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As soon as something substantial comes up from Europe, including the UK, will end up in the US. It's not really a quality problem, Europe produces tons of high

by mrtksn 5y ago

As soon as something substantial comes up from Europe, including the UK, will end up in the US. It's not really a quality problem, Europe produces tons of high quality stuff but anything that can scale scales in the USA. Europe is not one of the richest places on earth by selling museum tickets, the place has the talent even has the money - albeit not at the scale of the US. I don't know what's missing but tech in the sense of "fast scaling high margin business that eats the world" is something that doesn't happen in Europe and I don't believe that any legislation will directly change that. EU is more in the business of mitigating the risks of having your infrastructure run and data being processed by foreign entities. GDPR and the other stuff is all about that.

Mikeb85 5y ago
> I don't believe that any legislation will directly change that. I definitely didn't avocate for any legislation. I'm saying they need to shift their perspective. Tech isn't booming because US startups played it safe...
- hocuspocus 5y ago
  Legislation plays a big role in encouraging entrepreneurs to play it safe or not. Cf. banking. European fintech startups are doing extremely well. In turn, big banks have to catch up and adapt if they want to stay relevant. Thanks to EU regulation and investment in core infrastructure. If we think about the cloud, I don't see what Europe is lacking if we really wanted to build an O365 competitor. But there's no stewardship, rather the opposite, cf. the lackluster response to the CLOUD act an other extra-territorial US bullshit. Instead we have OVH and Hetzner compete on price rather than features and quality, and underfunded open source software like NextCloud.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
The EU doesn't have the 'free market above all' philosophy of the US. As a result venture capital is more restricted. In the US failure is not a bad thing, just a reason to try again. The EU is more risk averse. There's much more restriction on businesses, building megacities etc. However there's a flip side to this like our much better social welfare systems and affordable healthcare. I personally prefer it this way. It does hurt us economically but economy isn't the only thing that matters. In Europe we limit how high you can climb and this limits the amount of risky investment we attract because a big win is not automatically a mountain of profits due to more taxes and more regulations. But on the other hand we limit how far you can fall too. As a non-entrepreneur nor investor the latter matters much more to me.

by mrtksn 5y ago

Mikeb85 5y ago

> I don't believe that any legislation will directly change that. I definitely didn't avocate for any legislation. I'm saying they need to shift their perspective. Tech isn't booming because US startups played it safe...

hocuspocus 5y ago
Legislation plays a big role in encouraging entrepreneurs to play it safe or not. Cf. banking. European fintech startups are doing extremely well. In turn, big banks have to catch up and adapt if they want to stay relevant. Thanks to EU regulation and investment in core infrastructure. If we think about the cloud, I don't see what Europe is lacking if we really wanted to build an O365 competitor. But there's no stewardship, rather the opposite, cf. the lackluster response to the CLOUD act an other extra-territorial US bullshit. Instead we have OVH and Hetzner compete on price rather than features and quality, and underfunded open source software like NextCloud.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

The EU doesn't have the 'free market above all' philosophy of the US. As a result venture capital is more restricted. In the US failure is not a bad thing, just a reason to try again. The EU is more risk averse. There's much more restriction on businesses, building megacities etc. However there's a flip side to this like our much better social welfare systems and affordable healthcare. I personally prefer it this way. It does hurt us economically but economy isn't the only thing that matters. In Europe we limit how high you can climb and this limits the amount of risky investment we attract because a big win is not automatically a mountain of profits due to more taxes and more regulations. But on the other hand we limit how far you can fall too. As a non-entrepreneur nor investor the latter matters much more to me.