If this perspective of "startup failure is a deep moral sin insufficiently penalized by the government" is common in Europe then the lack of entrepreneurship is not very surprising.
Startup failure is fine, not being accountable to your employees is what we have a problem with. The concept of the workers council in German law keeps throwing wrenches into the attempts to import the more exploitative business models from the US (N26 and Gorillas are recent cases) and Walmart completely flopped for related reasons. I do admire the business and entrepreneurship culture over the pond, but I think we can import the best bits of that without treating humans like fungible capital and burnout culture. It will just take a lot of time, especially in Germany (my native country), the business culture is still very conservative in the sense of rule based and authority/hierarchy oriented. I think if Germany adopted californias laws on non-competes and employee IP a lot would be gained already.
Notably, Sweden has a very robust social security network and a lot of entrepreneurship as well, the Swedes I talked to explicitly pointed to it as something that eased their way into taking risks.
Are you implying that startup success in America requires exploitation of workers? I don't think most people would consider the management of early employees at successful startups to be "exploitative". Most of them are heavily incentivized.
There are specific issues with the worker models of Uber et al, but that's an orthogonal point to the general formation of startups.
For ultra successful startups, sure everyone gets rich.
I think the issue is with the 95% of startups that have no or moderate success who convince employees that lotto ticket equity and beanbag chairs are worth more than work-life balance, healthcare, and cold hard cash.
> Are you implying that startup success in America requires exploitation of workers? I don't think most people would consider the management of early employees at successful startups to be "exploitative". Most of them are heavily incentivized.
This statement perfectly encapsulates the difference in work culture from the US and Europe. Exploitation doesn't happen because successes exist. You can get rich, so everything is allowed.
Having less social nets and having more startups aren't independent: they both result from an inherently risk taker culture.
(of course, all generalizations are limited and may not apply to all cases)
That's the wrong framing. I suspect the reality is that many 20th century European law-books were written to protect workers and state from exploitative/criminal business owners. Rightly so.
It's an accident that the most important bits of corporate and labor law don't distinguish between a 300-person shoe factory and a 20-person series-A startup. They weren't around when these concepts were codified and written in stone. The systemic and personal consequences are unfortunate but impossible to prevent.
You'd be surprised. If I'm not mistaken in some central European countries you could be sentenced to jail time after bankruptcy up to the 2000s. My point is precisely that ltds exist but are not the same world-wide. People (like myself) raised on American business folklore can be in for very rude awakenings when things start going badly.
We'll, the claim seemed overly broad. I wanted to point out that these harsh liabilities on the side of company directors are country specific and usually a company can go bankrupt as long as it's not the fault of the director due to them mishandling the company resources without pulling the director down with it.
Let's put it this way: If anyone is thinking of starting a business, they should spend a couple of hours researching and getting guidance from experts about the laws in their specific country. It's very easy to act cavalierly on advice meant for another jurisdiction without realising it. I have.
Another quick example from Portugal: Did you know businesses or business-like entities (we have those for smaller entrepreneurs) are required to keep a 10-year archive of paper receipts, regardless of having already filed digital copies with the government or of any other common-sense exception? Most people here don't. But they can get serious fines for not being able to produce almost decade-old records they had no clue were mandatory.
The points are: a) that there is no such thing as "europe" to begin with in a regulatory sense; b) but there are structural reasons why entrepreneurs in the area behave like they do, it's not an accident; c) only the paranoid survive, so do your research because there will be a test later and you don't get a do-over.
Notably, Sweden has a very robust social security network and a lot of entrepreneurship as well, the Swedes I talked to explicitly pointed to it as something that eased their way into taking risks.