I would argue changing the app store you sell on is much more difficult than changing your company's HQ. If you are a mobile-first company and you ditch the App

I would argue changing the app store you sell on is much more difficult than changing your company's HQ. If you are a mobile-first company and you ditch the Apple App Store, you lose 40% of your revenue right there. There is no alternative to getting that revenue back. If you move your company's HQ you could lose a substantial portion of your staff, but you could also have them work remote. Or you can keep your engineering team in the EU and do other everything else elsewhere. There are lots of choices. Regulation plays a factor in the amount of startups in a country but it isn't the only factor and I would argue it is not even the biggest factor. There are plenty of countries out there that have about as much regulation as the US yet much fewer startups. And regulation isn't a black-and-white thing either. There are many cases where regulation would hurt startups (e.g. GDPR) and many cases where regulation basically exclusively targets larger companies (e.g. DMA).