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Three biggest Internet companies in each country

economist.com

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Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#13
World Startup Report team here. It's awesome to see our data on HN!

One interesting point to note is that out of the top 7 countries, none of them are from Europe. To put into context, the biggest internet company in Europe is merely 1/40th of the size of Google.

HOWEVER, Europe dominates the unicorn club (companies over $1b in valuation). Nearly half of 30 countries on the unicorn club list are European.

This prompts the question, is European market big enough but fragmented in such way that you can easily build mini-billion dollar companies, but never anything truly massive?

We'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

Also, AndriusWSR (lead researcher behind this research) will be joining us shortly to answer a few questions. Please feel free to ask away.

Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#14
I am Dutch, so naturally I checked the top 3 for the Netherlands. Number 3 (Booking.com) and number 1 (Marktplaats.nl, the dutch craigslist), I can understand because they are indeed big and well-known sites.

However, the number 2, apparently, is a website called "Shapeways", which is supposedly worth $175M. I have never heard of it and I asked some of my colleagues and they never heard of it either. After visiting shapeways I found that it is a 3D printing community site. After some research I found that it is actually founded in the USA, and just happens to have an office in the Netherlands.

Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#16
What factors are needed for a country to have start-up success. We know SV comes from defence money, but setting that outlier aside, what's the winning formula?

China's success would suggest that a huge talent pool and protectionism towards the big US internet companies is a winning move. Anything else?

Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#17

There are only 2 companies for a few countries, so that's not "three biggest".

Looks like there are only two internet companies in USA

There's like half a pixel you can hover over to the left of Amazon which shows Facebook.

Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#18
I was surprised to see Chile and Peru so far below Argentina. All the news pieces that I see make Argentina sound like a communist dystopia.

Anyone know whether the Startup Chile program (where foreign startups basically get a cash handout to physically relocate to Chile) is likely to have an impact on this chart?

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