4 ms·

> "not having tech giants" is seen as a weakness It’s a second order weakness. The first order weakness is the relative lack of capital availability vs the Uni

> "not having tech giants" is seen as a weakness It’s a second order weakness. The first order weakness is the relative lack of capital availability vs the United States which made it less likely to spawn EU native tech giants. The lack of tech giants means that there is a brain drain effect to the US or US tech giants functioning in Europe.

eldaisfish 2y ago
capital is a stumbling block but even if that were solved in the EU, the bigger problem of language still remains. The true power of the US is that it operates in the global lingua franca and has access to the world's biggest capital markets. Machine translation may one day be a solution but we are far from that day.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  > the bigger problem of language still remains Also culture and regulations. For example Austria and Germany, Netherlands and Belgium, might share borders and the same languages between the pairs but having different regulations in certain areas, meaning that starting a company in one country might be difficult to expand in the other due to a difference in regulations which is usually by design born out of local protectionism. Contrary to the US, EU is not a united country, but a collaboration of fiefdoms with often diverging interests, where every one of them wants to be king and won't hesitate to sabotage other members for their own gain, even if it holds everyone back. This high level of internal squabbling and fragmentation is ultimately what keeps EU unable to scale businesses of any kind, not just tech, as easily and as fast as in the US. What many founders do, if you're developing a SW product in the EU, is forget the EU market altogether and launch directly to customers in the US, and only when you succeeded there and made your money, you can afford to break into the EU fragmentation and expand locally. Sounds counter-intuitive but that's the reality for many product based EU start-ups that want to succeed, like Spotify for example. Why do you think Apple only launched the VP in the US and nowhere else?
- nyokodo 2y ago
  > the bigger problem of language still remains > the true power of the US is that it operates in the global lingua franca It is true that language is a problem but I suspect not as much as you say. ~51% of the EU population speaks english as a 1st or 2nd language, but a larger percentage in the wealthier western nations (e.g. ~57% in France) and an even larger percentage in the major metros (e.g. ~60% in Paris). [1] I couldn't find figures but I suspect an even larger percentage of university graduates in the wealthier EU nations speak english. Tech Giants disproportionately emerge from and draw from the University Graduate population. If they had the capital availability and culture/regulatory regime (as acknowledged elsewhere in the thread) amenable to the emergence of Tech Giants then they wouldn't need a big boost to English proficiency to get by language-wise. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...
  - eldaisfish 2y ago
    This argument is often brought bu but has a critical flaw - English is not not the working language in most EU countries. The ability to speak english is moot, what matter is the language of business and law which is not english. The point about university graduates is also moot because they are not the majority, even in a country like france that had the most number of university degrees awarded in 2022. Only about 35% of the french working age population has a university degree. Language, is, in fact, a much bigger problem than many want to admit.

eldaisfish 2y ago

capital is a stumbling block but even if that were solved in the EU, the bigger problem of language still remains. The true power of the US is that it operates in the global lingua franca and has access to the world's biggest capital markets. Machine translation may one day be a solution but we are far from that day.

Rinzler89 2y ago
> the bigger problem of language still remains Also culture and regulations. For example Austria and Germany, Netherlands and Belgium, might share borders and the same languages between the pairs but having different regulations in certain areas, meaning that starting a company in one country might be difficult to expand in the other due to a difference in regulations which is usually by design born out of local protectionism. Contrary to the US, EU is not a united country, but a collaboration of fiefdoms with often diverging interests, where every one of them wants to be king and won't hesitate to sabotage other members for their own gain, even if it holds everyone back. This high level of internal squabbling and fragmentation is ultimately what keeps EU unable to scale businesses of any kind, not just tech, as easily and as fast as in the US. What many founders do, if you're developing a SW product in the EU, is forget the EU market altogether and launch directly to customers in the US, and only when you succeeded there and made your money, you can afford to break into the EU fragmentation and expand locally. Sounds counter-intuitive but that's the reality for many product based EU start-ups that want to succeed, like Spotify for example. Why do you think Apple only launched the VP in the US and nowhere else?
nyokodo 2y ago
> the bigger problem of language still remains > the true power of the US is that it operates in the global lingua franca It is true that language is a problem but I suspect not as much as you say. ~51% of the EU population speaks english as a 1st or 2nd language, but a larger percentage in the wealthier western nations (e.g. ~57% in France) and an even larger percentage in the major metros (e.g. ~60% in Paris). [1] I couldn't find figures but I suspect an even larger percentage of university graduates in the wealthier EU nations speak english. Tech Giants disproportionately emerge from and draw from the University Graduate population. If they had the capital availability and culture/regulatory regime (as acknowledged elsewhere in the thread) amenable to the emergence of Tech Giants then they wouldn't need a big boost to English proficiency to get by language-wise. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...
- eldaisfish 2y ago
  This argument is often brought bu but has a critical flaw - English is not not the working language in most EU countries. The ability to speak english is moot, what matter is the language of business and law which is not english. The point about university graduates is also moot because they are not the majority, even in a country like france that had the most number of university degrees awarded in 2022. Only about 35% of the french working age population has a university degree. Language, is, in fact, a much bigger problem than many want to admit.