Q: Where is the Silicon Valley of Europe? A: It doesn't exist and it's very unlikely (in my opinion) that there is going to be one. When media and people talk

Q: Where is the Silicon Valley of Europe? A: It doesn't exist and it's very unlikely (in my opinion) that there is going to be one. When media and people talk about Silicon Valley as a whole and try to find its equialents around the world, they tend to forget why Silicon Valley is a thing to begin with. The need to have an area where businesses that operate in the same industry could perform their research, collaboration and product manufacturing stems not from some company's CEO trying to make some property investments for the sake of investing, but the need for having your partners (and competitors) in your physical proximity. Nowadays both the research and collaboration don't need to be performed at some particular spot (unless we're talking physical prototyping that has to be performed at a particular facility for whatever reason there is, but your questions seems to address the lack of European SaaS "hubs" so whatever), meaning that being somewhere akin to Silicon Valley is redundant for the most part. An argument could be made for networking, but i think that platforms like GitHub are far better for modern day tech networking than talking to randos at a bar. Q:Why is there so many missing eu based equivalents of American based saas companies? A:Because Europe. This isn't meant to be some sort of a snarky answer, but that's how it is. Mind that Europe is not monolithic in the ways European countries treat businesses (albeit there is certain movement in that direction (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-eyes-another-go-more-unified-european-business-taxation-2021-05-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-eyes-another-go-more...)), but there are certain differences between how German businesses have to operate versus their American counterparts and in my opinion that influences the costs of developing, maintaining and promoting the product, not to mention the differences in legal areas like IP laws. It's an incredibly complex topic to study and i wish i could give you a better answer, but the more i think about, the more i realize that the actual "final answer" would require you to take into account years and years of EU policies and how they affected European businesses, differences between European and North American specialists and their mindsets, how the talent moved around throught the years and so on. It would be the absolute easiest thing in the world for me to just write "something, something, taxpayer funds, German manufacturing powerhouses, something, something, government overreach." but that wouldn't really explain anything.