[cm277]

Agreed; this criticism comes from the POV of "the US is richer, so let's do what the US does". Instead, we should see that the US is struggling across many, many dimensions and the inordinate success of American Big Tech / Big Business has a lot to do with it. It's like looking at Dubai and saying "oh they are doing great, let's start drilling".

Instead Europe should focus on what's stopping EU companies from scaling and leveraging their strengths: lower costs, better infrastructure, more diverse customers and employees.

As a founder on both sides of the Atlantic, I would keep it simple:

1. The EU needs a common credit rating system, similar to Duns & Bradstreet in the US (which is a private company mind you, so very possible) and more competition between banks that should be allowed to do business anywhere in the EU. The EU banking system is much better than the US one, but the above stop it from scaling across the continent.

2. EU needs to give higher incentives to EU companies to do business with EU startups. The fragmented EU market means that most valuable European companies end up being very conservative in how they spend their money (because competition is weak / settled). Therefore they are much less likely to do business with startups for normal business risk reasons. That's a chilling effect for B2B companies who are more likely to get traction in the US rather than the EU. A simple insurance or tax credit scheme would go a long way to reduce risk --and would help the EU get their money back from many startup / VC programs they are subsidizing anyway.