
Why does the US generate more fast-growing tech startups than Europe? - nreece
https://www.aei.org/publication/why-does-the-us-generate-more-fast-growing-tech-startups-than-europe/
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smt88
For obvious reasons.

1) ~160M people in those countries vs. ~320M in the US. Per capita, those
countries are doing about as well as the US.

2) People in France (and many other countries) simply don't work as many hours
as we do in the US. That can hurt productivity in some cases. I'm certainly
not saying it's a bad thing overall though.

3) It's much cheaper to start a company in the US than many European
countries. It costs a few hundred dollars to get incorporated, and then you
get tons of tax breaks.

4) We have a lot of nonprofit and institutional support, as someone else
mentioned. The Kauffman Foundation is an incredibly important source of money
that gets sunk into startups (literally sunk -- it's a charity, and little of
that money will see a return).

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Jdoemk2
As someone with a tech startup in Europe:

1\. Europeans are more risk averse, and there is not the same entrepreneurial
spirit.

2\. You're comparing it with the home of tech and startups so it's not going
to compare well. More of a question would be why does the US generate more
fast-growing tech startups than the whole world put together.

3\. European investors are comically small-minded, stingy and don't have much
cash to use.

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noipv4
Also there's a regional language issue in Europe, and English is not the
native language in most countries. People in CH are expected to learn 2-3
languages, with English usually being the optional language. Hiring people
from outside the country becomes a problematic issue esp. for startups.

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AndrewKemendo
I would argue that it's due in large part, if not totally, to the size of our
VC/Angel funding system.

2013 VC investment Stats:

US: 33BN

Europe: 7.4BN

China: 3.5BN

[http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Global_venture_capi...](http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Global_venture_capital_insights_and_trends_2014/$FILE/EY_Global_VC_insights_and_trends_report_2014.pdf)

