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by nickpp 969 days ago
By successful I mean profitable privately held, IPOed or acquired.

Growth is a must - large companies are market makers and a continent without them will become dependent on the ones that have them.

Bought out is also fine - that how you get investment capital.

Regulation only helps incumbent companies though, which is exactly the problem in EU.
2 comments
denton-scratch 969 days ago
Well, you've just defined "successful" to mean rapidly growing, and by implication unconstrained by regulations.

European telecom companies are large tech companies, heavily regulated and successful. Yes, they are incumbents now. But they weren't always; at least not all of them.

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troupo 966 days ago
Somehow your definition of success doesn't have the actual definition of success: sustainable profitable business.

It's easy to see why: all the startups loudly hailed as successful are running into billions of dollars of debt every year, but keep being propped up by unlimited investor money. In any other industry this would be a failure.

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nickpp 966 days ago
If they are not sustainable they will go bankrupt. Are you saying all those investors are dumb and just burning money for the fun of it?! That's... interesting. More gain for us consumers then - subsidized goods and services!
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troupo 965 days ago
> If they are not sustainable they will go bankrupt.

They would if not for the infinite subsidies

> Are you saying all those investors are dumb and just burning money for the fun of it?!

For example, Uber has not been profitable for a single year in its 10 years of existence.

Same goes for most if YCombinator's "top companies".

In which other industry can you lose money (often billions of dollars a year) and still be in business and claim you're successful.

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nickpp 965 days ago
> infinite subsidies

There is no such thing. Private money is finite, it ends up eventually as investors want ROIs.

> Uber has not been profitable

Actually, they announced their first profitable quarter in 2023.

> In which other industry can you lose money (often billions of dollars a year) and still be in business and claim you're successful.

Well in the Government business, of course! Deficits around the world keep increasing and governments borrow trillions they never pay back.

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