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> due in part to burdensome privacy regulations. A large part is due to their approach to startup investing and chronic undercapitalization. GDPR is coming up

by yardie 11mo ago

> due in part to burdensome privacy regulations. A large part is due to their approach to startup investing and chronic undercapitalization. GDPR is coming up 10 years now and the worries about it were overblown. What hasn't budged is Europe is very fiscally conservative on technology. Unless it's coming from their big corporations it's very hard to get funding. Everyone wants the same thing, a sure bet.

bpodgursky 11mo ago
I think this is a very rosy framing. GDPR showed that once you are a ten-billion dollar company, your compliance team can manage GDPR enough to enter the market. For a startup, starting in the EU or entering the EU early is still extremely difficult because the burdens do not scale linearly with size. This means that yes, US tech giants can sell into the EU, but the EU will never get their own domestic tech giants because they simply cannot get off the ground there.
- yardie 11mo ago
  My company did not retain customer data or retained very little. So compliance for us was very simple. If your business venture relies on that PII data you're going to have a hard time. And I'm not exactly sympathetic since I'm regularly getting notified from HaveIbeenPwned about another PII leak.
  - bpodgursky 11mo ago
    I'm not sure what you're looking for here. If your position is "it should be difficult to make a company that has PII" you won't get any significant AI or consumer tech companies in your jurisdiction. That's just reality, they use PII, they personalize on PII, they receive PII, that's how they work. If that is your goal, OK, that's a choice, but then you can't say "oh GDPR fears were overblown". They caused exactly the problems people were predicting, and that's what EU leadership is now trying to change.
    - hdgvhicv 11mo ago
      If I sign up your company I can opt into that personalisation at signup time. You have no business stealing my personal data until we enter an equal agreement.
      - bpodgursky 11mo ago
        > If that is your goal, OK, that's a choice, but then you can't say "oh GDPR fears were overblown". They caused exactly the problems people were predicting I feel like, there's nothing in my statement you can actually disagree with, so you're just expressing general frustration with the state of the world. That's fine. You can set up aggressive PII laws, you're a big boy sovereign nation. But then you will not get domestic tech giants. That's not like, my opinion, that is the reality we are in. I am describing that reality, and that the EU is unhappy with it, and your response is "Here's why we set up laws!". OK. I'm not sure what you are looking for here. We all know how you got here.
    - voidhorse 11mo ago
      This notion that tech companies or even internet companies somehow fundamentally rely on PII is false and just an indicator of how normalized we've let unbounded and needless data collection become. There are tons of business that can run without collecting any or extremely minimal PII. We already let the big companies take this data unnecessarily, let's not also let them brainwash us all into thinking unfettered surveillance is somehow essential to building a software business.

by yardie 11mo ago

bpodgursky 11mo ago

I think this is a very rosy framing. GDPR showed that once you are a ten-billion dollar company, your compliance team can manage GDPR enough to enter the market. For a startup, starting in the EU or entering the EU early is still extremely difficult because the burdens do not scale linearly with size. This means that yes, US tech giants can sell into the EU, but the EU will never get their own domestic tech giants because they simply cannot get off the ground there.

yardie 11mo ago
My company did not retain customer data or retained very little. So compliance for us was very simple. If your business venture relies on that PII data you're going to have a hard time. And I'm not exactly sympathetic since I'm regularly getting notified from HaveIbeenPwned about another PII leak.
- bpodgursky 11mo ago
  I'm not sure what you're looking for here. If your position is "it should be difficult to make a company that has PII" you won't get any significant AI or consumer tech companies in your jurisdiction. That's just reality, they use PII, they personalize on PII, they receive PII, that's how they work. If that is your goal, OK, that's a choice, but then you can't say "oh GDPR fears were overblown". They caused exactly the problems people were predicting, and that's what EU leadership is now trying to change.
  - hdgvhicv 11mo ago
    If I sign up your company I can opt into that personalisation at signup time. You have no business stealing my personal data until we enter an equal agreement.
    - bpodgursky 11mo ago
      > If that is your goal, OK, that's a choice, but then you can't say "oh GDPR fears were overblown". They caused exactly the problems people were predicting I feel like, there's nothing in my statement you can actually disagree with, so you're just expressing general frustration with the state of the world. That's fine. You can set up aggressive PII laws, you're a big boy sovereign nation. But then you will not get domestic tech giants. That's not like, my opinion, that is the reality we are in. I am describing that reality, and that the EU is unhappy with it, and your response is "Here's why we set up laws!". OK. I'm not sure what you are looking for here. We all know how you got here.
  - voidhorse 11mo ago
    This notion that tech companies or even internet companies somehow fundamentally rely on PII is false and just an indicator of how normalized we've let unbounded and needless data collection become. There are tons of business that can run without collecting any or extremely minimal PII. We already let the big companies take this data unnecessarily, let's not also let them brainwash us all into thinking unfettered surveillance is somehow essential to building a software business.