-Europe is fragmented market. It is not given that German software will be gladly accepted and used in France, Italy or UK and vice versa. There are barriers there that does not exist in the US.
-The capital market and the stock market are not as developed as in USA in terms of market participants and available funds. Going public is unlikely event. If it happens, it would not get a lot of publicity and it would not raise as much money. Some European companies prefer to go public in the US.
-There is public mistrust about big software companies. Many people are afraid that big software companies will steal and abuse their personal data.
-There is also mistrust about venture capital and generally big finance institutions that they somehow "control" the economy, exploit small family businesses, and just make money on mistreating normal people.
I know that some of this sounds ridiculous, but it is true for astonishing number of people in Germany, France, Austria, and Italy. UK is a little better, but they mistrust everything about the rest of Europe.
Cant say they are wrong. But its also a business concern for enterprise companies everywhere - US or EU so you cant really say this is an issue here. More of a requirement.
>exploit small family businesses, and just make money on mistreating normal people.
Most of the people who think so are being very stupid.
VCs make a profit by selling startups to big corporations or big investors via IPO. Most startups have negative cash flow and make negative profits by the time they are acquired by a corporation or investors. This means that VCs make a profit by creating negative value. Most VC-funded startups with a successful exit never become profitable. Those few startups that do manage to IPO and eventually become profitable are usually those who happen to have a monopoly over some industry; in other words, they are only profitable because consumers have no other alternatives to choose from; so they get to set the price. Believing that VCs create negative value is not stupid. Not seeing that it might be the case is what's stupid.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/business/dealbook/farfetc...
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/civey-umfrage-fuer-den-ta...
Or at the very least the land under it should never be sold, only leased from the state.
How so?
> Shitty weather
To me, constant heat and sunshine is shitty weather. I prefer a temperate/boreal climate. I find it far more pleasant.
> the insane apartment situation in any major city
So just like every other major city currently.
> shitty services
They are going to have to be extraordinarily shitty to be worse than what I have already in the UK.
I've spent enough time in Spain to know I'd never want to live there, and enough in Germany to know that it is very attractive to me.
A personal preference. The quality of life is not high, considering the bureaucratic hurdles you have to overcome on a daily basis - dealing with any Amt/Behörde(agency), Schools, Kindergarten, etc. And on top of that - you get penalized for working hard. There is this Goldschnitt situation(golden edge, breaking point), where the taxes get way too high and makes no sense to work above that level.
> They are going to have to be extraordinarily shitty to be worse than what I have already in the UK.
I spent a couple of years in the UK and the services in Germany are way worse. Banks are better in the UK, transportation is better in the UK, at least in major cities(options where you don't have to rely on your car), doing business is easier and cheaper in the UK. Maybe if we compare the NHS vs the german health system, Germany has a slight advantage, at least when it comes to waiting times.
> the insane apartment situation in any major city
Here again - bureaucracy and the car lobby, which gets in the way of any sort of public transport development/investment. So there is space, but people have to bundle around the well connected spots. For example: East Berlin is vast and empty, no transport connections developed for 30 years - only tram and the occasional buses.
> Shitty weather > To me, constant heat and sunshine is shitty weather. I prefer a temperate/boreal climate. I find it far more pleasant.
It is 50/50 - I would not want to be in Spain in June, July, August and I don't want to be in Germany in January, February, March
I've visited Spain a few times and it's nice in short bursts, but to live there I would have to deal with the weather (not everyone likes hot and sunny, I'd honestly prefer Norway's weather to Spain), the piss-poor developer salaries, the struggling economy, the food that I really am not a fan of, the poor quality of healthcare, the remnants of pro-Franco fascism in their political landscape etc.
It's just not for me. I think I'm more suited to Germanic/Nordic countries for culture.
Could you elaborate on this? I'm genuinely curious what are some of those day to day bureaucratic burdens?
I'm not citizen but working as a dev. I have an old passport which doesn't have bio-metric security features. However, I have a valid residence permit card (it already has bio-metric features). Revolut app which is UK based bank accepts my residence permit in identification process without checking my passport. Just scan it via the app itself and there you go. There is literally no bank in Germany (including N26) that accepts my residence permit card. I constantly have to fight with every company providing any online financial service, because their online video identification process (known as Post-Ident which is run by Deutsche Post) only scans bio-metric passports.
How come? If this thing (residence permit) is a valid ID document, then why is everyone asking for passport? My identity has already been approved by immigration office.
If residence permit is not a valid ID document, then why issue it at first place?
lol, as a person who is forced to rent in Berlin, what should one be beware of while dealing with them?
You're framing this as if it's the EU's job. It isn't.
The only way the EU could compete if it would become a federal state, similar to the US. Right now the EU, despite being a single market in many respects is far from being a true digital single market.
Individual states are actively fighting against this because they would have give up bits of their sovereignty (controlling tax levels, such as VAT, commercial legislation, etc.).
You can't both have your cake (a huge single market able to funnel huge amounts of money into your desired investments) and eat it (keep total control of your country's finances).
I think this is less about regulations and more about language. Most people in the EU simply don't speak english so you would have to have your marketing and sales in 20 languages which is simply not doable. A french startup just can't cold call a romanian company because they can not communicate. Yes, it gets better with each new generation but it will be decades before this is "solved".
Every EU country pushes back when there are attempts for more integration. More than that, there's a rising anti-EU current in most EU countries, due to various population movement issues.
Then what is EU Horizon 2020 for?
https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/what-horizon-202...
But the EU budget is much, much smaller than the US federal budget:
EU: $150 billion for 2014
US: $3000 billion for 2014
And the barriers between national markets in the EU are much steeper than the ones between state markets in the US.
- Vaguely defined, so they open a lot of room for lobbying and corruption
- It is hard to align them to a startup agenda and the administrative overhead is often prohibitive
I wish it was more like a venture fund, but one that doesn't take equity.
Just my two cents.
https://www.logicalclocks.com/what-is-it-with-european-data-...
There's also the small detail of pension funds generally being forbidden from investing in stocks. That's the money that's fuelling SV, if my impression is correct. This policy comes from a general risk-aversion that's also evident in all other areas.
As someone who has worked for a Finnish start-up financed by a pension fund, you are mistaken on this one.
Europe has more than a few multi-national, global banks.
Also, my own pension is invested in the stock market. That's the norm for employer-provided pensions.
“Banks cannot use deposits in one country to lend in another, because national regulators do not want to be on the hook for loans to improvident foreigners. An eu-wide deposit-guarantee scheme would allay that fear, but has yet to be agreed.”
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/01/05/the-euro-enter...
You mean like Deutsche Bank? BNP Paribas? Santander?
I think Deutsche used to be pretty big, but it's been going downhill for a couple of years now.
This is more up to date but it seems you're right about Deutsche Bank https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2018/06/06/forbes-g...
Could you provide more info? All my Swedish pensions savings, both private and goverment, are basically stocks-only funds.
Do you have a source for that? I've not heard that before.
MySQL, JBoss, Elastic. The list is much longer.