Worth noting that the "EU GDP is stagnating terribly" narrative that motivates this post and quite a few of these comments is not true.<p>If you look at cost-relative (PPP) & per-capita numbers, the EU economy has been growing at a very similar or faster rate than the US for decades.<p><a href="https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-eu-economy.php" rel="nofollow">https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-eu-econ...</a> has a good introduction to the top-line numbers. <a href="https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/european-unions-remarkable-growth-performance-relative-united-states" rel="nofollow">https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/european-unions-remarkable-...</a> has a more detailed analysis.<p>The raw GDP differences come in very large part from exchange rate fluctuations and increasing costs & population in the US, not a meaningful increase in what the average American can buy with their earnings. PPP adjusts for these.<p>In terms of "how much <basket of normal purchases> can people buy" numbers, the EU is closer to the US today than it has ever been.<p>(That said, I fully agree with the post's conclusion regardless: a simple unified way to create an EU business & a universal language base would be a huge boost)
I have no idea whether Europeans work harder than Americans, but I do want to say that you can't extrapolate the overall work ethic of America by looking at the SF tech world. It's a very, very small (and very privileged) microcosm of the country.
A lot of the "Europe is bleh" rhetoric is about Western Europe - specifically France, Germany, and the UK (if they make it harder for European and Asian immigrants to come).<p>The Eastern and Central European countries have always felt much more dynamic and open to work hard.<p>There's a reason why the countries on the lefthand side of the graph provided are also the ones with some of the better innovation industries in Europe.<p>There is still much work to be done in the CEE, but I'd be fairly confident that they'll become truly developed first world countries in the next 10-15 years, and some already have such as Czechia.<p>Andreas is exactly right imo - his points about simplifying incorporation (there's a reason why CH does so well) and normalizing English (there's a reason why every developing Asian country from India to Vietnam to China is pushing English fluency, and lots of the CEE countries) will help.<p>German, French, and British government officials are the worst to deal with imo - they will bend over the barrel for local conglomerates but ignore domestic challengers. Datadog could have been a fully French company, but the French ecosystem stifled them.<p>Also, ime - Western Europeans seem to idolize Finance, Law, Management, and Civil Service careers more than innovation or entrepreneurship, unlike their CEE (Germany and Austria excluded) peers.
The EU does not have an equivalent of US commerce clause jurisprudence (which descends from Hamilton's original economic design to prevent exactly the kinds of problems that this author is complaining about). The EU does have an equivalent to the supremacy clause, but due to cultural and political forces it cannot have the same effect that it has in the US.<p>Another major factor that makes the US more competitive is our different approach to intellectual property law that favors competition in comparison to the EU equivalents. Another big thing is less the Delaware effect that he attributes US simplicity to and more the existence of uniform model laws that transformed state business law through the 20th century. Then you have the fact that almost all (except parts of trademark) of the relevant IP laws to large scale enterprises are exclusively federal laws. This is not the case in the EU despite all the normalizing treaties. The EU does not and cannot perform the same role that the federal government does.<p>I have a better proposal: incorporate the European states as self-governing US territories under the supervision of the federal government. They could have some carve-outs and immunities using an administrative structure similar to that of Native American law. This would also resolve the NATO controversies by just absorbing all of the individual ex-EU member state country militaries under the DoD. It would also eliminate a lot of the weird Article V ambiguity by just making it all American territory.
So many things here.<p>Lets talk pay, US tech workers, lets just say Sr SWE and up, and lets look at SF as the author uses this as a focal point. Salary is roughly $300-400k a year(in SF FANGish company), in Europe or England its about half of that, and maybe even less. I know as I have family I married into that points out this fact, the best workers all go over to the US and make large salaries over there at US tech giants.<p>Lets talk about taxes, especially in the northern European countries taxes are extremely high when you get into professional wage bands, ie. above 120-200K euros(50% tax rates in some countries compared to 37% top US tax rate) and capital gains which is a huge issue as some employees get a majority of their income through this - 30% cap gains tax rate and above for a decent amount of western/northern EU countries, compared to 20% top tax rates for US.<p>Lastly lets talk about employees, you hire someone and they don't work. In Europe you cannot just term them and give them a severance package of a few weeks. In France you are not allowed to even layoff employees unless you are close to bankruptcy(I think this was changed a few years back). But in general it is very hard to fire employees who are underperforming in the EU.<p>All of these facts really highlight why alot of top talent and founders from the EU come over to the US to make money and start companies. I am not saying one way is right or wrong but just want to pint out the points that both ICs/managers and founders have all told me(I am US based).
European here. It normal that EU become the #4 economy in the world. There is nothing wrong with that. What wasn't normal was to see billions of people in poverty. I am happy to see India and China catch up. The best way to be #1 economy is to destroy others. We don't want to do that. Indian entrepreneurs are as ambitious as the growth of their economy. EU wants to focus on ecology and democracy and this impacts it's economy. There is nothing wrong with that.
Why should Europe care where they are amongst this myopic ranking of “best tech hub”?<p>Western Europe is a great place to live, raise a family, and retire.<p>None of the tech hub countries are even remotely comparable to Europe in this sense.<p>If there are people in Europe who want to work in a high growth industry that desperately, they can move to USA or China.
There is a big difference between Europeans in Europe and Europeans in the US - Europeans in the US readily point this out. The idea that Europeans are somehow genetically less suited to building tech companies is an obvious strawman. The reality is that Europeans in America are, like all immigrants, heavily self-selected.<p>The article also does not mention the huge difference in compensation for technology talent between the US and Europe. As long as that gap exists, top European talent will continue leaking across the Atlantic.
As an EU citizen in middle of Europe (Czechia) I see two major problems.<p>- Free market is crippled by EU economical politics. Basically, EU is trying to implement centrally planned economics and fund many useless things by grants. About half of grants (in my country) going to ideology driven nonprofit segment. Many EU citizens are very angry about wasting our money. Also, our government is not able to provide cheap energy. It has historically lowest trust since 90's.<p>- We solve problems by creating new regulations. Instead of amendment of laws we adding bunch on new ones. In my country, its about 50 000 new legislative regulation every year. System is full of unnecessary bureaucracy. It costs many resources thus make it collapse in near future because of lack of resources (financial, personal, even mental).<p>Those aspects affect motivation in business significantly.<p>Many don't believe in reformation of EU. I expect EU exits of few member states in near future.
> Here is my Question: Why did we stop with “single market” efforts? Why is there no effort to unify legal entity in Europe?<p>I'm not sure the author understands what he's asking for.<p>While having California residency, you can start a Delaware company, open offices in California, pay taxes to the State of California. If the State of California sues your company for unpaid taxes, which court do you end up in? California. If the State of California sues your company for civil rights violations, which court do you end up in? California. The US doesn't have some magical system where just because you register in another state, you can resolve all legal disputes in that state, therefore you're not beholden to the laws and governments of the state you operate in, or that Delaware is legally bound to enforce the laws of the other states and localities you operate in. Indeed you are beholden to said laws and localities. And indeed, complying with 50 different states and all their localities can be <i>so damn complicated</i> that there are entire products built to help you figure out how much sales tax to charge when crossing state lines, as well as how to pay it correctly; not to mention how to offer health insurance to remote employees, since every state has its own insurers.<p>At the end of the day, sure an "EU Inc", as the author puts it, may help make it easier to close deals. <i>But it does not reduce the operational complication of operating across different localities.</i> The rights of different localities to set their own laws and regulations for those who operate within their jurisdictions is <i>unavoidable</i>. You could have a single Brussels sovereign and a single English legal contract language and this would <i>still</i> be true, because it's already true in the US.<p>The EU has a "single market", not a "single marketplace". The market is the <i>customers</i>, not the companies, not the banks, not the courts.
“The problem is not that regulation 1 or 100 is too much. The problem is that every country has different regulations, creating a mess of complexity if you want to act across a larger consumer market”<p>If you’re building the next Uber sure, this might be a problem.<p>But this is also a HUGE advantage if you’re not though. If you’re building the Workday for Estonia, or the LinkedIn for Germany (ie Xing) you have a huge advantage over any other big company that wants to steal your market share. Because there’s a bunch of local regulations, customs and ways of doing things that they simply can’t “port” over.<p>So yes, it’s a barrier if you’re building the next huge consumer startup, but at the same time it creates all these long tail opportunities for a LOT more startups that want to conquer a local market. And that probably helps a LOT more European entrepeneurs
Im an American currently living in Europe (Germany). I’ve founded a few companies in the US. I have a project that’s going well, could easily turn into a startup, but I’m not sure I’d found it here—genuinely struggling with it.<p>The way companies fundraise here is a bit weird to me. Much smaller rounds. Also typically thinking smaller in general. Obviously, everything is very commercially focused. In Germany, the worker protections make operating really quite difficult and it changes the culture of the company, too. Don’t even get me started about on-call culture.<p>I can’t really think of a distinct advantage to starting a company in EU vs US if you have a US passport outside some minor niceties. My current thinking is operating on both continents is likely best, with GTM in US and engineering in EU. But not sure…
Wake up from what? I couldn’t find the thesis in the first few paragraphs…<p>I keep seeing more and more from business types in the EU salivating over US business conditions: weaker labor laws, weaker regulations, record profits, etc. From the US it seems like the EU is doing fine and enviable from an employee perspective (except wages).
The author isn't wrong. Europe is falling behind, and people should not pretend it's a good thing: the current European life style ("more to life than work") depends on excessive interests gained from technological advancements that are not yet replicated elsewhere. The life would be much worse if Europe couldn't keep up.
This misses the big one: California bans non-competes, bans anti-moonlighting clauses and lets you quit with no notice. If you’re at an EU company and need to give 3+ months notice to quit that will discourage starting your own company on the side.
I'm not sure what I need to wake up from and what this even is about. The Europe is good, the Europe is bad? I totally don't want to live in another US, because if I wanted, I would have went to the one already there across the ocean. I specifically don't want to work with US-funded venture backed companies and their bullshit, it's not sustainable in the long term.
Europeans always like to approach this issue from the perspective of Europe being uncompetitive vs the US. I'd say it's not Europe that is underperforming, rather the US has been over-performing since the 2008 GFC.<p>If we look at other major developed countries (say Japan, S Korea, Canada, Austalia, New Zealand) they also lack the same innovation ecosystem the US has. Their economies have also been largely stagnating since the 2008 GFC in terms of metrics like nominal GDP per capita, labor prodictivity (GDP/hours worked), market cap of their national stock exchanges and diposable income. Canadian GDP per capita was $52k in 2011, and in 2021 it was still $52k. Meanwhile, these countries also saw their tech sectors decay. Blackberry was so big in late 2000s. Japan had the world's most advanced tech sector in the 80s and 90s. All of it gone, and the breaking point was 2008. You can see that in the productivity and GDP per capita charts of all developed economies except the US.<p>Why did the US outperform everyone so much? The main dynamic change in 2008 was QE. In my opinion, because the USD is the global reserve currency, it meant that the printed money gave an outsized benefit to the US due to the seigniorage effect, and distorted the dynamics of capital formation greatly in the US' favor.
Curiously China's very successful economic model - in which capital is more under state control than in private hands, but there's still a competetive market as industrial monopolies are discouraged - isn't brought up here - even though certain major European industrial sectors seem to be finding China more attractive these days, e.g. BASF;<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/basf-agrees-15-year-gas-supply-deal-with-chinas-enn-2024-04-05/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/basf-agrees-15-year-ga...</a><p>Apparently the Chinese are working too hard and being too productive, hence Janet Yellen complaining about 'overcapacity' recently:<p>> "I think the Chinese realise how concerned we are about the implications of their industrial strategy, for the United States, for the potential to flood our markets with exports that make it difficult for American firms to compete" Yellen said. "And then other countries have the same concern."
My pet theory on why tech in Europe is worse than in the US is the lack of career opportunities for software devs. If I, as a developer, want to make more than 100k a year here in Germany, the easiest thing is to work remotely for a US company. There is no corporate ladder for devs. If there is one, it isn't very long. Hungry, young devs move into management or consulting. So, there is no incentive to get better as a developer.<p>I’m, of course, talking generalities here; there will be exceptions.
The problem with the EU wide Inc, is who gets the tax revenue?<p>Is it the country you live in or the country where most of your customers are based in? What if your customers all live outside the EU?<p>France is never going to accept that you live in France but your business pays it's taxes in Germany or vice versa.<p>Also I don't agree with the author's take that Europe is not risk averse. It is risk averse.<p>I tried to open a bank account in USD at my local bank because I wanted my accountant to have access to all the deposits/invoices for my business. I had to answer a form with 50 questions as to why I needed this bank account.<p>I was told the process would take months potentially. the result is that 6 months later I never received a response and now I am using Revolut as my bank.<p>It's the small things really.<p>About the lack of English, that is absolutely true but not because EU kids don't spend enough time learning English, it's because of the teaching style and the culture.<p>In France all the movies/tv shows are dubbed in French. In Sweden it's not. Guess who speaks better English?<p>In Sweden I hear kids as young as 11 or 12 talk in English with their friends because it's cool. In France, there is no way in hell that this would happen.
Finally the way languages are taught in France is absolutely terrible. There is a lot of emphasis on reading and grammar rules but barely any talking.<p>The result is that a high school graduate who has spent almost 8 years leaning English 2 hours per week at school can't hold a normal conversation in English for more than a few minutes.
> In SF you frequently hear big tech people talking how hard they work, while they queue 30mins for a coffee at Blue Bottle and chitchatting there for another 20mins.<p>God people still haven't figured out how knowledge work and work ethic there is illustrated when you are giving your brain to your employer instead of your body. Some of these workers are thinking about work problems literally 24 hours a day, and come up with solutions in their dreams, but because they aren't literally chained to their desk writing lines of code every single second they are observed they are lazy slackers.<p>Can't stand this crap and it's just gonna get worse. Unless executives see you in pain, or are forced to sacrifice something you value like attending your kids piano recital they don't beleive you are dedicated enough to the cause like they are.
There are multiple EU countries that offer that "pro-business legal framework" which speak english and even offer very low taxes (Ireland Estonia Cyprus Malta Bulgaria etc). The problem is, as soon as they become substantially big , politicians will reign them in, and the "single market" suddenly breaks to 26 pieces.<p>There are many ideas about how to fix things. What is missing is political will . Politicians find it easier to leech off (european and US) entrepreneurship , in order to "give back" trinkets to their audience. Look at how EU subsidies and grants are given, and how little return europe gets from huge research projects like ERC grants. It's mainly a eu-wide jobs creation program for perpetual academics.<p>Until you change that thinking, all ideas are not usable
My company offers relocation from the US to Paris. The Paris office is beautiful, right near the Eiffel Tower.<p>If I take the relocation I get an automatic 50% salary cut, and my tax bill goes way up. Not to mention VAT and other expenses.<p>Seems like Europe’s problem with innovation is maybe related.
Evidence is lacking and the question is so vague that it isn’t worth arguing about. Both “Europe” and “the US” are too large and amorphous to usefully compare in an online discussion.
I think there's one point the author missed, and that's payment method standardization.<p>In the US, you put a credit card form on your website and you're done. That's how people pay online, period.<p>In the EU, this is not the case. You have countries like Germany, where many people use EC, not Visa or Mastercard. You have countries like Poland, where (debit) card adoption and usage is very high, but online card usage is almost nonexistent. Except for the young and tech-savvy, there's a weird phobia here when it comes to anything that can take money from your account without your explicit consent. That complicates subscription payments for one, most major streaming services had to give in and allow bundling with cable and satellite TV plans (Netflix), phone plans (Spotify and Tidal) or payments by SMS (Storytel). There was a Storytel blog post once where they discovered that 90% of Polish people that cancelled at the "payment" step of the subscription flow did so because "credit card" was the only method available.<p>And that's just two countries, I'm pretty sure the other 26 have their own nuances I'm not aware of.
Our biggest problem in the EU is a lack of vc capital. Vc oney goes to consumer SaaS. Most data people are European. Most data companies American. Go figure.
Europe needs its own tech megacorps. Their own OS, office suite, cloud provider, source control, social media, mobile devices, etc.<p>The creates the abundance of data required to win at AI.<p>Because Europe doesn't own its own data, they lack the data necessary to win in AI against others that do.<p>Creating a EU startup ecosystem without the megacorps is just feeding the American megacorps more because those startups will get acquired by the highest bidder.
I think this is a fantastic suggestion. Having an EU-wide “Inc” will indeed allow standardized investment vehicles such as SAFEs which in turn makes a lot of very-early-stage investment much cheaper = much more attractive. The EU doesn't need to standardize the SAFEs or stuff like that - the market will take care of that once all startuppy businesses are the same kind of legal entity.
I know too little to have strong opinions about this. I worked for a few years in Canada, and for the rest of my career in Germany.<p>In my opinion, bureaucracy is a growing problem, at least in Germany. There is just so much compliance work involved in running a business, and it keeps getting worse. As a sole proprietor running a very simple business, my first year felt like I was just working on compliance, and my actual business was just a side quest.<p>I wish there was more effort at every layer to make bureaucracy easier to handle. We should consider the bureaucratic experience the same way we consider developer experience, because it affects adoption the same way. We need good architecture, good documentation, good utilities. It makes a big difference.
Does the data presented here distinguish between full-time and part-time employment? Or hourly and salaried employment? I wasn’t able to find any information other than “hours worked per person employed”, which seems a rather vague statistic to be used to support any claim.
Dear Human, the 3 things that make life worth living are doing what you like for a living, having someone to love and something to hope for. You can learn that from me or the hard way. Happiness is so unassuming and easy to overlook, you have to pay attention.
It's a tricky thing: my experience does mirror some of the "propaganda" despite coming to Europe with heavily rose-tinted glasses. I'm not going to pretend that my limited data is enough to extrapolate to the whole of the continent but it's still a data point.<p>The work culture is very different. There's a clear attitude of working until the next holiday and the company never gets one minute more than what they pay me for. That's honestly not a _bad_ perspective to have but it's not ideal if you're trying to build a startup
That hours worked chart is funny with Greece in 2nd place. Then you have the ones that work the least: Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Luxembourg, etc.<p>Maybe next time take a look at this table: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_productivity" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_pr...</a><p>The countries at the back of "total hours worked" are at the top of "most productive per hour worked". These are also the countries that are doing very well economically.
I'm sure an insane number of companies in the EU operate only in one country. If you look over the border and see a tiny fraction of how different stuff works you run back home screaming.<p>You cant send a box into Germany. I'm sure I'm butchering the refined details but something like: You need to register with some approved entity who will sign off on the packaging you use with different rates for different volumes of which the first is 100 times what I need.
Taxes in California were very different when SV started. It's now running on intertia and fumes.<p>People who compare salaries obviously have no idea about the difference in cost of living in the US especially in California and especially in SV.<p>The productivity graph is obviously totally useless and not a representation of tech workers, but maybe fast food workers and diversity officers.<p>The characterisation of taxes and ease to start a business is utterly false.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the US loses the single market due to these state internet regulations, while the EU eventually figures it out.
Genuine question - could someone give some insight on why the post was flagged? I found the article interesting and it wasn't my intention to divide the audience. If anything, I believe lots of the comments here contribute positively in forming a more educated and all-round view on the matter.
"If you go to the south of France – our hope and prayers in the global AI race – and order a coffee there is a chance that the waitress doesn’t understand the word “coffee”, can’t explain you what’s in the salad – happened to me twice."<p>Oh they'll understand. They will just pretend not to. It's France.
> So, what do we need to change
> First, we need to stop believing the US meme about Europe.<p>Never believed that for a second. First, twitter is not real life. Second, let the europeans speak about Europe, not those who live thousands of kilometers away.
Rich person wants employees to work harder and have a lower quality of life.<p>Somehow I don’t think many people living in the EU want the work/life balance of the US with paltry benefits and no social safety net.
> Have you seen the Californian taxes? The EU isn’t far off.<p>I honestly don't think this is a fair comparison at all in the context of the entire US vs Europe.
> In SF you frequently hear big tech people talking how hard they work, while they queue 30mins for a coffee at Blue Bottle and chitchatting there for another 20mins.<p>Gotta be the Googlers. Elon and Zuck have shown the light to most tech cos and they are emulating to one degree or another. But Google seems unwilling/unable to deal effectively with the WLB'ers. After all, how can they conduct all of their political activities if work is getting in the way?
Incorporation is already simple in the EU. Just pick the easiest jurisdiction, access the common market. Yes, local labor laws for employing people in different countries vary, but so does the states.<p>The English language thing, meh. I used to think the same but no longer do. Diversity is a good thing, it's Anglos who could use learning to work in different languages and cultural contexts.<p>Last but not least, just the tech bro-itis is so strong with this article. Like yeah if your identity and life is consumed by being a tech bro and you want the world to optimize for that and your startups, sure, let's make everywhere Delaware and the Bay Area. But that's not what most of the world wants or tries to do.
As a fellow European that started skimming the article halfway through as I was facepalming too hard: did he never look at the raw numbers?<p>If you target the US market the pie is basically 10x times what it would be if you targeted your country in Europe.<p>Realistically speaking, Europe ain't got a chance unless we abolish our countries entirely, creating a single market. And that's not gonna happen. Ever.
« But India is one country »<p>I am sorry but this argument cannot be dismissed.<p>The reason why Europe struggles to implement changes is precisely because it is not a single country but a large group of countries represented by complex bodies where politics strive.
These e/acc types are insufferable and if anything "SF" has been ruined by them. I know I'll get downvoted or flagged given this is HN, but there's more to life than startups and private equity[0]. Let's leave Europe alone, huh?<p>[0]: <a href="https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2023/world-happiness-trust-and-social-connections-in-times-of-crisis/#ranking-of-happiness-2020-2022" rel="nofollow">https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2023/world-happiness-trust-...</a>
Dude has to wake up. Europe is done, it's a museum. He's thinking about tech but the real problem is lacking economical basis in Europe. Germany introduced spot natural gas prices and it skyrocketed. Next someone blew up the Nord Stream. Now Europe can't produce reasonably priced fertilizers. And all that green energy is a joke.
When I'm writing this, there's not a single comment that engages with the actual proposals presented in the article. Most commenters are addressing points that the author didn't make or just insulting him.<p>TL;DR: 1) simplify and uniformize company creation process 2) teach English to everyone.<p>(I agree, BTW)
“Europe” is not a thing I tell most people trying to expand. It’s just a bunch of countries. Yes, some things are unified but it really doesn’t matter. It’s fragmented, extra work, and it’s bullshit compared to just building for a unified market like US or China. Tall poppy syndrome is also very real in Europe. It’s a dream killer and is deeply ingrained in many societies here. You can work hard all you want but these are the true frictions for risking capital and time.
>> If every day is 1% harder for you than your competitor who will win? Your competitor. And in global markets where frequently 1-2 companies become the dominant player in a market this means you will not be a bit smaller. You will fight for scraps.<p>Abandon all hope. The race to the bottom is over. Any country not bowing at the feet of ever tech founder will be relegated to third-world status by the end of the decade. Canada, Finland, Australia, the US east coast ... all are doomed unless they drop taxes and abandon all hope of regulating anything. But that just isn't how the world functions. All those countries that are "hard" on new tech surprisingly keep ticking along year after year despite the ire of tech founders. Think London/Paris/Berlin/Vancouver are too hard on business? Ok. Leave. Make room for all the people that are ready and happy to do business in those cities.
I can't scroll this webpage to read it unless I plug my laptop in. Scroll events have a lag time measured in whole seconds, then the page scrolls down by either a fraction of a line or by multiple paragraphs, so I can't keep track of where I was reading. Plugging in my laptop, which changes the power mode, makes the webpage barely usable, but my cooling fans are spun up to full speed now. This is using Chrome on a Dell XPS 13 with an 11th gen Core i7 and 16GB RAM.