
The growth of the European startup scene - koonsolo
https://thenextweb.com/eu/2017/05/22/europe-isnt-the-new-silicon-valley-its-better/
======
flexie
The US has one thing that Europeans cannot compete with:

One language spoken by close to all 320M Americans as a native language and
spoken by More than a billion worldwide as first or second language and which
also happens to be the language most technology uses, incl in documentation
and tutorials.

Would Google have reached global fame if it had been in French to begin with?
Of course not. What about if Facebook started at Bocconi and in Italian? No
way Americans would have adopted it (let alone Spanish or Dutch).

Bureaucracy, taxes and other obstacles are possibly worse in the US than in
most European countries (I lived both there and in three different European
countries). We have very little to learn from the US in that respect. But
without a common language it's difficult for Europeans. It's not a coincidence
that most good startups in Europe are in countries where English is a first or
very strong second language (UK, NL, Scandinavia etc).

~~~
geff82
Due to the high number of regional languages, most startups simply start with
the English version of their product (if the product is not primarily aimed at
their home country). So Google in France would have been in English first and
French second.

~~~
mattmanser
AFAIK, and IANAL, in France, you'd still need to support 2 versions from day
one:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubon_Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubon_Law)

I just internationalised a UK startup to enter other EU markets, since doing
so it has been a non-trivial amount of extra work just to keep it up. Not
immense, but definitely a drag. There's all sorts of little extra cognitive
overhead once a product supports two languages. Button widths, text lengths,
layouts, email layouts, normalised date formats, even icons (for example we'd
used a £ icon to indicate paid). We use SendWithUs templates, and now we have
to upload all the translations too as part of a deploy. And that's not even
counting the extra time to do the translation, upload it, etc.

Silly little things that a lot of programmers use without thinking, like basic
date formatting like "ddd HH:mm", you simply can't do that any more. You need
to agree shared formats and they don't always fit as you'd like them to, or
quite convey the info you want them to. For example recently I'd have loved to
say "Today 9:15", "Tomorrow 12:15", "Thu 14:15" or "Next Week", just for one
specific place. But then you need to create a function to perform l10n on that
and suddenly you're adding a big bit of extra functionality and you end up
falling back on the shared .ToL10nDateTime() even though it's objectively
worse at conveying the info you need to convey.

We've got a bunch of work in Alpha at the moment that's English only because
we were under such time pressure to deliver it for one client. The time to
insert all the place holders and do the client-side i18n meant we've parked it
all to get the functionality out of the door for that client. Even though it
will take more time in the long run.

As I understand it, a hypothetical French startup equivalent would be breaking
the law by doing that.

------
ever1
Living in Paris, I can feel a strong momentum of entrepreneurship and
startups. ex: Recent "Station F" incubator from Xavier Niel is opening in 2018
and will be one of the largest startup campus in the World. Macron is strongly
pro-startup. there are a LOT of options for funding (quite crazy when I saw
how much we can get with my startup (Banque publique d'investissement, crédit
impôt recherche...). It is really easy to start a startup, not much paperwork
(surprisingly).

Contrary to 10 years ago, best students coming from "les grandes ecoles" want
to be entrepreneur or join a startup. This is a radical change to the mindset
from the past when the best opportunity would be in big companies. PhD start
to be recognised as they should in private sector and more PhD are leaving
academic to private (which I did).

Now, I think that comparing Europe to SV is too premature, (A change in
culture is yet to come). But the dynamic is here.

In Paris, salaries in tech startups are high (for what I saw: ~42K junior, ~60
senior (5y)) compared to the cost of living (in France healthcare and
education are free), rent is high. So yeah, I am confident for the future of
Europe :)

edit: and from what I saw, most startups' products have english language
available (interface/doc). Most of them have international expansion in mind.

~~~
majewsky
> salaries in tech startups are high (for what I saw: ~42K junior, ~60 senior
> (5y))

Are the salaries at the big corps lower than that in France? In Germany, I get
about the same working at a big software company in a developer/architect
role.

~~~
ever1
I gave an average, in big companies it depends on which company you are
working for, which "Grande ecole" you come from, and what position you have. I
would say that the variance is quite high.

------
wuschel
The article is the usual PR piece on startup sectors in the EU.

Unfortunately, writing hype articles like that do not make things better. From
my personal observation, there is a huge difference in
funding/regulatory/technology adoption and available workforce.

------
tzakrajs
If Europe is better than Silicon Valley, where is the output? They have been
silent compared to Silicon Valley in most markets.

~~~
kuisch
To name a few --

Payments: Adyen, Transferwise, and (arguably) Stripe

Music: Spotify, Soundcloud. Shazam

Travel: Booking.com, SkyScanner

Fashion: Zalando

Telecommunications: Skype

Gaming: Rovio (Angry Birds), King (Candy Crush), Supercell (a.o. Clash of
Clans)

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
yet Europe has a population more than twice the US.

~~~
relyio
But a much more segmented market, what is your point? Europe is not a country.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
The parent lists a handful of European startups. Just incase that list was
being presented as an example of Europe's startup prowess, I just wanted to
temper any enthusiasm by pointing out that on a per-capita basis, the density
of startups is much lower in Europe.

------
jankotek
Hiring people from abroad is also easier in Europe.

------
tyrw
Wishful thinking, and hilarious that I had to clear a cookie notification just
to read the first part of the article. It's that kind of forward thinking web
bureaucracy that has allowed SV to flourish.

~~~
mbaha
I didn't understand your comment.

1) Do you think cookie notifications are a bad thing ?

2) Do you think it is web bureaucracy ? If so, laws protecting every european
citizen with digital neutrality are also bureaucratic ?

~~~
tortasaur
There's a difference between protecting citizens and overloading them with
meaningless warnings that just end up desensitizing them.

~~~
Noseshine
Indeed. Fortunately there is a filter-list [0] for my ad blocker with the sole
purpose of blocking these EU cookie warnings :-)

[0] List homepage: [http://prebake.eu/](http://prebake.eu/)

------
rhapsodic
This is a dupe of a recent posting:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14432977](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14432977)

------
superplussed
What did this statement mean: "It’s very difficult for American startups to
relocate post-Trump."

------
pottersbasilisk
I hope not. The pay of developers is horrible compared to silicon valley.

~~~
KitDuncan
The cost of living is also a fraction of the one in silicon valley. I stayed
in Silicon Valley for a few months and compared to Munich, the quality of
living is complete horse shit, to be honest.

And Munich is the most expensive city in Germany.

~~~
aries1980
I bet you don't mean at central locations, because 10-20 miles further to your
workplace, as most of Londoners or Berliners can afford to live, you have
affordable housing in SV as well.

~~~
KitDuncan
That's an interesting aspect I didn't consider.

Another issue though is traffic during rush hour in Silicon Valley. I can see
myself traveling 20 miles in/around Munich in half an hour, while in Silicon
Valley, that would probably take me 1.5 hours, because of the pretty much non
existent public transportation.

~~~
aries1980
London is not much better. E.g. from Hammersmith (a posh, well connected area)
to Old Street (aka “Tech City”), this 14km journey is 46 mins from underground
station to underground station, both are north to the river.
[https://tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-
journey/results?IsAsync=true&JpTyp...](https://tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-
journey/results?IsAsync=true&JpType=publictransport&InputFrom=Hammersmith%2C+London%2C+United+Kingdom&Modes=bus%2Ctube%2Cnational-
rail%2Cdlr%2Coverground%2Ctflrail%2Criver-bus%2Ctram%2Ccable-
car%2Ccoach&From=Hammersmith%2C+London%2C+United+Kingdom&FromId=&PreviousFrom=Greenwich&InputTo=Old+Street%2C+Old+Street+Station&To=Old+Street%2C+Old+Street+Station&ToId=1000169&PreviousTo=Old+Street%2C+Old+Street+Station&TimeIs=arriving&Date=20170531&Time=0900&IsMapRequired=False&Mode=bus&Mode=tube&Mode=national-
rail&Mode=dlr&Mode=overground&Mode=tflrail&Mode=river-
bus&Mode=tram&Mode=cable-
car&Mode=coach&CyclePreference=AllTheWay&WalkingSpeedWalking=average&JourneyPreference=leasttime&AccessibilityPreference=norequirements&MaxWalkingMinutes=40&WalkingSpeedTransport=average&InputVia=&Via=&ViaId=&PreviousVia=&NationalSearch=false&WalkingOptimization=false&SavePreferences=false&IsMultipleJourneySelection=False&JourneyType=&IsPastWarning=False)
Sure, you can move around to carve down 10 mins, but then you give up to live
in realitvely nice, convenient area populated middle class people and yet not
as expensive as Chelsea or Chiswick. If you live further, your journey time
from station to station is not much longer, but only if you are lucky and
there is no delay in the service, which happens almost daily.

------
CaseInsensitive
Silicon Valley has 30bn venture cap. Germany 3bn.

------
boona
I'm very skeptical of that claim. Besides the fact that every week we read an
article about X city is the new Silicon Valley, Europeans in general don't
seem to have that same drive Americans do to create new products. Which could
explain why we haven't seen many large innovative tech companies come out of
there in a while.

(Though in countries like the Czech Republic, and to a lesser extent places
like Romania and Poland seem to have more drive, and the work ethic to boot.)

Edit: I'm not saying that they haven't achieved say a better work/life
balance, but that their culture doesn't seem to produce very many world
changing entrepreneurs as evidenced by so few companies being created there
and that stay there.

I'm not sure what's going on with the Hacker News culture lately, but it seems
to be increasingly hostile to diversity of thought. I get that comparing
cultures has come under fire from the extreme political left, but that's no
reason we can't have a discussion about it. I would like it if members didn't
just downvote me, but engage me instead. Anecdotally, I've been to several
European countries, I've engaged with local populations, and the culture is
different. And empirically, they're not innovating anywhere near the rate the
US is. I'm willing to change my views, I would love to be wrong and that
Europe will experience an entrepreneurial renaissance, but I just don't see
it. Tell me where I'm wrong.

~~~
rmc
> _Europeans in general don 't seem to have that same drive Americans do to
> create new products_

Maybe they don't want to work 70 hour weeks?

~~~
boona
Exactly. Elon Musk has been working 80 hour work weeks for the past 20 years
now. I'm not saying that's anywhere near a balanced lifestyle. But without
those sacrifices, it's much harder to produce innovative world changing
products or services. The United States creates and draws those character
types to it, and for many Europeans countries, they don't.

~~~
danielam
There's a body of research that corroborates the opposite claim, i.e., that
past a certain point, working more hours does not correlate with -- or
correlates negatively with -- effectiveness. So if Europe is less
"innovative", the reasons are not likely related to a simplistic measure like
hours worked.

~~~
smsm42
On overall, probably not. There's a difference though between average load and
peak load. Virtually nobody could sustain a 80 hour work weak for an extended
time. A lot of people could do it for a short time, provided the possibility
of a large reward.

