Arnaud Bertrand (creator of HouseTrip (sold to TripAdvisor)) explains in a twitter post that: ____ > At first, when I created the company and before Airbn

Arnaud 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