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by DoingIsLearning 1485 days ago
It is mostly due to differences in funding.

EU funding is typically small government grants or seed money. Investors are culturally a _lot_ more risk averse if comparing with the US.

None of the tech sector in the US would exist without NSF, darpa, and NY,SV investors.

Most of the success stories in the EU have been with companies that secured capital from US funds. The only exception I can think of from the top of my head is Nokia and ASML.

2 comments

>> None of the tech sector in the US would exist without NSF, darpa, and NY,SV investors.

"None" is probably a bit much but I agree it rounds to a number close to zero.

Nokia doesn't really exist anymore except being a marketing machine and name brand for Chinese made OEM Android phones, and a networking device manufacturer with sweat-shop style dev offices in Eastern Europe because they're not competitive on Western wages due to chinese competitors like Huawei stealing/eating their lunch.

It's only a shadow of its former self.

Yeah, but it used to be a huge company and it shaped the future of mobile phones forever, so I think it's fair to point out the major success it did have. It should be a lasting legacy, even if it turned out poorly.
A glorious past is pretty irelevant in the current market when you consider all the EU hardware jobs that have been lost or offshored in the process of Nokia's decline.

It's one of the reasons why embedded gigs pay so little in the EU.