That thesis is hard to square with the fact that it’s not that these unicorns are started in the US, it’s that they are almost all started in one metropolitan area.

The distinguishing factors here aren’t simply European regulations and taxes.

It's a matter of locality sure. But also access. SF and NYC have easy access to startup incubators and venture capital. Do you have a great idea and looking for an angel to give it a chance? You'll probably find it in New York or San Francisco. Pretty unlikely in Munich or Paris.

I realise it's maybe clear from the context of the thread, but it's worth reiterating that this is only true for unicorn-scale. There is plenty of startup capital available for good ideas in both Paris and Munich as well as many other European cities, they are just unlikely to breed unicorns.

I think this is important; I am in a bunch of startup hubs in the eu/uk as technical validator and tech expert and over the last 10 years of doing that, I haven’t heard 1 team that wanted to go for unicorn growth. There is money enough here for a healthy, profit making company; just generally (Revolut as counter example) not for burning a few 100m$ to become a (loss making) unicorn.

And if perchance they do some US company will buy them.

It’s a cultural difference not regulation, at least according to every VC and mentor I’ve ever met who has worked in both the US and Europe.

I know of American VCs who have been just as ambitious investing with U.K. startups as with American ones.

There might be a bit of observational bias here (better technical term?). HN is overwhelmingly about the tech industry, but most US companies are started outside of SF/California.

Most are started outside of California, yes, but there are plenty of large scale companies in the EU too. So unless we are limiting the discussion to large scale tech companies of the sort that are predominately in the Bay Area, the discussion just isn’t congruent.

Yes but that concentration in the Bay area has historically been because of its proximity to Sand Hill Road no? Or am I misunderstanding your point?

Well that’s basically is my point. The thesis I was responding to was that tech unicorns don’t exist in Europe due to taxes and regulations.

If we are to take the content of your post at face value, that thesis is wrong. It was due to sand hill road being where sand hill road is. That may have something to do with taxes and regulations to a degree, but that isn’t a sufficient explanation.

taxes and regulations could be a sufficient explanation for why unicorns are birthed in the US.

and within the US, "why SV?" might simply have another orthogonal explanation.

> taxes and regulations could be a sufficient explanation for why unicorns are birthed in the US.

If that were the case, you would have to see unicorns in Delaware and Texas and many other places in the US, especially since many of these have a much more lax tax regime than California or New York.

The fact that unicorns are almost exclusively bred in two cities in the US actually suggests that the influence of the tax and employment regimes is overwhelmingly dwarfed by other factors.

Checkout.com, Klarna, Revolut, Transferwise, Mollie, Deliveroo, Spotify, Hopin, Trustly.

> Checkout.com, Klarna, Revolut, Transferwise, Mollie, Deliveroo, Spotify, Hopin, Trustly.

No offense to Europeans, but I've only heard of Spotify.

Not hearing about Klarna and Deliveroo is surprising. Klarna is everywhere I turn in the US.

Transferwise/wise too. I use it to pay employees in Europe. I remember going to Clearwater and seeing their logo on i4 all the time. It is a known company. Revolut also known but still doesn’t work well for US costumers.

Klarna is like a layaway program? I'm like the GP never heard of these companies other than Spotify and the Klarna website isn't very helpful

It’s kind of like a payday loan type of micro-lending that integrates with merchants similarly to PayPal. I’ve never understood the appeal, it feels super predatory. But most creditors do, I guess. I first heard of it a few years ago when they did a huge ad campaign with a lot of the popular queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race.

It’s frequently way less predatory: merchants pays the finance charges and payoff time is much shorter.

I don't know, perhaps they're not predatory in usuary rate sense but I feel like using celebrities like A$AP Rocky and Keke Palmer to appeal to Gen Z to load up on consumer debt feels a bit questionable.

Layaway is the opposite: pay now, buy later.

I realize Spotify was started in Europe but they opened an office in the US in 2010. That's 8 years before they went public. And within a year they had a mega office. They were regularly in the NYC real estate news for the next couple of years after as well for adding and outgrowing existing office space. Statista shows the US presence has almost double the Swedish employees.[1]

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/813906/spotify-number-em...

Agreed, Spotify is a Swedish company in a pretty limited capacity. I know so many ex-Spotify people in NYC.

So that's the full list of successful startups for a developed economy polity with twice the population of America over the past 25 years... Not exactly impressive.

But possible.