A big part is that the EU is a collection of countries that (with very few exceptions) have different languages and laws. For a company to serve Spain and France, for instance, it would need to translate everything, hire local lawyers and customer support agents. Considering the much smaller size of the countries (biggest one is 70 million vs 330 million in the US), the opportunity for "unlimited" growth is limited.
This also rebounds in the fact that when an American company makes it big, they have the resources to flood other EU markets and be cheaper/better than the local competition due to economies of scale and money based on their big successful US market. A French company making it big is still small compared to a US equivalent.
Then, there's the capital markets, no denying that. The money being thrown around the US is like nowhere else on the planet. Some of it definitely a bubble / unrealistic, but that doesn't matter. But in part it's because of the size of the total potential market that this is justified.
Education / national mythology also plays a part, I think (this is pure conjecture now). In the US, the "American Dream", "everyone can make it" etc is heavily ingrained. It propagates through the world with the help of Hollywood and other American cultural exports. In most EU countries, there isn't such a heavy emphasis on independence and "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps". "Hustle culture" isn't a thing. So for most people, it isn't something that comes naturally to them to start a company and work 100 hour weeks to be big and rich and successful and famous.
That's not to say there aren't such people, I went to 42 and have been to Station F and know some people in that universe. A decent proportion of my classmates wanted to make their startup and make it big, and some did end up starting their own companies.
> This also rebounds in the fact that when an American company makes it big, they have the resources to flood other EU markets and be cheaper/better than the local competition due to economies of scale and money based on their big successful US market. A French company making it big is still small compared to a US equivalent.
Ding ding ding! When China does it with solar and EVs we call it "dumping". When Uber, OpenAI and Anthropic do it, that term is never ever used. VC funded US techs dumps harder than any Chinese industry ever has.
> Considering the much smaller size of the countries (biggest one is 70 million vs 330 million in the US), the opportunity for "unlimited" growth is limited.
If you manage to get 10 million customers, your business is already successful on a gigantic scale, and you should have all the know-how in taking on the world. The success of other people is rarely the reason why you are failing in your own life. Start somewhere, do something.
> The money being thrown around the US is like nowhere else on the planet.
That's true and it's awesome. In Europe money is only thrown to real estate owners and any enterprising people with a dream are cordially invited to fucking forget about it, shut up, and fall back in line. Even if they already have a proven track record. They take their idea to the United States and are treated incredibly well in comparison. Even if their business will only be a niche business with limited reach, like 99% of businesses.
> Europe money is only thrown to real estate owners and any enterprising people with a dream are cordially invited to fucking forget about it, shut up, and fall back in line.
That's simply not true. Europe is a continent that includes startup powerhouse Sweden, UK that has a ton of them too, and France that is making massive strides (just check out Station F). It might be true in Slovakia or whatever, but you simply cannot say that broadly for the whole continent.
> That's true and it's awesome
Is it? It is to an extent, but it also encourages nonsense (Juicero, the AI spice mixer), pump and dump tech-isation of existing stuff with no business model (Wework) and outright scams (Theranos, Nikola).
If the barrier to entry to get money thrown at you is so low, a lot of it gets wasted. So the rest really really has to make it big, which gives some perverse incentives (like Uber dumping to driver old school taxis out of business to then jack up prices, because if they're not a monopoly/biggest fish in town, they wouldn't have been worth it)
Nations like Sweden and the UK might have a healthy startup scene despite not getting good help from banks and other capital institutions.
Go search the web for startup financing in Sweden. One of the big banks has a page dedicated to this - but they're not offering their own money, instead they're pointing to government grants and government lending programs.
> If the barrier to entry to get money thrown at you is so low, a lot of it gets wasted. So the rest really really has to make it big
You can't do your accounting like that. One entity does not make up for the losses of another entity. Money is cheap in the US and thrown around to bad startups and good startups. In Europe money is expensive and mostly available to governments or for real estate feudalism.
A few.
A big part is that the EU is a collection of countries that (with very few exceptions) have different languages and laws. For a company to serve Spain and France, for instance, it would need to translate everything, hire local lawyers and customer support agents. Considering the much smaller size of the countries (biggest one is 70 million vs 330 million in the US), the opportunity for "unlimited" growth is limited.
This also rebounds in the fact that when an American company makes it big, they have the resources to flood other EU markets and be cheaper/better than the local competition due to economies of scale and money based on their big successful US market. A French company making it big is still small compared to a US equivalent.
Then, there's the capital markets, no denying that. The money being thrown around the US is like nowhere else on the planet. Some of it definitely a bubble / unrealistic, but that doesn't matter. But in part it's because of the size of the total potential market that this is justified.
Education / national mythology also plays a part, I think (this is pure conjecture now). In the US, the "American Dream", "everyone can make it" etc is heavily ingrained. It propagates through the world with the help of Hollywood and other American cultural exports. In most EU countries, there isn't such a heavy emphasis on independence and "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps". "Hustle culture" isn't a thing. So for most people, it isn't something that comes naturally to them to start a company and work 100 hour weeks to be big and rich and successful and famous.
That's not to say there aren't such people, I went to 42 and have been to Station F and know some people in that universe. A decent proportion of my classmates wanted to make their startup and make it big, and some did end up starting their own companies.