There are no shortage of European startups and GDPR is really doesn’t prohibit a startup…unless your business model is trading personal data. And if it is, then you deserve to be regulated.
One press announcement from 5 years ago isn’t proof. Companies shutdown all the time and cite reasons beyond “our business model just wasn’t profitable”. Many other companies are just Trojan horses for data harvesting — and if those get shut down then good riddance because they’re exactly who GDPR was intended to protect us from.
If GDPR was really that problematic then it would be all over the news instead of a few nationalists outside of EU arguing about hypotheticals on random message boards.