4 ms·
Yeah, this is it right here. EU investors are terrified of risky bets, or throwing a lot of money at untested business ideas to see if they'll catch on. Invest
by CM30 4y ago
Yeah, this is it right here. EU investors are terrified of risky bets, or throwing a lot of money at untested business ideas to see if they'll catch on.
Investors in the US will throw millions or even billions of dollars at an innovative new business, even if it doesn't make that money back for years. They'll invest in consumer facing businesses, like consumer tech products, apps, social media sites etc.
EU ones won't do that. They'll invest fairly tiny sums in safe, conservative businesses with a proven (but arguably limited) business model, and that won't be enough to get the kind of unicorns Silicon Valley specialises in.
- danpalmer 4y agoI think it's a fairly deep cultural difference. In the US there's a cultural sense that anyone can make it, that if you just put in enough effort it'll work. Arguably there's even a culture of it being your right to try anything to make money, there are very few businesses that the US would disallow. The former is obviously hubris, and the latter creates some of the worst exploitation in the US, but sometimes these factors create hits. In the EU the culture is much more cynical, and the belief in individual impact is much lower. There's also more of a sense of there being things that one just does not try to exploit, types of business that could be considered morally distasteful (see the healthcare industry for the clearest examples of what I mean). These are very broad generalisations, they don't apply evenly across the US or the EU, and while they all sound quite negative they are really trade-offs and it's up to individuals to decide where they prefer to sit on these trade-offs.