[thijsc]

Hard to know where to start!

Looking at the Netherlands, where I'm from: There are many fast-growing tech companies. Both big and small. Bigger examples are Adyen and Elastic. GitLab started out here.

This is a pretty nice overview, which still misses a lot: https://www.notion.so/Dutch-SaaS-Landscape-89504403a57e43f58...

There are many many tech companies with 10s of millions of revenue that aren't even on this list.

On the other side of the spectrum we have a huge high-tech industry around Eindhoven. ASML is market leader by far in machines to produce chips. The M1 is made possible by them for a large part. NXP is a huge chip company.

I could go on. There is a very diverse landscape here. I'm sure if you look closely you will find a lot in other European countries too.

[berkes]

... Just Eat Takaway. Booking.com are from the Netherlands too.

Spotify is Swedish. As is Klarna and Mojang. SoundCloud is German. Mixcloud British.

Several of the covid vaccines were develeoped in europe (albeit under the umbrella of US companies such as J&J).

Volkwagen and Volvo are beating Tesla in sales numbers and in getting self driving to market hands down.

There is lots of high tech in Europe.

Just Because there are no redicoulous overvalued tech corps, does not mean we aren't creating solid, profitable tech here.

[ahartmetz]

The BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine was AFAIK developed entirely in Germany by BioNTech. Pfizer helped with regulatory affairs, logistics and mass production.

It is also interesting that three key people at BioNTech (founders and an original developer of mRNA medicine) are immigrants. That is an interesting similarity to SV. Soundcloud was also started by two Swedes in Berlin. That one is probably entirely due to the cultural capital of Berlin - from what I hear, Sweden is a good place for software businesses.

[relativ575]

mRNA vaccine was originated in the US in the 1980s [1]. BioNTech got in the mRNA game thanks to Katalin Kariko, who was a professor at UPenn [2].

Moderna started working at mRNA based approach in the similar timeframe, and get similar results. Also what does it tell you that Moderna can do trial and manufacturing on its own, as opposed to BioNTech who has to rely on Pfizer? Trial was absolutely vital in order to bring the vaccine to the mass that quickly, and Pfizer's role was essential.

Of course Katalin is also Hungarian, so again, it goes to prove that things are complicated than it appears.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_vaccine

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3

[ahartmetz]

Katalin Kariko is the third key person at BioNTech that I mentioned ;)

[fifilura]

It is not possible to argue that Volvo is European anymore unfortunately.

It was sold by the american company Ford to the chinese company Geely.

[mxschumacher]

Volvo cars was sold, volvo trucks and heavy machinery for construction are still independent

[dmitriid]

Volvo's R&D is in Sweden.

[barry-cotter]

> Booking.com are from the Netherlands too.

Booking has been owned by a US company since 2005.

[midasuni]

That’s the US M.O. any innovation gets bought out by successful companies.

[Nimitz14]

Nothing you mentioned is high tech. Car companies haven't innovated anything in decades. Spotify is a perfect example of a company with lots of revenue that doesn't do anything interesting with it.

[berkes]

> Spotify is a perfect example of a company with lots of revenue that doesn't do anything interesting with it.

As an investor, I'm very reluctant of those typical SV companies who use debt to finance growth. Not for nothing that the investing world is jitterish lately, with an interest-rate increase looming: it's very bad for tech stocks.

I see those as unhealthy or at least very risky (though I have one or two of those in my portfolio: spread)

Spotify is still growing at mad pace; even compared to the COVID/lockdown boom, they are doing well. Spending loads of cash to landgrab the podcast market. Spending loads of cash to move into the audiobook market.

I can understand the grudge some US people feel over a company like Spotify: why not a US-company? Why are they attacking our tech-pride AAPL? Why are they taking hold of our US-media (podcasts) and our entertainment (music)? But Spotify really is what it is: a tech success. Albeit a more typical European one: less debt, slower, more organic growth and less horn-tooting.

(this is not investment advise)

[effie]

Ramp up of electric car production isn't innovation?

[marvin]

I'm as big a fan of the European businesses that succeed as anyone, but the car industry would still have been dragging its feet if Tesla hadn't provided a credible threat to eat most of their market share.

[berkes]

Toyota was way ahead of the curve and selling more EVs and hybrids than Tesla untill something like 2018-2019. Only last few years Tesla is ramping up their output and becoming this "threat".

Toyota is not a European company. But it certainly is "the car industry" and it has moved that industry towards EV for years before Tesla produced anything close to significant numbers.

And when it comes to e.g. self-driving, Volvo is far ahead of Tesla too. When it comes to safety and duress Tesla is far from leader too.

I don't like fanboyism and a lot of "Tesla Praise" is driven by mostly this. They make great cars, I presume far above average (which also includes all the low-end cheap cars). But above all Tesla seems to be a great marketing machine, yet when it comes to building cars, they are not up there yet between the BMWs, Volvo or maybe even Toyota, Nissan or Volkswagen.

[joelbluminator]

You chose the most competitive European economy (besides Sweden), that's not a good representation to Europe. But even if we only look at NL there are quite a few metrics it falls way short from the U.S: VC raised per capita, exit volume and salaries are all falling short.

[thijsc]

> You chose the most competitive European economy (besides Sweden), that's not a good representation to Europe.

There are also vast differences between states in the US. If we're comparing I think it's perfectly reasonable to pick places that are on the top end of the scale on both sides of the ocean.

> But even if we only look at NL there are quite a few metrics it falls way short from the U.S: VC raised per capita, exit volume and salaries are all falling short.

I'm not claiming that the EU is equivalent to SV, or the wider US. There is certainly much to love about SV and we can and should do better in a number of areas in which SV is already doing very well.

I'm only correcting the unfounded assumption that some people in this thread expressed that there's somehow nothing going on in the EU. Or that it's a bad place for business, it's really not.

[SOMA_BOFH]

your anecdotal evidence is quite entertaining. please continue.

[dang]

Would you please stop posting flamewar and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot and we ban that sort of account because we're trying for a different kind of site here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit more to heart, we'd be grateful.

[SOMA_BOFH]

will do. you are correct.

[dang]

Appreciated!