[jariel]

"OK, bear with me here. So, a US company can create a huge market for itself in the EU, but a EU company can't?"

US companies can create massive businesses within the US. They are backed by massive VCs, national press.

Once you're 'big in the US' you can knock out many other countries like dominos - except for those that are protected, or too big, or both.

EU nations are mostly separate. The Swedish market is basically too small to be relevant for most things, to have a credible business model you have to raise money on the basis of 'EU wide' and that's a hard thing to do.

French media doesn't care one bit about Swedish startups, just the opposite, they probably prefer their own.

Ebay and Amazon bought up all their smaller competition in Europe, that same pattern is repeated.

So it's an existential problem.