3 ms·

> Meh, the EU (where I live) is an ossified behemoth whose VIPs (Germany and France) don't really understand or appreciate tech and cannot innovate their way ou

by sofixa 4y ago

> Meh, the EU (where I live) is an ossified behemoth whose VIPs (Germany and France) don't really understand or appreciate tech and cannot innovate their way out of a paper bag. It's telling that you're lumping France and Germany together that you don't know what you're talking about. France has come an extremely long way in the past few years, with pretty good mobile and fibre coverage (there are villages with hundreds of people with proud signs "Commune fibrée"), and vast government digital services. The last time i had to interact with a government office physically was to file the (online prepared) form for ID and passport, where it's purely done for verification purposes. There's a government SSO which gives access to all government services online, for free. There's also a very healthy startup culture and scene (check the FrenchTech's Next40). > Entire huge countries such as France and Italy produce basically nothing of value when it comes to tech Insulting to companies such as Doctolib (revolutionised health appointments, a single platform to book one, send your documents if needed, have ones online, etc.), Back Market, fintechs such as Qonto and Swile, Ornikar, etc. etc. Real world companies solving actual problems and widely used in France and starting to export (Back Market have an EU wide presence, Ornikar are in a couple of Western EU markets, etc.).

inglor_cz 4y ago
"Insulting to companies such as Doctolib (revolutionised health appointments, a single platform to book one, send your documents if needed, have ones online, etc.), Back Market, fintechs such as Qonto and Swile, Ornikar, etc. etc." Do you realize that even here on HN, the percentage of people who know at least one of those names is likely to be in low single digits? Compared to Google or Meta or Apple or Microsoft, these are not successes. And yet, France with its relatively big population and relatively good schools, should theoretically produce at least one or two comparable companies.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > Do you realize that even here on HN, the percentage of people who know at least one of those names is likely to be in low single digits? And that's fine because those companies are serving the French market first? I don't expect French people to know about Zelle or Konbini payments.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    Depends on what you mean by "fine". It is certainly not bad, but it makes no sense to pretend that they play in the same league as the global giants, or even just one level under them. At this level of significance, countries like Thailand or Turkey can play, too. I would expect more from France, one of the heavyweights of the Western civilization and a cradle of Enlightement.
  - haneefmubarak 4y ago
    Zelle and Konbini are both also tiny dwarfs, that aren't really good examples of at-scale success, esp with anything that has any adjacency to tech. I say this as an avid Zelle user.
- justeleblanc 4y ago
  A company is a success only if its market is the whole world, or at the very least covers the USA where most of HN's users live? That's an interesting take.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    And a pretty mainstream one. One of the niceties of software is that it scales quite easily and that if it really solves an important problem, it can grow explosively all over the world, where people do have the same problem that needs solving. Specializing in a niche corner of the market can be called a success, but a cunning dwarf is still a dwarf. For one, it lacks the necessary capital to invest into something more risky but potentially more rewarding.
    - vidarh 4y ago
      A whole lot of US unicorns haven't even tried to crack markets outside the US. That the US by itself forms an easily accessible largely single-language market is one of the reasons they do disproportionately well.
    - justeleblanc 4y ago
      None of the listed examples were purely software. You can't build a website that store health data about patients and scale it to the whole world and its dizzying regulatory variations overnight. You can't setup a shop for second-hand electronics that serves the whole world overnight. Etc.

by sofixa 4y ago

inglor_cz 4y ago

"Insulting to companies such as Doctolib (revolutionised health appointments, a single platform to book one, send your documents if needed, have ones online, etc.), Back Market, fintechs such as Qonto and Swile, Ornikar, etc. etc." Do you realize that even here on HN, the percentage of people who know at least one of those names is likely to be in low single digits? Compared to Google or Meta or Apple or Microsoft, these are not successes. And yet, France with its relatively big population and relatively good schools, should theoretically produce at least one or two comparable companies.

sofixa 4y ago
> Do you realize that even here on HN, the percentage of people who know at least one of those names is likely to be in low single digits? And that's fine because those companies are serving the French market first? I don't expect French people to know about Zelle or Konbini payments.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Depends on what you mean by "fine". It is certainly not bad, but it makes no sense to pretend that they play in the same league as the global giants, or even just one level under them. At this level of significance, countries like Thailand or Turkey can play, too. I would expect more from France, one of the heavyweights of the Western civilization and a cradle of Enlightement.
- haneefmubarak 4y ago
  Zelle and Konbini are both also tiny dwarfs, that aren't really good examples of at-scale success, esp with anything that has any adjacency to tech. I say this as an avid Zelle user.
justeleblanc 4y ago
A company is a success only if its market is the whole world, or at the very least covers the USA where most of HN's users live? That's an interesting take.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  And a pretty mainstream one. One of the niceties of software is that it scales quite easily and that if it really solves an important problem, it can grow explosively all over the world, where people do have the same problem that needs solving. Specializing in a niche corner of the market can be called a success, but a cunning dwarf is still a dwarf. For one, it lacks the necessary capital to invest into something more risky but potentially more rewarding.
  - vidarh 4y ago
    A whole lot of US unicorns haven't even tried to crack markets outside the US. That the US by itself forms an easily accessible largely single-language market is one of the reasons they do disproportionately well.
  - justeleblanc 4y ago
    None of the listed examples were purely software. You can't build a website that store health data about patients and scale it to the whole world and its dizzying regulatory variations overnight. You can't setup a shop for second-hand electronics that serves the whole world overnight. Etc.