Why Europe Failed to Dominate Tech

Airbus is not just French: It's a French-Spanish-German conglomerate of 3 different companies

Every company I've worked for (in the UK and Sweden) has been bought by US companies, except for one I think. The goal when one starts a company seems to be to sell it to American investors.

Europe has 44 nations. The EU has 27.

I have a masters degree in business administration from a German university. My friend and I wanted to start a start-up straight out of university. I pitched my deck to around 25 german and european companies, universities and banks, all denied because the risk was to big. I pitched it online to three US companies and got the 150K funding. Now I am in the process to apply for an entrepreneur visa, to start my operations in the US. That means that the european union trained and educated me for 5 years in higher education + all the 12 years of education before that just to give the potential gains away for free. I even feel kind of guilty for that, but I am definitely not sorry. Europeans lack the ability to dream and think big.

When you spend all that public money on students from the time they are young and they end up moving somewhere else to live their life and start their enterprises, it is a huge blow. Whether they move to another country in Europe or over seas, it hurts the countries that invested in them from the beginning. This happens in America too with some states.

Europe’s failure to dominate tech is not due to lack of talent, but because of systemic barriers fragmented markets, less aggressive investment, and risk-averse culture.

0:22 bro really calls Tiktok American

You forgot Sweden's gift to the world, Pirate Bay. Yay Pirate Bay!

Worked in the Silicon Valley for over 30 years in tech (enterprise software). If you were part of leadership in a start up that failed, in Europe you would be looked at as a failure. However, in the US, if you failed at a start up, the first thing people ask, “What did you learn?” Plus, we have a much higher risk tolerance. The other reason, and it’s major, is the lack of a broad VC network in Europe.

I think the saying is "The U.S. innovates, China replicates, and the E.U. regulates".