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I hope they get something out of it, lots of tech jobs in a nice and accessible area is a good thing for the whole web ecosystem and me personally.
Question: What places in Europe would someone recommend an ambitious EU techie with no ties to move to (and possibly settle)? I figure the country needs to have fairly good internet and a decent political climate at the very least.
> A single digital market could bring in €340 billion to European GDP, create 3.8 million jobs, Automation was never about creating jobs. In my experience it's mainly about two things: - Doing the same or more work with fewer people - Doing things a person cannot safely or accurate or affordably (or at all) do in person Compare the number of people employed by a major software company compared to a major oil company…
Not to mention the underlying different cultures in the case of entertainment seservicek like Netflix. Even if the language could be translated on the fly (which will certainly happen inevitably) would Germans find an Italian comedy funny, and vice versa?
"Europe" competing with a small neighborhood on the west coast where the vast majority of the world's tech capital lives? Sorry I don't see it. Combined with the gloomy pessimism and fear of failure even in Europe's brightest areas (London and Berlin) and the absolute, spineless pathetic nature of European VC's (no not bitter at all ;) Europe will NEVER compete on any meaningful level with Silicon Valley. edit: spell…
The closest thing Europe has to a major tech hub is Tel Aviv.
True though, serious stuff seems to be happening with Israel. I even know of a growing number of US-based startups who've been raising parts of their rounds from Israel-based investors in the past few years.
Correct me if I'm wrong, my impression is that they don't have the anti-American nationalism and not invented here syndrome mentalities that countries in Europe seem to have. Big advantage.
As a European the title of the article pretty much sums up why there is no Silicon Valley here in Europe. Politicians and bureaucrats think they can somehow create and run such an environment from "the top down", when what is needed is a culture change and more venture funds to dangle carrots for entrepreneurs. Here often you have to deal with state bodies for funding for startups populated by beuracrats and controll…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the best way to introduce innovation "from the top down" for some reason always involves inventing more complicated legislation or benefits. Then somehow, large established companies turn out to be the ones who end up profiting because they have the legal/administrative staff to file out a few tons of paperwork. It's truly maddening. I worked for a European startup once, and one of the founders left to create a c…
I can relate, EU VAT would be a prime example of needless bureaucracy and paperwork. All that time wasted collecting, calculating, paper shuffling around in order to get VAT right, is time not spent on actually running your startup Yes one can pay accountants but that means increasing your costs and complicating your business from day 1 If they want more startups, they could for example exempt companies lets say with…
The EU plan was to exempt small businesses. But for god-only-knows what reason - I'm not ruling out petulance because they'd be losing tax breaks - some of the member states vetoed this.
I hope they get something out of it, lots of tech jobs in a nice and accessible area is a good thing for the whole web ecosystem and me personally.
Question: What places in Europe would someone recommend an ambitious EU techie with no ties to move to (and possibly settle)? I figure the country needs to have fairly good internet and a decent political climate at the very least.
It hosts Philips, ASML, TomTom, Shapeways, NXP Semiconductors, DAF Trucks and quite a few other high tech startups.
I don't understand the popular obsession with recreating the Valley: can't we do something better?
We can and possibly have, it's just banal. We have comfortable lives with nationalised healthcare and cheap or free education. We aren't striving to earn money for our own health, or to prove ourselves because we can't afford a degree. Without that there's just making something because you want it made. Governments and private organisations in Europe are decent at finding those people and giving reasonable funding.
Decent, reasonable, comfortable - hardly the sales pitch you'll want to use if you want to attract or retain highly ambitious people. Do you?
Not trying to offend anyone, just consider that some people have much different desires than others.
Sometimes I feel shame being a programmer in europe.
Resulting in a ton of cringe-worthy YouTube videos and managed twitter accounts and Facebook pages for politicians who think the Internet is "new" and still print out their e-mails.
For some reason European politicians talking about technology is often a lot like parents trying to come across as "cool" to their teenage kids. It just doesn't work and is a humiliating and disturbing experience for everyone involved.
There are some who get it right, mind you, but generally those in charge simply don't care about technology and see no reason to educate themselves (other than by listening to lobbyists who offer them shrink-wrapped opinions and soundbites).
One big problem is that a European "Silicon Valley" would have to grow in one of the EU states - Silicon Valley is a locality, not a distributed phenomenon. But with our current EU system, only the state hosting this tech hub would really benefit from it: We don't have federal taxes as in the US, each country has its own "social security" and pension system to which the new jobs would contribute, and this naturally b…
There is similar competition among states in the US. The states get very little revenue from the Federal government and when they do it's for specific programs (ie Highways or education). Often times they are mandated to institute programs by the Feds with no funds to finance the programs (assistive telephony). For example, Applebees is well known restaurant chain here. Their corporate headquarters is near the border…
Starting a tech company in Europe is, usually, easy enough. The paperwork is more complex and expensive than in the US, but easy enough to navigate.
Looking at the startup hubs in Europe (London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Dublin...), getting early stage or seed money is also relatively easy. But we find the first difference with the US here.
Getting a bit of money is easy enough, maybe something below 500K€ is feasible. But there's no way you are going to get the valuations and the money raised by similar startups in the valley.
Most VCs here are pretty risk-averse, so that's an extra hurdle, but there's a lot of other VC operating on both sides of the ocean that are sometimes more approachable and the networks of angel investors work really well.
For me, the real problem is growth. Converting a startup into a big company requires a lot of changes. Sometimes the founders are able to step up their game and continue to run the big company, but more often than not you need senior executives, people that have done this before and have the set of skills, knowledge and contacts to manage a big monster.
There's plenty of people with those skills in Europe, but the mentality is totally different from the US. In the US you can find one of these guys that is bored, contemplating retirement and sees this process as an exciting opportunity. In Europe is more common for these people to be afraid of losing their position.
All this IMHO, of course and based of my experiences.
By the way, I find it funny that the article talks about simplifying tax structures just after they've approved MOSS, which is a headache for most companies selling virtual goods.