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Americans fail to appreciate a few things about our economy 1. We have a large homgoneous market where you can build a product and it’s expected it can succeed

• bestouff 9mo ago
  ... and Canada doesn't seem very keen on going on like this.
  • eigenspace 9mo ago
    Yeah, assuming Canada is just going to keep going along buying American software and services seems pretty naive. There's less capacity to build alternatives in Canada than there is in Europe, but as Europe builds out alternative ecosystems, Canadians will likely be just as eager customers as Europeans (if not more eager). The beauty of so many of these solutions being open source solutions also means that it creates avenues for cooperation between organizations that have no official cooperation agreement. E.g. The Austrian federal Military, the state of Schleswig-Holstein, and the city of Leon have no direct forum for cooperating on software projects, yet all three are contributing to the development and rapid adoption of Nextcloud. Canada can easily get in on this too.
  • kylehotchkiss 9mo ago
    Canada has roughly the population of California, and Aus/NZ combined have populations less than California. For these types of market analyses, these countries are closer to US states in market potential.
    • iso1631 9mo ago
      Sure. Canada has a GDP of: Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska, Mississippi, New Mexico, Idaho, New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont put together. That's the equivalent of 18 states. Throw in Aus and NZ too and you add another 7 states -- Louisiana, Alabama, Utah, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nevada and Iowa. Ontario alone has a larger GDP than 45 of the 50 US states, and a bigger GDP than New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont put together.
      • deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      • realo 9mo ago
        I am pretty sure many in Minnesota right now would love to be able to exit the current fascist regime and be part of Canada instead ...
        • eigenspace 9mo ago
          Canada isn't coming to save you. Get your own house in order before it burns ours down.
      • mgh95 9mo ago
        > Ontario alone has a larger GDP than 45 of the 50 US states, and a bigger GDP than New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont put together. This is not correct as of 2024. In 2024, Ontario had a GDP of CAD 1.17B. [1] In USD, this is (at .73 exchange rate, which is favorable for these calculations) this comes to US 854B. In 2024, the following US states had greater GDPs [2]: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and tied with Washington. GDP growth in 2025 was worse for Ontario than these states, and it would be expected Ontarios' position to continue to decline. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/248023/us-gross-domestic-product-gdp-by-state/?srsltid=AfmBOoqIlNJitZ3kIe64NHr_9No-WXKMLR-6CZgtGTI15qr7GpzMEkWF https://www.statista.com/statistics/248023/us-gross-domestic...
• kylehotchkiss 9mo ago
  India, but many companies aren't willing to price for the market nor respect corporate norms there.
  • zulban 9mo ago
    What corporate norms are notably different in this context?
  • benterix 9mo ago
    I guess the point here is to keep high prices. If you lower the prices, you can try to enter even Africa, but it's simply easier to keep more or less uniform pricing, unless you're Steam-size and are able to spend resources on doing this properly.
  • SoftTalker 9mo ago
    Weird, because software has probably the lowest marginal cost of goods sold of any product or service. You can make money selling at almost any price. Yes, there is some cost to provisioning and running a cloud account. It's pretty small though. Some disk space and electricity. By "corporate norms" I presume you mean bribes paid to the person making the purchasing decision?
  • Acrobatic_Road 9mo ago
    No, thank you. I would rather run Chinese spyware.
  • guerrilla 9mo ago
    > nor respect corporate norms there. What do you mean?
• mc32 9mo ago
  From a world domination point of view fragmentation is bad. On the other hand heterogeneity is good for choice and freedom as at least on paper if one platform kicks you off due to whatever curbs on freedom, you have alternative choices. Heterogeneity/fragmentation also makes it harder for companies and countries to impose their mores on others. From that PoV Africa also should develop its own tools so as not to be subject to either North American or European values but their own values.
• mrits 9mo ago
  I think they are a decade or two late to migrate away. They will end up developing their own in a time where these are loss leaders. It’s likely they will pay for it in a bundle while just not using it. Not to mention in my experience EU companies don’t know how to migrate away from anything as their tech companies operate at the efficiency of a US government agency.
• bparsons 9mo ago
  Canada is in the same boat as the EU -- desperately looking for alternative vendors at the moment.
  • betaby 9mo ago
    Canada's government is not looking for MS or AWS alternatives.
    • 8note 9mo ago
      i wouldnt be surprised if theyre talking about it internally, and avoiding saying it out loud until they've secured alternative options
• hintymad 9mo ago
  In a way, isn't it what the Americans and even the current administration want? We want a strong Europe who is keen on preserving and developing the glorious modern civilization that it created. We want a strong Europe who can build and innovate instead of regulating and fining. In contrast, we certainly don't want see the disastrous joke like Northvolt. We certainly don't want to see the joke that BASF shut down its domestic factories and invested north of 10B in China for state-of-the-art factories. Oh, and we certainly don't want to see a Europe that couldn't defeat Russia and couldn't even out-manufacture Russia, even though Russia's GDP is merely of Guangzhou's.
  • toomuchtodo 9mo ago
    Europe will then redirect the 300B euros it was investing in US treasuries annually to Eurobonds, while redirecting the $300M in purchasing from US companies to EU companies. This is biting the hand that feeds the US. Europe will buy LNG from Canada instead of the US, and continue to purchase imports from China. I agree though that a strong EU is needed, in part to defend against the US, as well as Russia (until the Russian economy reaches failure). CATL is currently building the largest battery factory in Europe in Spain.
    • hintymad 9mo ago
      I think they should (in practice there could be something in the middle). Yes, they may have more bickering with the US, but that's just part of the messy diplomatic process. At the end of the day, we want to see strong allies that share a compatible value system with us. I'm actually more optimistic too: a stronger Europe will earn more respect because of their strength. And that respect will lead to more negotiation instead of more bickering.
    • tick_tock_tick 9mo ago
      lol hahaha Europe will "say" and maybe in a few decades they might get around to starting some of that. Europe still buys gas from Russia; can't even ween itself off it during a war.
      • 9mo ago
• indoordin0saur 9mo ago
  I think it's totally great that competing products get produced in the EU. Not a bad thing from anyone's perspective except the owners of those US companies that will now need to compete.
  • eduction 9mo ago
    It’s great yes, but if we in the US weren’t proving so untrustworthy, EU startups and tech giants could focus on building things that actually might out innovate us and everyone else. Which would be a win-win. Instead they will spend a lot time duplicating tools where only US companies are providing options, and maybe not innovating much if anything in those areas. Or not enough to matter much. I don’t blame them. There is value in trusting your tools and not risk having them weaponized. It’s just sad all around.
    • tdrz 9mo ago
      > It’s great yes, but if we in the US weren’t proving so untrustworthy, EU startups and tech giants could focus on building things that actually might out innovate us and everyone else. Which would be a win-win. Instead they will spend a lot time duplicating tools where only US companies are providing options, and maybe not innovating much if anything in those areas. Or not enough to matter much. You could apply this to Slack vs Teams as well. Slack was already good, Microsoft just duplicated their work, came out with an inferior product and won. So, was it worth it?
      • XorNot 9mo ago
        Teams won by being good enough and bundled into O365. There's probably some value in making a product so available that people can use it where normally they wouldn't have the opportunity.
        • ornornor 9mo ago
          Teams won by being bundled with the rest of the Microsoft stack and shoved down captive (corporate) users throats.
• realo 9mo ago
  Canada is (was?) the single biggest commercial partner of the USA and Trump, in one of his tantrums, threatened to destroy that this week, with 100% tariffs. Canada is very much in the same boat as the EU.
  • brightball 9mo ago
    Why did he threaten 100% tariffs?
    • kl4m 9mo ago
      He did not like the Canadian prime minister's speech about "great powers" weaponizing economic integration, so he decided to prove him right.
    • ihaveajob 9mo ago
      Delusion? Dementia? Being surrounded by yes-men?
    • CMay 9mo ago
      Because Canada has been in trade talks with China and may potentially lower its tariffs on China which gives them a back door into the US. There are some specifics and it's all conditional. It depends on the kinds of deals it settles on.
      • rchaud 9mo ago
        It's not a back door to anything. It's competition for the US and Japanese automotive manufacturers who are protected by the existing tariffs.
        • CMay 9mo ago
          It's multiple things. Yes, the automotive manufacturers matter not just for business sense, but because manufacturing base is important to be able to leverage in case of a war. Manufacturing lines played key roles in WW2. In addition to that, since we're on the car angle, Chinese EVs are basically just privacy nightmares. I mean, all cars are at this point, but that's why we definitely don't want Chinese ones coming across the Canadian border and ending up all over the place. In the end there are in fact legitimate national security concerns that the tariffs address and Canada risks weakening those. So, that is the actual answer to why.
• xiphias2 9mo ago
  There's only one thing they need to replace if they want to show independence: ChatGPT. They had their chance with Mistral and failed spectacularly with just creating anti-AI regulations. As a European I'm happy to use their product (and pay for it), I just ask one tiny little thing from them: build a better model with lower latency.
  • ddalex 9mo ago
    > build a better model with lower latency. That's mighty impossible for the european mindset - people here are not so risk-eager as to through hundreds of billions on infrastructure for something that might return a profit.
    • tormeh 9mo ago
      The US capital markets are truly a wonder to behold. There's no way to replace that. For good and ill, you'd only get weird looks in Europe if you asked for €10 billion for an unproven business model in what's somehow also a competitive market. To be fair this example does look a lot like insanity.
      • stackghost 9mo ago
        >There's no way to replace that. Nothing is truly irreplaceable
      • LunaSea 9mo ago
        It's not really a wonder, Americans will simply lose their pensions if the AI business models don't work out. The same way it happened many times in the past.
    • yobbo 9mo ago
      This is part of the answer. I have a theory about the second part; European consumers have an even more suspicious view of "corporate overlords" if they are domestic/European than if they are American. Not because Americans are more trustworthy, but because they see Europeans as "anonymous masses" and are therefore more "neutral" to the internal struggles in Europe. Signing up to a service owned by a European "dynastic" family, possibly in a neighbouring country, feels like more of a surrender of autonomy.
• KptMarchewa 9mo ago
  China, India. There are little EU-wide network effects similar to American ones.
  • softwaredoug 9mo ago
    Outside companies don't do well in China India doesn't have nearly the purchasing power of EU or US
  • ben_w 9mo ago
    China: Everything that puts western buyers off Chinese stuff, same happens in reverse. E.g. translation is really really hard. Every previous time I have illustrated how bad Google Translate is at this by quoting the Chinese output, someone has missed the point and replied to tell me the output is so bad as to be almost incomprehensible. India: Lots of people, sure, even after accounting for how they've only recently fully electrified and don't all have office jobs where software is even slightly relevant… but the entire economy even in aggregate let alone per capita (and therefore TAM) is smaller, and the linguistic situation is (according to what I was told by Indian coworkers at a previous job) an exciting mix where everyone speaks 3+ languages and intermixes them in basically every sentence.
• PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
  >2. EU is the easiest second market, and another step change of hundreds of millions of customers in a somewhat unified market I was making hardware at one point, and it took less than a day to decide that Europe was not getting our product. The regulations were insane. I imagine software is significantly easier, but there is a mountain of difference when it comes to electrical and plumbing.
  • lm28469 9mo ago
    Regulations are le bad. - signed someone from a country where ~10m people still drink water from lead pipes (the USA)
    • codyb 9mo ago
      Regulations are neutral. They can be positive, or negative. And should be pruned occasionally probably. And yea, we have lots of old lead pipes here in certain places. But let's not pretend we can't find fault with the immigrant ghettos in Europe or myriad other issues y'all have over there. There's problems everywhere there's sufficient numbers and complexity.
      • deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
    • rangestransform 9mo ago
      Lead pipes in Chicago were due to union regulatory capture and not lack of regulations
    • deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    • mgh95 9mo ago
      And in France alone 7.5 million home have lead pipes [1]. [1] https://www.zerowaterfilter.com/blogs/zerowater-knowledge-center/lead-in-tap-water https://www.zerowaterfilter.com/blogs/zerowater-knowledge-ce...
• Zigurd 9mo ago
  The typical mature technology company in the US earns half their revenue from outside the US. Makes it harder to understand even tacitly supporting white supremacy and ignorant isolationism.
  • overfeed 9mo ago
    A core tenet of the "dark enlightenment" mind-virus that has taken hold of the valley is the idea that civilizational decline/collapse is not only inevitable but imminent, so they don't really mind getting a bigger slice of a smaller cake, as long as they are in charge[1]. However, they also are getting citizenships from other countries or buying pacific island bunkers: just in case. 1. The collapse inevitabilitism absolves them of any guilt when their actions make the world worse, since "it was going to happen anyway"
    • XorNot 9mo ago
      It's also pervasive. The weirdest thing in the world is watching someone I know who works for a big tech company and moved to the States suddenly wanting to get a New Zealand citizenship "just in case".
  • dragon-hn 9mo ago
    They supported it because they saw an opportunity to remove limitations on them, both domestically (see FCC, restrictions on state level AI laws, etc) as well as internationally (regulations, digital taxes, etc in the EU and Canada, for example).
• jshen 9mo ago
  It's not clear that anything will be kneecapped. You need more than a desire to not use these products, you also need a viable alternative. Using products from China or Russia probably isn't deemed viable if the concern is politics, which leads to a need for Europe or Canada to build alternatives. They have not been good at this for a long time, maybe that will change, but it's not clear that it will.
  • Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
    India. Today India invited President of EU commission on its republic day & I feel like there are discussions on signing free trade agreement. I was in my car watching it live when I recognized the President of EU commissioner and I was like hey!! I feel like friendly relations of EU and India are definitely on the rise & I have said this previously as well and talked to my other cousins/family who works in Coding and most agree that a deeper India-EU ties are possible. One thing we were discussing is if EU could directly invest funds in Indian companies instead of going through 10 layers of councils/commissioning companies but to people who want to either build private solutions (Preferably open source?) I do feel like that's inevitable too. EU's financing is something which I have heard is tricky within EU itself but there are some recent initiatives to stream line it and perhaps India can even integrate into it if its actually net positive for India. Overall I feel like I am pretty optimistic about India EU relations (though I feel like I have bias but what do people from EU think respectfully?,I'd be more than happy to answer as I talked to my developer cousin about it for almost 2 days on how EU India integration especially in tech feels so good and inevitable haha :>)
    • Am4TIfIsER0ppos 9mo ago
      I can't wait to see how many indians we are going to be forced to import due to that "free trade deal". They must have looked at how well it went in canada and said among themselves "now that's how you destroy a country we gotta get some of that". [EDIT] Hopefully national politicians get balls, more balls, and tell their MEPs to vote against it like the mercosur deal.
      • 9mo ago
• Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
  > When we piss everyone off in the EU tech company growth gets kneecapped and limited to US / Canada I don't think Canada's pretty entertained about US either. US is completely alone in this regards. From what I can feel, US wanted to isolate itself from Global economy/Globalization and its succeeding at it.
• beloch 9mo ago
  Don't take the Canadian market for granted. There's a strong desire to forge closer links with the EU now and reduce dependence on products that could be weaponized against us at any time. Geographic proximity doesn't count for much when it comes to software.
  • rchaud 9mo ago
    It should also go without saying that Canada already had a vertically integrated telecoms giant in RIM/Blackberry that handled end to end smartphone comms globally in the 3G era, right down to compressing emails through their servers so they could be transmitted efficiently over 2G data networks. Unfortunately Blackberry was heavily dependent on US telecoms and corporations buying their servers and devices to pad their profits. And since then, local engineering talent from the Kitchener-Waterloo region has been siphoned off by Silicon Valley money, mostly to craft elegant solutions to deliver more ads to your devices.
    • sbarre 9mo ago
      Canada's telcos are a "narrow waist" for a lot of software licensing. A lot of business customers bundle their business/productivity software with their phone and Internet services. Did you know you can buy Google Workspace and/or Microsoft Office through your telco? I was shocked to find out how many do this when I worked for one of the telcos. Just like how consumers bundle their streaming services with their home Internet plans. One bill for all the things is convenient. I would bet it's the same in EU (but can't say for sure, I only have first-hand info about Canada). If there was a real push to move companies away from these platforms, it would probably start there, mostly because the telcos are typically very government-aligned due to regulatory and spectrum concerns, and would get in line with government efforts to promote non-US alternatives, if they decided to. Getting the majority of consumers to ditch their US-based streaming and entertainment is another thing though, I can't see that happening ever, no matter how at-odds the US and Canada become.
      • afiori 9mo ago
        in the eu i think this is significantly less common
• dyauspitr 9mo ago
  We’re also pissing off Canada. This administration is actively destroying America to reduce the influence of American liberal values on the world. Destroying America is part of the plan.
• mytailorisrich 9mo ago
  Let's not go over the top. The announcement is about a tool developed internally by the French government to use internally, too. This is a very wasteful approach that does not create real competitors to US giants, and it is liable to be cancelled at the next round of cost reduction...
  • softwaredoug 9mo ago
    It’s not just this, it’s the arrogant attitude of the administration on tarriffs, Ukraine, and a broad range of topics
    • mytailorisrich 9mo ago
      And that will change in 3 years or even at the end of this year... A lot is blown out of proportion by the EU itself because it serves its own agenda to expand reach and power. Realistically there is zero alternative to US tech/online dominance in sight in Europe and the credible competitors are more likely to be Chinese (tiktok, temu, shein, etc.) What is happening is EU politics.
  • thibaut_barrere 9mo ago
    An insider view: there is a major push in a lot of state related team & department at the moment to go “sovereign tooling”. With alternatives for a lot of stuff. This is not just a corner of the universe, most of us are switching tools at the moment, the trend is definitively big.
    • mytailorisrich 9mo ago
      My point is that you don't achieve that by having the state start developing internal tools (unless it's highly sensitive stuff like for the intelligence services or military) for standard office applications. The French state is already massively oversized...
• xracy 9mo ago
  At this point I am praying that one of the things pushing back on this administration will be American Companies that have gotten rich on the back of "American Globalism", learning just how much it hurts when the US doesn't do its responsibility to remain Allies with it's nominal Allies. And the EU, Canada, and anyone else who the current US administration is slighting, should absolutely be moving cash hard and fast away from the American Economy, if they want change in US policy. TACO, is about economic policy, and it's hard to imagine this administration continuing it's more unpopular global (and even local policies), if it's discovering it's not actually backed by US Mega-Corps.
  • fakedang 9mo ago
    The wheels for the great decoupling have been set though. The companies (which are also persons apparently thanks to the perversions of American law) have made their bed and will have to sleep in it themselves. Of course, there are huge unrealized opportunities to be had in economic powerhouses such as Belarus, Argentina, Russia, and whichever other member exists in the Board of Peace.
  • 0cf8612b2e1e 9mo ago
    There is no unringing this bell. Maybe a sane administration would slow the migration, but the damage is done. America is a capricious partner who can flip the table at any moment.
    • hn_throwaway_99 9mo ago
      100% The reason there is no unringing this bell is not just that we have a capricious, vainglorious president, it's that all of checks and balances that are supposed to restrain the executive have proven worthless so far. Republicans in Congress have completely declared their impotence, having fully relinquished their duties that the Constitution specifically delegates to the legislative branch, like tariff power, war powers, etc.
    • kettlecorn 9mo ago
      A terrible potential is that US products may find themselves unable to get footing internationally, due to broken trust and increased competition, so instead they'll try to rely on every-expanding protectionism and corruption to stay dominant in the US market. Just as we've seen in the car industry we'll wind up less innovative, less productive, and less economical.
• shin_lao 9mo ago
  EU market is by no mean easy, it's heavily fragmented requiring very often intense localization effort.
  • jansper39 9mo ago
    Seems easier to comply to the single market rules though than 50 odd different states.
    • nozzlegear 9mo ago
      I'm American and sell my software to all 50 states (plus the rest of the world). I don't have a single special market rule for any state, not even my own. My payment providers take care of tax collection for me and my accountant tells me how much to pay the government each tax season.
  • softwaredoug 9mo ago
    For sure. But a major goal of US foreign policy was to create an EU so it would be easier for trade. Backsliding on support, wanting to sabotage it, doesn’t help US companies as it just adds burden.
• simfree 9mo ago
  What was the last successful French software project in the Telecom or Conferencing space? This project has been forced into the hands of 40k users, but likely due to a plethora of bugs and user experience issues they are picking a date far in the future for broad deployment. Belledonne Communications has been actively breaking Linphone, conference calling broke back in August 2023 for example and remains broken to this day. If we look to Québécoise in Canada, SFLPhone would crash after 2 dozen calls, and Jami (formerly GNU Ring) is still a beta quality product with some neat DHT concepts that I'd love to see work. The French sphere has a software delivery and quality problem. The user rejection factor will remain high until they choose to fix the bugs that cause users to run away.
  • Glawen 9mo ago
    Impossible n'est pas français ! And you seriously are saying Teams is the greatest thing since sliced bread? Ok I concede the videoconferencing works, but it's quite a feat to make a text chat window so slow and buggy. Sometimes when I type, it is spelling stuff backwards! Message texting is a solved problem since IRC or ICQ
    • simfree 9mo ago
      I made no such assertion, please do not put words in my mouth.
  • RiverCrochet 9mo ago
    Idk, VLC is kinda everywhere and while not the super cutting edge of video playing anymore, is still pretty OK. If they'd just attach a chat and SIP client to VLC they'd be set.
    • tvshtr 9mo ago
      I don't know what's the ETA on VLC 4 but it's been entirely usable for me for the past year, and it's pretty cutting edge (internally). Hopefully it's not too long before we'll see beta releases.
  • 9mo ago
• thayne 9mo ago
  Some Americans. Others of us are very aware of this.
• carlosjobim 9mo ago
  > When we piss everyone off in the EU Companies are supposed to compete anyway, without having to get pissed off first.
• baby 9mo ago
  There is also australian and british markets I assume?
  • angry_octet 9mo ago
    100M people isn't nothing, but it is highly likely that EU products would compete strongly in those markets.
  • tvshtr 9mo ago
    Britain is trying to get tighter with UE and back into the common market.
    • hardlianotion 9mo ago
      It’s not trying to get back into the common market.
• bandrami 9mo ago
  > there’s not an easy 3rd economy There isn't right now but India very much wants to be that in about a decade
• anticodon 9mo ago
  EU is a colony of USA. If it would be necessary, US can simply force EU to buy US technology. If you check the EU politics, they never do or say anything that can be interpreted negatively by US or damage US interests. In 2025, EU and US signed an agreement that obliges EU to buy energy resources from US at ridiculously high prices, despite that EU is already struggling with the high price of energy.
  • jongjong 9mo ago
    In the tech sector, EU has been a colony of pretty much every other country which it used to colonize. IMO, the fines that the EU used to collect regularly from US big tech companies were bribes to keep suppressing the EU tech sector.
• wdr1 9mo ago
  > 2. EU is the easiest second market, and another step change of hundreds of millions of customers in a somewhat unified market What about China? India?
  • DaedalusII 9mo ago
    india is a great market, but: 1. extremely price sensitive; zoho is regarded as expensive 2. 121 major languages in active/business use, with 22 formally recognised by government. These people may understand limited english. 3. 28 unique states plus 8 unique territories. so in many ways its like expanding across the US, except there are 22 languages as well as 36 state law regimes, plus federal law, and then indian city law, transfer pricing regimes, currency settlement issues... etc. China is also possible, but still price sensitive and strongly culturally prefers local solutions edit: fixed formatting.
  • Beretta_Vexee 9mo ago
    To add to what has already been said: - Business law is in its infancy and local courts excessively favour the Indian side. In the event of a dispute, enforcing the terms of the contract can be very complicated or even illusory. - Banking and insurance services are complicated, slow and expensive. - There is not one but many different sets of legislation per province. There are gaps in the legislation and it is necessary to go through a long compliance process based on the manufacturer's or supplier's legislation, involving translation, negotiation, etc. - Each time there is a change in decision-makers, at least part of the process must be repeated. I work for an energy company and we have a team that has been working on an Indian project for almost ten years, without the project really seeming to have progressed. The Indian market is a bottomless pit if you don't have a very high-ranking political sponsor in the Indian government.
• tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
  US perspective: EU looks like a great place to expand into once I've reached some critical size threshold. But I can't imagine starting a business there. In the US we have effectively limitless capital, tons of tech talent, and many fewer regulations. Just about everything I'd want to do in a startup appears illegal or otherwise infeasible in the EU because of the morass of data and AI and energy regulations.
  • worksonmine 9mo ago
    > Just about everything I'd want to do in a startup appears illegal or otherwise infeasible in the EU because of the morass of data and AI and energy regulations. Sounds like you're doing some shady, disgusting bullshit or you're exaggerating the regulations. I hope it's the latter.
    • DaedalusII 9mo ago
      i understand it from a neutral perspective. building a simple business in south east asia is drastically easier. there are effectively no privacy laws, no class action lawsuits (a big US problem not EU), no gdpr, energy is cheaper, no punitive labour courts, much looser zoning laws. almost no restrictions on international trade, no withholding taxes, no major issues with transfer pricing, no capital gains taxes, relaxed packaging laws. of course, there are different challenges. When you go from an open market to EU mode it is insanely stressful having to suddenly deal with these enormous regulatory regimes that simply dont exist anywhere else, and to figure out how to deal with them. this stress is an energy cost, which becomes a capital cost, which makes it much more difficult for small businesses to be created. I also find supranational regulatory regimes difficult to understand, unlike other parts of the world where each country has its own law and thats it. I think its generally a good thing for the people who live there though! when i am driving around in ASEAN i don't look at my speed. in EU i am anxiously making sure i am 1km/h below the limit to avoid a fine in the mail.
    • tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
      ok bro I think you might want come down off your high horse and mingle amongst the people again
• paganel 9mo ago
  > s in a somewhat unified market It's really not when it comes to the internet. First of all I'm in a very big minority here in Romania because I can read French (I can also speak somehow), but the majority of the people around me cannot. And let's not mention German. So, when the majority of EU citizens cannot speak the languages of EU's two biggest countries by population then it means that the market is not unified. And, no, using English as a lingua franca across the continent going forward is not going to cut it, that will mean cultural erasure. Maybe in the future some EU bureaucrats will advocate for that, i.e. to replace French, German, Spanish, Italian etc as people's main language, but I think we're pretty far away from that. Also, making everyone around these parts bilingual is also not going to work, it's either English as a first language (or French, or German) or nothing.
• wlecometo 9mo ago
  > When we piss everyone off in the EU tech company growth gets kneecapped and limited to US well, you can finally hardcode the date in mm/dd/yy format without worrying for a menu to change it.
• stopbulying 9mo ago
  > When we piss everyone off in the EU tech company growth gets kneecapped and limited to US / Canada. The Internet Research Agency worked to get Trump elected in the US. Putin paid them to push Trump here. Has Russia won EU tech by foreign interference in the US? FWIU Yandex is operating out of EU now? "Russian Court Imposes $2.5 Decillion Fine on Google" (2025) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD44zqhCnMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD44zqhCnMo
• zx8080 9mo ago
  EU market is _very_ regulated comparing to the US one, and also don't dismiss the language barrier in the european countries. Not everyone speaks English.