> What massive barriers are there?

Starting and scaling a business in Europe is harder than in America. This is true for fundamental reasons, like language and national borders. It’s also true due to regulation and the culture of work and towards commerce in general.

Some of those come with reasonable tradeoffs, e.g. in respect of employee protections. Many do not, particularly when it comes to licensing, bureaucracy and the peculiar way most European tax law and regulation tries to compensate for its licensing and bureaucracy by adding more bureaucracy in front of a balancing subsidy.

Opinion of a german here: Build & break things (without caring for laws or implications) is what the US and their companies do. Often it works, and sometimes breaking the law makes a new law pop up to legalize it, but that's not a good thing.

Yes, it's a big annoying to start a company in some EU countries. No, it's not as bad as HN claims.

Working for a big American company.. we have to abide by a lot of laws, including the EU ones.

Small companies can get away with it for awhile, but not forever

Requiring companies to offer more than two weeks of paid time off per year.