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The lack of VC funding is a real problem. On the other hand, I've seen many EU start-ups with lots of potential, developing things way ahead of the wave. Having ideas and skills is not a problem. Keeping afloat long enough to make them reality is hard. There is also an important but unspoken cultural factor that really hurts EU initiatives: more-or-less subtle cultural imperialism. No, really, I mean it. As with many things, to succeed in the world of start-ups, you need to be validated by Silicon Valley pundits, to adopt the language of the Silicon Valley, the cultural codes of the Silicon Valley, and ultimately Silicon Valley money etc. That's really hard when you come from a culture that has different definitions of things as basic as "yes", "no" and "please", different definitions of what a good pitch is, different definitions of ethics, of the employer/employee relationship, etc. not to mention the need to live in a foreign language and, to a large extent, in a foreign timezone. In many cases, the EU start-up bashing I've seen feels like (a reduced form of) poor-bashing, attempting to explain to people who started with fewer chances that everything is their fault. Now, this doesn't mean that nothing should be done to improve the situation. But I've started to take EU start-up criticism with a pinch of salt. |