
Europe’s Other Crisis: A Digital Recession - philippnagel
https://hbr.org/2015/10/europes-other-crisis-a-digital-recession
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makeitstop
I'm so tired of this bullshit right wing propaganda. It's been going on for
decades, and always uses the same formula:

1) Europe (a non-existent as a nation, even purely geographically it's blurry)
is in crisis/dying/crumbling. Optional addition: because socialism.

2) The solution is to be like the glorious USA.

~~~
mavdi
If you bury your head in sand that's exactly what you'll think. Try getting
out of Europe more often and see what the rest of the world achieves in a year
and then you'll come to the same conclusion. Even in case of already advanced
countries like Japan, in certain sectors, they are years if not decades ahead
of Europe.

~~~
m_fayer
As the op said, there is no "Europe" and talking about it as if there's a
single entity is, to European ears, quite ignorant. Practically the only thing
Italy has in common with Poland has in common with France has in common with
Holland is that they're all very generally liberal democracies. Otherwise, on
the spectra of backwater-to-scifi, honest-to-corrupt, socialist-to-capitalist,
religious-to-secular, nationalist-to-egalitarian, dynamic-to-sclerotic,
authoritarian-to-permissive, you will find everything in every permutation,
somewhere.

I get that the US is big and diverse and dynamic. But the EU is far bigger
(population wise) and far more culturally / economically / politically
diverse.

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mtgx
> By many measures, the UK is ahead of the others in terms of its digital
> foundations and sophistication; for example, the proportion of retail in the
> U.K. penetrated by B2C e-commerce is nearly twice the European average and
> higher than even in the U.S.

UK has been doing well compared to others mainly because it's a fully English
speaking country and the US already has a history with UK (sort of speak).

It's _natural_ for US companies to establish headquarters in "Europe" in UK
first, before any other country. Personally, I do hope US companies consider
countries where leadership doesn't favor so strongly mass surveillance and
censorship, but either way it has little to do with policies and laws. The
language barrier is a huge problem for an "EU single market". As the young
generations grow-up with the English-speaking Internet, it will be less of a
problem, but right now the language barrier is very much real.

~~~
kuschku
And even in Germany, for the first time ever, the IT business is the largest
business. Car manufacturing is down to #2.

~~~
_up
How do they get the numbers. Are Banks that offer online Banking IT
businesses? And everyone with a commercial website too?

~~~
kuschku
No, they especially do not count stuff like online banking, but companies that
directly sell or provide IT solutions, including software vendors, SaaS
companies, Hosters, Internet Exchanges, etc.

This includes T-Systems, SAP, Hetzner, DE-CIX, etc.

I do not know if they counted smaller startups like Soundcloud.

~~~
germanier
Could you provide a link (German is fine)? I couldn't find something like that
in the few minutes I searched.

~~~
kuschku
It was something one of my professors showed in a lecture, and I can't find it
right now on mobile (especially as I am busy printing a letter, buying stamps,
etc to send the livecoding guys a C&D), but you might find some numbers on the
BitKom site.

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gingerlime
There are quite a few hurdles for small businesses and young startups in
Europe to do business online:

* registration of a limited company is not that simple in some countries. UK is relatively easy, but in Germany you need to invest at least 25,000 EUR just to get started. Half of it upfront. Not to mention notary fees and other red tape.

* VAT is a huge pain since 2015, especially for digital goods and services. Look up VAT MOSS aka #vatmess

* language - if you want to cater to a wider audience, localization is still a major aspect and costs a lot in terms of development, content, support etc

* employment rules are usually much more strict. This is generally positive for employed individuals, but when it comes to a small business trying to work with freelancers (or freelancers themselves), they are massive hurdles. I'm familiar with IR35 in the UK, but there's pretty much the same thing here in Germany without having a fancy name... I'm pretty sure similar rules apply in other EU countries as well, but have no actual knowledge about other countries.

Source: being a small fish entrepreneur in Israel, UK and Germany.

EDIT I should also add currency support. Whilst the EUR covers a fair number
of countries, there are still exceptions...

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pyvpx
I incorporated in Berlin with 1500EUR. I got a shelf corporation, with the
documents translated to English so I didn't need an official interpreter @
150EUR per hour, and the notar costs included. Granted it isn't a GmbH but a
UG, so I imagine for some industries that wont work; but for a boutique
consulting firm it's been excellent.

VAT is a mess, though. definitely. but then you hire an accountant and you get
VAT + all that other tax stuff "abstracted" away for a very reasonable cost.

~~~
_up
Has someone incorporated in Delaware and Headquartered in Germany? We are
talking small budget here. Is this a nightmare or could work in some
instances? Taxes could be a problem I heard. I am working on a feedly
competitor (with Popularity Sorting) and it would make sense to concentrate on
the US Market first anyway.

~~~
kobayashi
Looking forward to seeing your beta product! Where can I keep apprised of your
company's news?

~~~
_up
Thanks. We will launch our beta on feedcred.com in the next weeks. But we
haven't setup a dedicated blog or social media yet. I must admit registering a
company and marketing are things I have to do my due diligence on very soon.

~~~
kobayashi
Good luck, it's a steep learning curve but well worth it.

Q: In function, how does the popularity-based sorting differ from feedly's
current popularity algorithm?

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_up
Feedly doesn't really sort by Popularity. Instead they simply load ca. 20
entries and select the three most popular entries on the client side as
Featured. That being said at scale you have to compromise one way or other.

The Idea behind my popularity algorithm is that I don't want to calculate what
is popular among the Users of my service. Instead I want to estimate what is
popular with the original User base of each Feed you subscribe to. I think the
average User base of The New York Times is different from the typical reddit,
twitter or facebook crowd. So this should be an interesting Differentiator.

~~~
kobayashi
I'm significantly more excited about your beta now that you've explained it. I
think that's a unique and a potentially great way to do popularity ranking.

 _Fingers crossed that you 're also going to have an eye for security_

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entropyneur
We incorporated our startup in the Netherlands because that's where one of the
founders lived. It took a couple of months of sending various documents back
and forth and required 18K EUR in cash (recoverable) as well as some non-
trivial expenses for various fees. Fast forward a few years, we sold our app
and liquidated the company. The amount we received in cash _before income tax_
is less than half of what was paid to us. I feel like I was working for the
Dutch government this whole time. Obviously not happening again.

~~~
roel_v
Then you weren't informed/advised properly, because it's possible much easier
and cheaper, _especially_ for digital goods suppliers. But yes, if you naively
follow the simple interpretation of the law and/or what the website of the tax
office says, you'll get shafted.

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trymas
Not about article itself, but design of the website made me consider if it's
worth reading.

Fixed header and footer takes 25% of my screen's space and distracts greatly.
If my screen would be somewhat smaller (e.g. 11-12'), first graph would barely
fit in between header and footer.

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dandare
4 websites deeper I finally found at least an outline of what are they
actually measuring:

"Our data and insights are calculated and measured utilizing four drivers.

Digital Economy Driver - Demand Demand: covers consumer income and
demographics as well as internet usage.

Digital Economy Driver - Supply Supply: focuses on technology and
infrastructure and whether or not they can support digital commerce and
transactions.

Digital Economy Driver - Institutions Institutions: accounts for government
policy and access to trade.

Digital Economy Driver - Innovation Innovation: rates the environment for
creating startups and the overall competitive landscape."

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sbt
HBS - Sullying the Harvard name since 1908

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rajadigopula
Yet the UK PM is keen on making things much tougher for digital startups -
[http://uk.businessinsider.com/immigration-cuts-will-hurt-
uk-...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/immigration-cuts-will-hurt-uk-tech-
sector-2015-10)

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hobo_mark
Isn't this what Estonia is trying to solve with their e-residency initiative?

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arcosdev
The index's criteria...

 _...high levels of digital development are attractive to global businesses
and investors and that their digital ecosystems are positioned to nurture
start ups and internet businesses that can compete globally_

...is so nebulous and silly how could anyone take this seriously?

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xchaotic
The graph on HBR is a bit weird. Czech and Slovakia are just next to each
other geographically (used to be same country), Czech are pretty far in terms
of getting things done digitally and yet they are classed as rapidly receding,
Slovakia is in the "slowly advancing" category. I'm sure there are minute
differences between those countries but as vast as the graph portrays...

