services. It's far from trivial for a UK company to sell stuff in the US. I imagine the timezone difference also doesn't help.
- tormeh 6y ago
  It's more than language. Regulations are more important. Also sales networks, word of mouth, network effects..
- riffraff 6y ago
  The market accessible with "no extra effort" is 5 times bigger in the US. If a company headquartered in the UK wants to sell to the US they need to deal with a whole new set of regulations, bureacracy, marketing etc. In the meantime, any SV startup can grow in a huge market and only then bother with crossing the ocean.

by jerven 6y ago

throwaways885 6y ago

If it's about language, then why isn't London a huge tech hub (order of magnitude bigger)? They can sell to the US the same way SV exports back to the rest of the world, no?

MagnumOpus 6y ago
London as a tech hub does punch above its weight, mostly because the language makes for a very deep pool of labour -- people from all of Europe plus Russia/India. Of course that is only half the equation -- better and cheaper labour (than in Berlin or Paris, say) brings you halfway there, but the language barrier for customers in the EU as well as regulatory hurdles still make massively harder to scale to the whole of the EU than to the whole of the US.
oblio 6y ago
London is a huge tech hub :-) And it's not bigger because there are trade barriers between countries, for services. It's far from trivial for a UK company to sell stuff in the US. I imagine the timezone difference also doesn't help.
tormeh 6y ago
It's more than language. Regulations are more important. Also sales networks, word of mouth, network effects..
riffraff 6y ago
The market accessible with "no extra effort" is 5 times bigger in the US. If a company headquartered in the UK wants to sell to the US they need to deal with a whole new set of regulations, bureacracy, marketing etc. In the meantime, any SV startup can grow in a huge market and only then bother with crossing the ocean.