Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

coinerella.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 391 posts

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#101

Post by yoavm »

okanat wrote: post #88
yoavm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions of euros over multiple decades? Why? Seems to me like it's mainly regulation. The thing that makes people in China, or Russia, for example, not use Google - isn't that Yandex / Baidu got tons of investments. It is that people can't easily access Google. If the EU decides to pull the switch (or if the US decides to do so), we have enough competence people here to build a search engine.

That's where democratic governments at a disadvantage. Europe is also more integrated into US market. For example, killing access to Google ads ecosystem will make 100s of thousands or even millions of people unemployed. Apple and Google have multiple offices in Europe. A divorce with US will again make a huge amount of people lose their very high paying jobs. Unlike China and Russia those people can vote. Moreover,…

I think those things are very hard to predict. Yes, many Europeans will stop working for American companies and lose their very high paying jobs. On the other hand, the EU as a whole will stop sending billions of euros to the American economy, and at least some of this money will be invested in creating local alternatives; Those who worked for American companies will probably find their place in these alternatives.

Everything you wrote about the open market system is true, except it seems like that system have died over the past year. Europeans understand now that the US isn't a friend.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#102

Post by zonkd1234 »

znnajdla wrote: post #74

Thank you for this. I'm in Europe with an established SaaS that's been running in production for years and I've converged on a similar stack (OVHCloud instead of Hetzner). However, I've realized you can stay sovereign and independent in any jurisdiction (not just Europe) just by simplifying your stack and running a few baremetal servers in-house. Just buy a few Mac Studios and run them in-house with power supply back…

Thanks for the post. How do you currently deal with HD failures/redundancy? That’s my main concern leaving a managed database provider.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#103

Post by dizhn »

willy__ wrote: post #78
dizhn wrote: post #65

Authentik would fit very nicely there and eliminate that one large bit that the author says he can't avoid putting on US infra. I am only saying this because he's already self hosting a bunch of things.

Hanko can be self hosted, if needed - it is one of the few products I chose actively to NOT self host. I am aware of Authentik and do like it.

I am not familiar with Hanko. I will check it out. Thanks.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#104

Post by zelphirkalt »

bjourne wrote: post #62
palata wrote: post #49

> Your users expect "Sign in with Google" and "Sign in with Apple." You can add email/password and passkeys, but removing social logins entirely is a conversion killer. I know this is true, but I genuinely don't understand it. I want email/password and passkey, I will always go out of my way to avoid "Sign in with ...". I just don't get why people love this.

Heard of haveibeenpwned? You'll end up there, eventually.

You mean when using "sign in with" and then using a shitty password for your social media account?

If you use e-mail and password with a good password manager, that runs locally on your device and generate good random passwords, it is unlikely you will end up on haveibeenpwned, and even if one website does shit, the blast radius is only one account on one website.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#105

Post by willy__ »

honzabe wrote: post #97

The article does not mention payments. I would be especially interested in a European Stripe alternative - this is what I find really difficult to replace.

I am simply not at that phase yet... I considered revolut pay (UK) or adyen (NL)?

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#106

Post by raincole »

bjourne wrote: post #62
palata wrote: post #49

> Your users expect "Sign in with Google" and "Sign in with Apple." You can add email/password and passkeys, but removing social logins entirely is a conversion killer. I know this is true, but I genuinely don't understand it. I want email/password and passkey, I will always go out of my way to avoid "Sign in with ...". I just don't get why people love this.

Heard of haveibeenpwned? You'll end up there, eventually.

Password manager.

Before inevitable "what if your password manager is hacked...," what if your google account is hacked / banned?

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#108

Post by deaux »

> Google Ads and Apple's Developer Program. If you want to acquire users and distribute a mobile app, you're paying the toll to Mountain View and Cupertino.

If you said Play Store, then sure, though at least distribution on there is free. But you said Google Ads, which you really do not need to acquire users. Returns on Google Ads were already low, and have only continued getting worse and worse. I'm sure someone here claims to be a magician at it and believes they can get a fantastic RoI out of it, and I'm sure some can. But the huge majority doesn't. It's very much like day trading stocks.

There's a huge number of other, better avenues for paid marketing if you want to do it.

Re: I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

#109

Post by danelski »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #89
wvh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's true Europe might not be producing the next Apple or Google, there are lots of alternatives, like national academic login systems, logging into third parties with bank credentials or government IDs... Solutions that depend less on one commercial company capturing the market, that are in place on a national level and work well. It's a different landscape. Factors like current day political turmoil make peop…

What about non EU users? Americans don't second guess themselves when they slap google/apple/meta sign in only. They know everyone in the world will never pause when they see their logo on the buttons. To reach this scale of worldwide adoption for a European service requires a massive amount of investment. What's even the entry point? Google and Apple make the devices that everyone uses. Even if you build a service l…

> They know everyone in the world will never pause when they see their logo on the buttons.

As in, that they won't run away when they see them or that they will all happily use them? If you mean the latter, then it's just false. Also, why do you assume that such product would need to be used worldwide all of a sudden? Having something for the local market would be sufficient to call it a success in this instance. There's an ICC judge who could tell you a thing or two about having a whole digital life on the hook of services from one country, so reducing this dependency is a clear benefit.

Post reply on HN