4 ms·

Interesting that these people only represent a single recent, original European startup: Skype. The rest of the companies are either old (SAP), not in Europe (

by pg 14y ago

Interesting that these people only represent a single recent, original European startup: Skype. The rest of the companies are either old (SAP), not in Europe (Sun), or localized variants of things invented elsewhere (the ISPs, the Samwers). And even Skype has been acquired.

mlchild 14y ago
Seems to support the power-law view that Silicon Valley is a better place to start a company than everywhere else combined.
mixmax 14y ago
Being Danish I remember that in the early days of Skype they made the rounds amongst Danish investors and VC's. There were no takers (with the notable exception of Morten Lund who made a small investment and made a fortune from it). Nobody had any idea what the heck they were talking about, so they went abroad and got funding from more sophisticated and knowledgeable investors. I think a lot of the reasons can be found in that answer.
d4nt 14y ago
There's no denying that the US is better at making tech billionaires than Europe, but the US list of top tech billionaires is hardly a picture of new thinking and innovation: Gates, Allen and Balmer are all from Microsoft (which, like SAP, was founded in the 70s). One would be Ellison (Oracle was founded in the 70s too). And one would be Dell (and making computers is something the British invented).
- rpm4321 14y ago
  As I mentioned below, if you expanded the list from 10 to 50 or 100, the US list would be a Who's Who of start ups, and the Euro one a Who's That? Besides Skype and Spotify, unfortunately there just haven't really been very many mainstream start ups coming out of Europe. Also, I'm not sure what Alan Turing has to do with Sinclair and Amstrad failing and Dell being successful. From what I understand of the early development of the computer, much more work was done in Boston, NY, and the Valley than in the UK.
  - d4nt 14y ago
    I agree with everything you say, there is no doubt that the US is way better at producing successful tech startups. But pg's point was specifically about how the Euro top ten was dominated by old companies and boring business models. My point is that aside from google, amazon and Facebook, the US top ten is not all that hip and fresh either.
    - xiaoma 14y ago
      >"My point is that aside from google, amazon and Facebook, the US top ten is not all that hip and fresh either." That's a pretty big aside.
CookWithMe 14y ago
I was interested to see what it's like for the US, so I did go through the forbes list [1]: 1. Bill Gates 2. Larry Ellison 3. Jeff Bezos 4. Sergey Brin 5. Larry Page 6. Steve Ballmer 7. Paul Allen 8. Michael Dell 9. Laurenne Powell Jobs (widow of Steve Jobs) 10. Mark Zuckerberg If the definition of old is "younger than 20 years", this represents 3 startups (Amazon, Google, Facebook). If the definition is "younger than Skype", then only Facebook is left. [1] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400 http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400 [edit: formatting]
- rpm4321 14y ago
  Yeah, but come up with another big time Euro start up success story, other than Skype or Spotify (Spotify arguably happened in Europe only because the labels would only allow streaming in small Euro markets at first as a test case). If you expand the list from 10 to 50 to lessen the dominance of the legacy players, the US list would be a Who's Who of start ups, and the Euro one a Who's That? Discounting the Samwers for obvious reasons.
  - d4nt 14y ago
    How about Arm?
    - rpm4321 14y ago
      Yep, that's certainly an important company. I think you'd probably agree that it's not a household name, and other examples are few and far between, but I probably should have mentioned ARM.
      - beambot 14y ago
        "Not a household name"... yet probably at least one processor in (nearly) every household. It qualifies.
- spindritf 14y ago
  > I was interested to see what it's like for the US We suck compared to the US[1] regardless of how you slice billionaires lists. [1] https://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/290-width/images/print-edition/20120728_FBC674.png https://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/2...
ovi256 14y ago
I dare to say Xavier Niel has brought enough innovation with Free which is more than just another ISP. They came in with a low price, disrupting the market, because they pioneered cost-savings everywhere. For their broadband service, they even designed their modem/set-top box themselves, and built a lot of internal systems that other ISPs outsourced. Their service is very geek friendly, and as a consequence is a geek favourite. Now they're disrupting mobile service, even if it's not going as smoothly as desired, they forced all the other network operators to offer lower prices. I find it interesting they have a very entrepreneurial YAGNI and fake-it-till-you-make-it swagger. They really do a lot with very few resources.
- GuiA 14y ago
  Yes! Free is a fantastic, innovative company that is actually bringing positive change to their landscape. A company like Free in the US would be like a fountain of icy water in hell.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

by pg 14y ago

mlchild 14y ago

Seems to support the power-law view that Silicon Valley is a better place to start a company than everywhere else combined.

mixmax 14y ago

Being Danish I remember that in the early days of Skype they made the rounds amongst Danish investors and VC's. There were no takers (with the notable exception of Morten Lund who made a small investment and made a fortune from it). Nobody had any idea what the heck they were talking about, so they went abroad and got funding from more sophisticated and knowledgeable investors. I think a lot of the reasons can be found in that answer.

d4nt 14y ago

There's no denying that the US is better at making tech billionaires than Europe, but the US list of top tech billionaires is hardly a picture of new thinking and innovation: Gates, Allen and Balmer are all from Microsoft (which, like SAP, was founded in the 70s). One would be Ellison (Oracle was founded in the 70s too). And one would be Dell (and making computers is something the British invented).

rpm4321 14y ago
As I mentioned below, if you expanded the list from 10 to 50 or 100, the US list would be a Who's Who of start ups, and the Euro one a Who's That? Besides Skype and Spotify, unfortunately there just haven't really been very many mainstream start ups coming out of Europe. Also, I'm not sure what Alan Turing has to do with Sinclair and Amstrad failing and Dell being successful. From what I understand of the early development of the computer, much more work was done in Boston, NY, and the Valley than in the UK.
- d4nt 14y ago
  I agree with everything you say, there is no doubt that the US is way better at producing successful tech startups. But pg's point was specifically about how the Euro top ten was dominated by old companies and boring business models. My point is that aside from google, amazon and Facebook, the US top ten is not all that hip and fresh either.
  - xiaoma 14y ago
    >"My point is that aside from google, amazon and Facebook, the US top ten is not all that hip and fresh either." That's a pretty big aside.

CookWithMe 14y ago

I was interested to see what it's like for the US, so I did go through the forbes list [1]: 1. Bill Gates 2. Larry Ellison 3. Jeff Bezos 4. Sergey Brin 5. Larry Page 6. Steve Ballmer 7. Paul Allen 8. Michael Dell 9. Laurenne Powell Jobs (widow of Steve Jobs) 10. Mark Zuckerberg If the definition of old is "younger than 20 years", this represents 3 startups (Amazon, Google, Facebook). If the definition is "younger than Skype", then only Facebook is left. [1] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400 http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400 [edit: formatting]

rpm4321 14y ago
Yeah, but come up with another big time Euro start up success story, other than Skype or Spotify (Spotify arguably happened in Europe only because the labels would only allow streaming in small Euro markets at first as a test case). If you expand the list from 10 to 50 to lessen the dominance of the legacy players, the US list would be a Who's Who of start ups, and the Euro one a Who's That? Discounting the Samwers for obvious reasons.
- d4nt 14y ago
  How about Arm?
  - rpm4321 14y ago
    Yep, that's certainly an important company. I think you'd probably agree that it's not a household name, and other examples are few and far between, but I probably should have mentioned ARM.
    - beambot 14y ago
      "Not a household name"... yet probably at least one processor in (nearly) every household. It qualifies.
spindritf 14y ago
> I was interested to see what it's like for the US We suck compared to the US[1] regardless of how you slice billionaires lists. [1] https://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/290-width/images/print-edition/20120728_FBC674.png https://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/2...

ovi256 14y ago

I dare to say Xavier Niel has brought enough innovation with Free which is more than just another ISP. They came in with a low price, disrupting the market, because they pioneered cost-savings everywhere. For their broadband service, they even designed their modem/set-top box themselves, and built a lot of internal systems that other ISPs outsourced. Their service is very geek friendly, and as a consequence is a geek favourite. Now they're disrupting mobile service, even if it's not going as smoothly as desired, they forced all the other network operators to offer lower prices. I find it interesting they have a very entrepreneurial YAGNI and fake-it-till-you-make-it swagger. They really do a lot with very few resources.

GuiA 14y ago
Yes! Free is a fantastic, innovative company that is actually bringing positive change to their landscape. A company like Free in the US would be like a fountain of icy water in hell.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]