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Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow

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Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow

#51

Post by antupis »

lrem wrote: post #5
antupis wrote: post #4

This is basically failure in European startup ecosystem that companies needs to go SF, but good for Y Combinator and SF that they can attract best talent.

It's not "European startup ecosystem", it's basically "European societies". Imagine how well would SV work if being involved in a bankrupt company (co-founder, major investor, C-suite) made banks refuse to talk to you again for 10-20 years. I believe that was the case in France. You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again.

I think it is set of different problems Southern Europe and France are almost hostile to entrepreneurship and startups. Nordics, Baltic and Benelux countries mostly nail culture and regulatory frameworks but small markets slows down starting and scaling business. Personally I don't know what is problem with Germany probably something to do with how German is organised around manufacturing.

Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow

#52

Post by pjc50 »

bserge wrote: post #40
inglor_cz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in European societies still feel need for some thrill. I think the problem is a bit different. Language and cultural barriers are still meaningful. I am a Czech and I know shit about selling to Romanians or Portuguese customers; even if I was able to pay for professional translation of my products AND customer support in 20-25 languages, my cultural ignorance would be still a significant hurdle. USA and Anglos…

If you're selling a technical solution, why would you even touch cultural differences? I bet you'd be successful if you could afford the extra costs of translation/marketing.

Cultural differences hugely affect the marketing, and in some cases the market; you couldn't sell a tipping management app to somewhere without a tipping culture, for example.

Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow

#53

Post by dmitriid »

cblconfederate wrote: post #34
dmitriid wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. European "companies" look to the US and see that you can lose billions of unlimited investor money for years with no repercussions and no negative consequences for the founders. Now "successful" European startups want in on the money. YC's "most successful startups" routinely lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27485360

there is also a lot of money thrown in businesses in the form of EU subsidies. YC gives a miniscule amount of money ($125K), i believe european entrepreneurs can (and do) milk naive US VCs for a lot more than what YC offers. The YC data is clear about one thing: if you remove the need to travel to the US , a lot more europeans flock to YC. We 've become a terribly sclerotic continent and it's very visible now. I beli…

> there is also a lot of money thrown in businesses in the form of EU subsidies.

Show me any subsidy in the EU that supports a business losing 500 million dollars a year for 10 years.

> We 've become a terribly sclerotic continent

No. The US has become reckless with money, and the concept of a successful business has been entirely substituted by "but this unbelievably unprofitable company with no chance of ever earning money has an imaginary market cap of 50 billion dollars".

Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow

#54

Post by Grustaf »

pjc50 wrote: post #23
Semaphor wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t quite understand the benefit. Surely, if you have to take loans to get over the month, this won’t change anything as your overall income is still the same. I guess for unexpected expenses, you can bridge the gap one-time by borrowing from future-you. What am I missing?

Cashflow, the same as for busineses. If you don't have one months' spare cash as a "float", then you may have to resort to lending at the end of the month.

The solution to that is not to live even closer to the edge.

Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow

#55

Post by inglor_cz »

bserge wrote: post #40
inglor_cz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in European societies still feel need for some thrill. I think the problem is a bit different. Language and cultural barriers are still meaningful. I am a Czech and I know shit about selling to Romanians or Portuguese customers; even if I was able to pay for professional translation of my products AND customer support in 20-25 languages, my cultural ignorance would be still a significant hurdle. USA and Anglos…

If you're selling a technical solution, why would you even touch cultural differences? I bet you'd be successful if you could afford the extra costs of translation/marketing.

Well that is why Linux is successful around the planet. It really does not touch any soft cultural differences. Geeks and their needs are similar everywhere.

Something like a food delivery corp. on the other hand must know precisely what to expect from which holidays etc. There is a fairly successful Czech startup called Rohlík that expanded to Hungary, Austria and Germany, but every added country is a challenge.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/30/rohlik-raises-119m-at-a-1-...

BTW Translation is probably cheaper than support. Customers will often demand support in their native language.

Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow

#56

Post by raverbashing »

bserge wrote: post #40
inglor_cz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in European societies still feel need for some thrill. I think the problem is a bit different. Language and cultural barriers are still meaningful. I am a Czech and I know shit about selling to Romanians or Portuguese customers; even if I was able to pay for professional translation of my products AND customer support in 20-25 languages, my cultural ignorance would be still a significant hurdle. USA and Anglos…

If you're selling a technical solution, why would you even touch cultural differences? I bet you'd be successful if you could afford the extra costs of translation/marketing.

"Extra costs of translation/market" you're saying it like it's a byline

It is more complicated than that for things moderately complex.

Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow

#58

Post by maeln »

oblio wrote: post #12
lrem wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "European startup ecosystem", it's basically "European societies". Imagine how well would SV work if being involved in a bankrupt company (co-founder, major investor, C-suite) made banks refuse to talk to you again for 10-20 years. I believe that was the case in France. You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again.

> You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again. Is this just hearsay? It seems extreme, even for French levels of bureaucracy.

I think he is confusing "interdit bancaire" and bankruptcy. If you end up being put in the interdit bancaire file, yeah life pretty much sucks and most bank will refuse to do business with you. But having a company that go bankrupt doesn't mean you will be put in the file. You usually need to do things like stop paying your loan to be put on this file.

Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow

#59

Post by pjc50 »

Grustaf wrote: post #50
StreamBright wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If you live in a safe and secured society why would you want to do something risky like creating a startup. One of the biggest success for the EU startup scene was just copying what is done in California, avoiding the risk of trying out new ideas. On the top of that, regulation in the EU is much worse than in the US. This does not help either.

> On the top of that, regulation in the EU is much worse than in the US Worse as in better for consumers and citizens, but more costly for companies that can't do exactly what they want?

EU regulation generally doesn't have "de minimis" exemptions. If you have something that takes a flat cost of €10k or €100k to comply with, that burdens small businesses much more than large businesses, and a startup is a small business in the beginning.

Theoretically if you want to build an electronic product and sell one (1) unit of it in the EU you need to give it the full works of CE compliance. I don't believe UL/FCC are quite so onerous? And certainly this doesn't apply to random items in unmarked packages from China.

Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow

#60

Post by gyulai »

awelkie wrote: post #37
lrem wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "European startup ecosystem", it's basically "European societies". Imagine how well would SV work if being involved in a bankrupt company (co-founder, major investor, C-suite) made banks refuse to talk to you again for 10-20 years. I believe that was the case in France. You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again.

There was an article on this in The Economist recently. Apparently what you're describing is no longer the case. https://www.economist.com/business/2021/08/14/one-way-to-mak...

It's a pretty regular occurrence for the political PR machinery to try to get stories published that basically say that (thanks to some politician's doing) European region X is now going to be the next silicon valley. ...none of that ever actually filters through to the daily realities of a European entrepreneur. ...omg, the war stories I could tell, being an E.U. entrepreneur who was dumb enough for large stretches of time to believe the hype.
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