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EU startups fail because their press refuses to hype them up
- MisterSandman 1y agoThis really is an excellent post. I wonder if things will change with the anti-Americanism spreading throughout the world
- ldjkfkdsjnv 1y agothey fail because software engineering is low status in europe, and so its low paid, and they have no talent to actually build good tech companies
- danelski 1y agoI feel like you mistake cause and result here. The number of Europeans working for US companies shows that the environment nurtures status / wages, rather than Americans being somehow intellectually superior by default.
- ryzvonusef 1y agoArnaud Bertrand (creator of HouseTrip (sold to TripAdvisor)) explains in a twitter post that: ____ > At first, when I created the company and before Airbnb was even a thing, I used to pitch the company to the media and the general response I would get was almost one of contempt, as in "why would I belittle myself to write about your startup? And furthermore, who would be stupid enough to stay in an apartment when there are hotels? You guys have no future..." > And then Airbnb got launched and the American media started their thing, hyping the company like it was the greatest innovation since sliced bread, like they were national heroes, giving them hundreds of millions in free publicity. > That's when European media started to take notice. Not of us, god forbid, but of Airbnb. The concept was promoted by Silicon Valley, see... so now it was valid. > So I went back to pitch HouseTrip to European media. This time around I was met with a different kind of contempt: "So you guys are like Airbnb? Why would we cover a European copycat when we can just write about the real American original?" Luckily I'm not violent but lets say those moments really tested my civility > All in all, we arrived in the absolutely grotesque situation where, despite Airbnb not having yet set foot in Europe, they were already a cultural phenomenon there, promoted by European media, for free, when the European original - yours truly - had to spend millions on paid marketing (mostly to Google and Facebook, American companies) to achieve a small fraction of the brand recognition. > So there you have it, the dirty little secret behind Europe's lag. We're essentially witnessing a "colonization of the minds" whereby Europe has structurally internalized its technological inferiority, celebrating American startups while dismissing its own homegrown companies. ____ It's a long post, this was just the relevant snippet, i suggest people read it, they get into more detail regarding US/EU/China startup scene
- gausswho 1y agoSalient. Ironic he wrote it on Twitter.
- baobun 1y agohttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1925029185052917791.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1925029185052917791.html
- openplatypus 1y agoMedia coverage is definitely a factor, but the post has some gleaming issues. > Take excessive regulations for instance, which gets mentioned all the time. If they were such a hindrance to startups, why would American startups succeed in Europe - like Airbnb in our case - and European startups not? We all face the same regulations Nope, they don't. US companies in Europe generally don't care about EU regulations. Even if we skim over privacy, AirBnB succeeded in Europe despite there being laws preventing short lets in many municipalities.
- gizmo 1y agoUS startups also don't care about US regulations. AirBnB, Uber, Tesla, Coinbase and many others break the laws in the US they don't like. I'm not making the moral argument that breaking laws is always wrong. Instead I'm simply pointing out that breaking "bad laws" is culturally accepted in Silicon Valley but not in Europe. Silicon Valley startups do what it takes to win.
- exe34 1y ago[flagged]
- exe34 1y ago> Tesla's CEO bought the government and fired everybody who was investigating his companies! I'm not sure why my comment was flagged, so I'll add the link to the evidence here: https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025.02.13_fact_sheet_re_musk_investigations.pdf https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025.02.... My point is that in the US, you don't have to follow the law. If you're rich enough, you are the law.
- ExoticPearTree 1y agoI guess it was flagged because it is a one party opinion that Musk is "bad" (for whatever value of bad). Basically the democrats are throwing a tantrum at Musk because he supports Trump instead of a democrat.
- mertbio 1y agoMany people attempt to apply the American mindset to the European market, then act surprised when it doesn't work. This is yet another example. European culture operates differently, and the startup model doesn't translate seamlessly to this continent for a variety of reasons. I've explored this in depth on my blog, with a particular focus on Germany: https://mertbulan.com/2025/02/24/we-dont-need-startups-we-need-digital-mittelstand/ https://mertbulan.com/2025/02/24/we-dont-need-startups-we-ne...
- glimshe 1y agoGreat post. The German audio product company u-he sounds like your digital mittelstand. They make synthesizers nobody can quite emulate.
- piva00 1y agoIn the audio/music production space Germany has Ableton, Bitwig, Steinberg, Native Instruments, u-he, and quite a few others. All following the Mittelstand model as far as I know. Notwithstanding all the physical audio equipment manufacturers in Germany, there are loads of them producing quite high quality gear.
- thefz 1y agoSennheiser too!
- Yizahi 1y agoInteresting article, but I think it's not contradicting to the OP post. What is a "successful specialized high-quality mid size company"? It's formerly a successful startup, just aiming not to cover as wide audience as possible, but a narrow market. And not aiming to go public or sell out, but retain private ownership and vision of the founders. Think Ebay store vs Valve (Steam) store. The problem is that to become a mittelstand, company must survive early growth phase, and the OP tweet correctly notices that such possibility is severely hampered both by EU and USA media. To continue my example - "we have Valve at home"(c) i.e. for example EU has CDPR with it's GoodOldGames (GoG) store. Yeah, it also went a bit wide in past years, but not because of lack of trying to be specialized. And they still retain that specialization mostly. But they are far far away from the Steam, and I now suspect the marketing playing a key part in it. tl;dr - authors message "Germany should focus on developing the Digital-Mittelstand" is wrong. It is wrongly formulated. It's like saying "country should focus on developing successful companies". Yeah, no shit Sherlock, but before that every successful company must somehow be created and grow. Or, alternatively, we can replace every Mittelstand word in the incentives part of the article and all of the sentences would be true: STARTUP, however, can leverage remote work to further reduce costs. Employees could live in small towns, enjoy lower living expenses, and maintain a high quality of life thanks to Germany’s good transportation infrastructure. Remote work also translates into lower personnel costs, typically the largest expense for any startup. By tapping into these advantages, STARTUP could achieve both profitability and sustainability without compromising employee well-being. If you’re already sold on the STARTUP concept, let’s explore the potential products they can create. There’s a wide range of possibilities: (a list of typical software industries) Rather than pouring large grants into startups with the hope of generating returns for shareholders, the German government should consider introducing tailored incentives to foster the development of STARTUP. Salary Grants - (applicable to startups? of course) Simplify Bureaucracy and Regulations - (same) Expand VAT Exemptions - (same) English Language Support - (same) etc. etc.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- reedf1 1y agoA bottom up cultural shift is required to change startup culture in Europe. I have lived in both the USA and UK, attempted various startups in both. Reactions of family in UK and around Europe - I've given up a simple life to be a chancer, small setbacks are seen as enormous failures, every discussion is commiseration, enormous skepticism. USA friends and family are universally positive, respectful, full-throated and full-hearted behind what I've done, they view my goals as meaningful despite failures. This starts at the bottom and bubbles up to media, investors, company and government.
- izacus 1y agoWhy is it "required"? What's so desirable in the american mindset that folks so badly need in EU?
- bryanrasmussen 1y agothe meaning of required in the relevant sentence is not "we are required to do this because it should be done" but rather "if we want that step 2 gets done then step 1 would be required for step 2 to get done."
- reedf1 1y agoWhy represent my point like that? "is required to change startup culture in Europe." If you don't want it, don't change.
- K0balt 1y agoPoor reading comprehension skills or a bad faith interpretation. Either way, what you wrote was absolutely fine.
- greyman 1y agoBecause all that scepticism, non-support etc. are like small micro-defeats that will suck the life energy. Not to mention all those taxes which sucks money energy. :-) But the deeper reason I see in in Europe is that everything is biased towards big and old, and not new and small.
- seydor 1y agoa symptom rather than a cause. there is little incentive to succeed in europe because the culture is against it, or , at best, indifferent. tech journalists reflect this fact. most people are technophobes , but they do ultimately catch up with US tech after the media has spotlighted it, and they do it reluctantly or because of fomo. being an early adopter is anti-european. we are supposed to be more seasoned, more elitist, and leave early adoption to the plebs.
- magicalhippo 1y ago> Or take fragmented markets. Same question: how could US startups successfully conquer these fragmented EU markets when European startups can't? How many tiny US startups have been successful in EU markets? I'm from Norway, we're ~5 million people here. You're not going to have a ton of users, and hence employees, before having to study other countries' rules and regulations. Some of which might not be available in English, and we all know how great it is to use automatic translation for that. We had <10 employees when our company branched out into the Nordic countries. Complying to rules and regulations has been a constant struggle, and I suspect impossible if not for the fact that we're a B2B shop, as B2C is much more regulated. That said, I'm not disagreeing with the main point of the post. I think we and our media could take more pride in local software. The weird thing is that for physical goods, and especially food here in Norway, I feel like there already is this patriotism OP finds lacking in software.
- intothemild 1y agoAussie in Norway, and have been part of a founding team here, as well as lead teams in companies you've definitely heard of. I think the OP on X gets it right. It for sure is a marketing problem. The media machine in Europe is most likely fractured by languages. So take Norway. Sure we have our fair share of tech blogs/news/etc. but all are in Norwegian. Which cool for the local market, but outside that it's not the language that others are speaking. Where as the US publish in their native language, which so happens to be something most people speak globally. I'm not suggesting that the local tech journalism is doing it wrong. But what is lacking is some kind of large European tech journalism, or heck even all the smaller ones writing about each other's cool new startups.
- greyman 1y ago>But what is lacking is some kind of large European tech journalism Yes, even when tech media in europe would want to hype the original OP startup, they are not that influential in general. I follow tech news daily but all of them are U.S. media, there is nothing comparable here.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y agoI have for many years believed this. In practical terms global media is American media. And if press coverage is necessary for cheap costumer awareness, then American companies have the advantage that global media hype them up more than non-american. In before stupid objections, this isn't a law of nature, obviously; there's exceptions to everything.
- josefritzishere 1y agoIf your product needs hype to survive was it even real?
- danelski 1y agoWhat is marketing then?
- wat10000 1y agoDude spent three months in Nepal reflecting on what went wrong, and apparently didn’t come up with anything he or his company should have done differently. Maybe he’s right, but it’s very suspect.
- amadeuspagel 1y agoWhat? Remember Wirecard?
- oytis 1y agoWirecard, Northvolt, Lilium. German media and politics seem to have a unique talent for only promoting wrong things.
- tessierashpool9 1y agoGerman media are puppets of the government and their NGOs. That's why those specific companies have been hyped up - they were officially backed by the government.
- oytis 1y agoBeing backed by the government is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just the government seems to be uniquely backing things that don't fly.
- gsky 1y agoI see this happening in many countries but they love to hype up silicon valley startups.
- qoez 1y agoEurope in general have a refusal to lying to preserve integrity and trust problem, they should borrow from the americans and succumb to arms races that eat into public trust by making exaggeration and lying the default.
- jokethrowaway 1y agoI think it's natural for press to avoid hyping EU startups: they perform bad. Is the press responsible for the bad performance? I don't think so. (source: I worked in startups in EU, UK and US, I started two companies in EU and UK, one failed). I think the underlying problem is the anti-work attitude of people. Most people don't want to work hard, they don't have any ambition. And this attitude is normal in Soviet Union 2.0, a society where you get beaten down by taxes if you try to climb up the ladder and regulations make sure your company gets stopped before it's too large. The US is objectively better in this regard, but it's getting worse every year. Luckily there is a lot more capital from the past keeping the startup scene afloat. Will it survive another 20-40 years or will the next Silicon Valley be in China? Anyway the general lack of ambition in EU means that the composition in an EU startup is completely different between US and UE. While you can find real gems in US startups, in EU you find your typical average corporate employee - but less skilled or more junior. People in EU startups are just people who couldn't grab a job anywhere else. They're not hoping to make it big because there is no capital to have life changing exits and the government will get most of the profits anyway. Leaders and managers in US are also considerably better than in the EU. Many countries in EU never had a decent entrepreneurial class. Building those skills will take decades.
- dgb23 1y agoInteresting take. On the topic of work ethic: If we measure it via labor participation rate then EU and US are similar with some countries being lower and others being higher than the US in that regard. Switzerland as an example is quite a bit higher in that metric. But it is known for a rather conservative economic approach overall. Favoring stability, predictability and quality over velocity and big payoffs. Perhaps it's a good thing that there are different models and cultures.
- shubhamjain 1y agoThis is a pretty bad take, imo and confuses cause and effect. Why does US press hype their startups? Because they do have track record of creating revolutionary companies, something that can be traced back to 70s (Atari, Apple, Microsoft). It’s much easier for an established player to replicate the success elsewhere, despite of over-regulation. Just see how successful are US firms in India, but it will be mistake to not fault Indian bureaucracy and regulation for the lack of its own set of high-tech companies. So I would take Airbnb's success in EU with a grain of salt. In US, you can start a LLC, get a bank account, a tax ID, all within a few days. The process is completely online. Taxes? A single form for the whole year when you’re starting out. Hiring and laying off employees is relatively easy. How many European countries can claim the same?
- mytailorisrich 1y agoThere is definitely a cultural aspect. There is a much bigger resistance to change and to new things in Europe and iften the first reaction is indeed to shoot down new ideas.
- trashcan2137 1y ago> In US, you can start a LLC, get a bank account, a tax ID, all within a few days. The process is completely online. Taxes? A single form for the whole year when you’re starting out. Hiring and laying off employees is relatively easy. How many European countries can claim the same? In Poland, for example it's remarkably similar. I had an LLC, bank account and EU VAT ID without leaving my home. Hiring gets a little bit more tricky because we like having accessible health care and don't like throwing people under the bus so you have a notice time of anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months depending how long that particular person has been your employee. Taxes? You pay once/month but even then you most likely have an accountant handling that for you.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>In Poland, for example it's remarkably similar. I had an LLC, bank account and EU VAT ID without leaving my home. That simplicity changes drastically once you're a newly arrived immigrant into an EU country, with some countries being much worse than others, see France for example.
- jbverschoor 1y agoBig difference is in the following examples Startup in the garage or attic: US:American dream. EU: My cousin create a website in his attic for €20 When still starting, using a university email address: US: credibility. EU: doesn’t even have a domain! How can it be anything Limited liability company vs sole proprietor: US: Not so smart. EU: company means credibility so let’s not risk working with him, eventhough in terms of claimsof, it’s unlimited without an LLC People often say that Americans are all show and no content. The opposite is true. They look for value and story. The “show” is in the polished quality of consumer (and small business) products.
- joshstrange 1y agoThis was an interesting read and being called a copycat while being the first-mover must have been infuriating. But I have to call into question other parts of this post due to this: > Contrary to popular belief, they don't do it in a stupid way by just banning competition. Those cases are actually very rare and only occur if the companies in question violate Chinese law in pretty egregious ways. > Most of the time it's the exact contrary: they welcome foreign companies and competition, but create conditions where local alternatives can thrive alongside them, giving Chinese users and businesses legitimate options to choose domestic champions. They are correct, that is contrary to popular belief, to the point I question if this author is wrong. Living in a country for 8 years does not an expert make. My understanding is foreign companies are “welcomed” in, so long as they give heavy ownership to Chinese citizens/companies, are ok with stolen IP, and are fine doing whatever the government tells them to do (like giving them full access to the data centers, which are required to be in China).
- djoldman 1y agoAnyone have examples of startups starting out in a European country, keeping their HQ in Europe, and taking big market share in the US?
- klabb3 1y agoAren’t American startups enjoying access to capital markets to a much larger extent, which in turn is a result of financialization of the US economy and demand for USD as a reserve currency (ie unrelated to tech itself)? My impression is US VC startups are not trying to sell anything to customers or break even, it’s a game of hype and future potential from inception to very late in the game. Basically, you don’t even have a business model until you’ve passed through all the rounds and even longer. Instead, you’re working towards finding and validating PMF, often with free or subsidized products to capture markets before even thinking about ROI. All while appearing successful since the VC money keeps flowing, essentially driving the car while the company is changing tyres. In the last decade, had anyone tried to optimize for profit or dividends in the startup world? OTOH my impression of EU startups are addressing an existing validated need (such as CRMs, booking systems etc). While I do think it’s also culturally more risk- and novelty averse, in terms of capital access you just can’t afford anywhere near the length and size of the runway.
- pas 1y agothe financialization and the exorbitant privilege of the USD are probably not negligible factors, but they are simply miniscule compared to the stark difference in the dynamics of the Valley and other VC/startup scenes. https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/11/why-the-canadian-tech-scene-doesnt-work/ https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/11/why-the-canadian-tech-scene...
- dsalzman 1y ago> Or take fragmented markets. Same question: how could US startups successfully conquer these fragmented EU markets when European startups can't? I think this assumption is wrong. By the time a “startup” in the US expands into Europe they are really not a “startup” anymore. They have a proven business model in the US and have raised 100Ms. So succeeding in Europe is not a fair comparison. When Airbnb expanded into Europe in 2011 they had raised 120m and acquired a company in Germany to kickstart the expansion.
- FinnLobsien 1y agoI'm European and there's a lot to bemoan and many reasons why Europe is behind (overregulation, fragmentation, etc.). And this article is directionally correct in the sense that Europe has internalized a sense of inferiority and will hype up American companies. But the culprits he talks about are shaky at best: > Take excessive regulations for instance, which gets mentioned all the time. If they were such a hindrance to startups, why would American startups succeed in Europe - like Airbnb in our case - and European startups not? We all face the same regulations This is just wrong. Yes, the regulations are the same. No, the burden relative to company resources isn't the same. A company with billions in the bank has options most EU startups don't: 1. Pay a battalion-sized compliance team 2. Ignore the law, pay the fines when they come, continue to ignore the law 3. Get into years-long, drawn-out legal battles while changing nothing Yes, we face the same regulations. No, they don't have the same impact. It's sort of like a person who inherited millions saying "Cost of living isn't a problem, we all face the same housing costs". > Or take fragmented markets. Same question: how could US startups successfully conquer these fragmented EU markets when European startups can't? Same thing. Localization, local entities and complying with local regulations are a lot easier when you can throw a couple million at it. Meanwhile a startup can barely comply with all of one country's regulations. = You can criticize overregulation, the fact that EU grants almost always arrive at incumbents that can afford lobbyists (the old money class), etc. But I think "the media" plays the tiniest part in this. Traditional media has been in decline for 20 years. If anything, yes, we need a shift in cultural narrative, away from internalized inferiority. But the idea that some gatekeeper at a newspaper changed the trajectory at a startup I think is wrong. Besides, this reads a bit like "Who has the idea first should get all the money", which is rarely how things work.
- h1fra 1y agoUS startup coming the EU can sustain the bureaucracy because they are already printing money to pay the lawyers. Anyway I also don't believe it's that, but the fact that there is 30 different cultures, regulations, markets, whereas in the US there are one big market that speaks the same language.
- alxlaz 1y ago> [German engineers and tech workers a]re not the kind to release half-baked products and patch issues later What the article doesn't point out is that this is deeply ingrained not just among companies but among customers, too, and it's one of the many culture shocks I've seen my colleagues who move between US and EU markets experience. If a European customer (adjusting for geographical variation, Europe is pretty big and diverse) runs into some weird issue and they call tech support, there's a very good chance that you've already lost them. It doesn't matter if tech support was super helpful, remedied things right away, and the customer support experience was top notch. The perception is that if they had tech support to un-break it, someone not only cut corners, but didn't even cut them very well, and now they wasted their time, too. This isn't "just a cultural thing", it's ingrained because of how customers themselves do business, too (which makes it especially difficult to deal with in a B2B setting). The whole chain of commercial relations and norms is structured in such a way that depending on a "move fast and break things" platform is a very, very bad idea. This is one of the most frequent things I had to explain in review meetings, and it went both ways: - People who moved from US to EU markets didn't understand why customers had nothing but good words to say about customer support and then didn't renew contracts citing quality issues - People who moved from EU to US markets going nuts over product release timelines getting aggressively slashed not so much because the feature sheet was too thin but because they thought there was no way to get those features tested enough
- oytis 1y agoI don't know what country is it, but being in Germany I've had to interact with customer support (for internet providers, banks etc.) a lot. At the quality was not top notch at all. The companies are well alive and thriving.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y agoWhat is "hype" Why do startups fail without it "EU startups fail because their press refuses to hype them up" Would non-EU startups fail if the press ("journalists") did not "hype them up"
- yc-kraln 1y agoThe article reads like sour grapes: It's always someone else's fault. It was your company. If you knew the press in the US was better, /why didn't you expand to the US/? /Why didn't you raise money in the US?/ Companies are ultimately transnational, the market for capital, talent, and eyeballs is global, and if you weren't getting what you wanted from the European press, why didn't you go after the American press? There are some structural things which make things more difficult than if you're living in SF, LA, or NYC--I'd argue more strongly it's the lack of pension funds investing as LPs in funds which results in less overall money in the ecosystem--but there's a LOT of the US which is not those places, and I would strongly argue that it's easier to be a startup in Berlin or Paris than in Chicago or Dallas.
- waltercool 1y ago[dead]
- amai 1y agoAbsolutely true! So - https://european-alternatives.eu/ https://european-alternatives.eu/ - https://www.goeuropean.org/ https://www.goeuropean.org/ - https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/ - https://buy-european.net/ https://buy-european.net/