[redrove]

“Tech alternatives” yet a good portion of the companies I randomly clicked on are software services/outsourcing, especially on the eastern side.

Show me a European iPhone, European Microsoft, European Nvidia, etc. Hell, I’ll take a European one man company that can reach all 27 markets.

Europe needs a single market for capital and the removal of legal barriers to extend across the continent, foremost for the little guy. Von der Failen can only add _more_ regulation. Someone wake me when they actually make something easier.

[karambahh]

Feels like you're addressing two different topics in one comment.

Legally speaking, a one person company can address the whole EEA market. From a marketing/sales standpoint yeah, sure, it's probably hard to address culturally different markets like Portugal, Poland and Sweden.

But it does not have much to do with regulations, especially not ones decided at the EU level.

I'm all for better integration but diverse cultures are here to stay....

Sample size of one, but done business in Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Germany: main issues were not regulation related...

[joshuaisaact]

Have you heard of a little company called Arm Holdings?

It was a travesty that the UK government let it be sold, admittedly.

[shiroiuma]

UK isn't European. They made that clear when they voted for Brexit.

[Lio]

We are. Do you think someone dragged the whole country to new location?

Norway, Iceland and Switzerland are also not in the EU. Are they also on a different continent?

[hardlianotion]

UK is European. Membership of EU is unnecessary for that criterion to be met.

[SkiFire13]

The UK is not in the EU, but it is surely european.

[domh]

The UK is no longer in the EU; The UK is still in Europe and is very much European.

[cyberax]

How about European ASML?

> Europe needs a single market for capital and the removal of legal barriers to extend across the continent, foremost for the little guy.

?!?

You can trivially sell your software inside the EU. As for software that I use almost daily: OsmAnd. LanguageTool, which is spell-checking this message, is made in Germany. IntelliJ products are made in Czechia, and I'm using them right now.

[redrove]

You can sell products anywhere but you’re battling 27 different sets of rules and legislations. Look at how a burger shop becomes a continent wide franchise overnight and you’ll see how that’s impossible in the EU.

We just lack the regulatory freedom and deep financial markets, access to credit, etc.

[jimnotgym]

A burger shop is a hard example. Software is trivial. Distribution of goods is no harder than the US and its sales tax regime, that is different in all 50 states and can be different in each county inside that state. In EU you can use the One Stop Shop.

[ragall]

In the US you're battling 51 different rules and legislations, plus the countless county and city legislations if you're shipping or doing anything physical. The EU is better.

[mvc]

There are 50 different sets of regulations in the US though and lately even federal regulations have been "changeable" shall we say from year to year.

Just ask Moderna

[cyberax]

If you're selling software that needs to _battle_ 27 different rules, then you're doing something seriously wrong.

[XorNot]

I don't know why this is held up as some insurmountable challenge: every US state has different laws, if you sell any software to solve business problems you'll be dealing with 50 different legal codes and regulations you have to support too.

[stackghost]

>Show me a European iPhone, European Microsoft, European Nvidia, etc.

The "avoid dependence on the US" movement only really started picking up steam with Trump's accelerating dementia in his second term.

The iPhone, Microsoft, and nVidia all took multiple decades to develop into the behemoths they are today. Famously, the first iPhone was actually expensive trash: no apps, no 3G, couldn't even cut and paste text. It wasn't until the 3G model and the App Store that it became a true success.

[jmchuster]

> Famously, the first iPhone was actually expensive trash: no apps, no 3G, couldn't even cut and paste text.

Also famously, while the tech elitists complained about all of its shortcomings, the broader consumer market fully embraced it and it single-handedly drove an entirely new generation of consumer electronics.

[Lio]

I wouldn’t say trash.

For the record, it let you read the same web pages as a desktop computer over WiFi. It had a usable mapping app and good music app.

The rest of the experience, stuff like alarms, calculator, address book, etc. also worked nicely.

Those turned out to be things no one else was offering. I had a Nokia N95 at the time and the original iPhone was a big improvement on everything except the camera.

[stackghost]

Yes, as I wrote initially: the iPhone is a behemoth today, but its first version was underwhelming to say the least.

My point, which you seem to have overlooked, is that parent poster complaining that a "european iphone" doesn't exist is not realistic, considering how it went for Apple.

[shiroiuma]

The consumer market embraced it despite its shortcomings because it looked nice and was easy to use; the alternatives were not. Yeah, it didn't do that much, but it did more than a flip phone. The alternatives wanted you to use a stylus just to use your phone, and tried to basically recreate the MS Windows UI on a tiny screen; their UI was terrible.

[brabel]

I had a flip phone at the time and it certainly did more than the iPhone, but admittedly harder to use and not as good looking.

[raincole]

Yeah. Not sure if it's the intention, but what this site really shows is "the lack of European tech alternatives."

[puchatek]

I believe the EU inc initiative attempts to fix the capital aspect

[redrove]

It’s just a shortcut for broken Germany to be able to found a company without a notary and 25000EUR.

[9dev]

That is false. You can absolutely found a company by just getting an entry as a merchant here with neither of the things you listed. If you want to found a limited liability company though, then yes, you need some monetary backing to cover for fuckups (likely the 25k are not fully covering it anyway) and a notary to make it official.

[redrove]

No, you CANNOT found a company like that. It’s an absolute fabrication.

You also seem to somehow justify spending 25k on an endeavor you don’t know will succeed upfront, when every other country on the planet allows you to open one with orders of magnitude smaller amounts of capital.

You can open a UK LTD in a few days with 12GBP. Similar in DK/NL/CZ… the list goes on.

I’ve learned firsthand that germans will bend over backwards to justify this insanity.

[sehansen]

Needing to put in >1000 EUR in starting capital is not uncommon. The "cheapest Danish limited liability company, the Aps needs 20k DKK up front, i.e. ~3000 EUR. In Sweden an AB needs 25k SEK, ~2300 EUR.

And you can always dissolve the company and take the capital out again tax free, so what's the big deal?

[9dev]

> No, you CANNOT found a company like that. It’s an absolute fabrication.

I'm a German. I have done this myself. I assure you it's true.

> You also seem to somehow justify spending 25k on an endeavor you don’t know will succeed upfront, when every other country on the planet allows you to open one with orders of magnitude smaller amounts of capital.

If you are planning a serious endeavour where you intend to limit your liability, you'll have a business plan. And that allows multiple options, from a bank loan of a local bank that will very likely be granted on good conditions, to one of the various municipal, regional, or federal programs that offer grants for newly founded companies. My current company secured 200k Euro at the beginning from a federal program that we did not have to pay back, for example.

[Dacit]

You are clearly misinformed. According to German law, you can start a UG (limited) with only 1€ + notary cost. Starting a business with personal liability doesn't cost anything.

[ragall]

Businesses with personal liability don't count. They might as well not exist. AG or nothing.

[coredev_]

So there are of course a lot of large EU based IT/tech companies but I guess you already know this.

As for leaders, von der Leyen might not be the best but still lightyears better than the orange pedo in the wh.

[redrove]

There are many many degrees of harm before the extreme. They can both suck at the same time.

[budududuroiu]

Realistically, what you're asking for won't happen unless there's a strong push for Federalisation.

Unfortunately, most Eastern Bloc countries are led into the false belief that the EU is encroaching on their ways of life and "making them eat ze bugs", and the Brussels elite is more concerned with using their slim remaining political capital to push restrictions on internet freedoms rather than federalisation.

[redrove]

Yes, precisely. Going federal is the only viable l, unified, way ahead.