When it comes to european languages, we are at least an order of magnitude better in understanding natural language and delivery speed(from start to production) than these big companies. But oh boy how many times EU companies pick one of these big players over us and fail. Today we have a range of HUGE clients, half of them who has even failed with a competitor. We have a really good story to sell. Still it is impossible to convince 1 of 2 companies to go with us first. They really want to fail hard before giving us a chance. I just can't understand why it is like this. The trust in US companies with a strong name over decades is really huge here in EU.
German PayPal? Not that I know of. The banks are helplessly trying now after many years but they aren't even able to match what PayPal provides let alone being innovative.
That's a startup?! It was some dodgy scheme set up by infamous brothers, hysterically taken over by eBay within first couple of months of its existence.
And in southern Europe I am lucky to be able to speak most languages, as anyone beyond a certain age hardly speaks any word of English, specially outside the major cities.
Which is indeed a challenge, on the other side is also something quite rich, as most traveling Europeans tend to speak fluently three languages on average.
Everyone who knows English has already left. I'm not sure how much it's worth to other people but for me knowing English has been a ~x50 income multiplier.
??
There’s been a German eBay, PayPal and Facebook.
Europe doesn’t really do major companies though, and part of that is certainly a lack of demand to go global from capital investors, but there are other parts as well. Like language and regulation.
I went to harzen for holiday this summer, very retro I know, and almost no one spoke English. In fact I had bigger luck with Danish than I had with English because they see so many Danish tourists. I’m not sure Americans can really understand how big the language and cultural barriers are from creating global companies when you’re de-attached from the Anglo-Saxon world.
I think the reason that a lot of European startups that made it to the global scence came from Scandinavia, is exactly because we’re so attached to American culture that’s it’s almost second nature to us. Sure we don’t understand American individualism, not really, but we’re all brought up watching American tv-shows and movies, hell American politics and economics sometimes take up more news space than our own national news...
The rest of Europe isn’t like that, so while Germany had its own eBay, that made its founders billionaires, no one outside of Germany has ever heard about it. Except for maybe eBay who couldn’t enter the market.