[tjwebbnorfolk]

Not just startups or funding. Google alone has more AI compute than China and the EU combined.

There's no shortage of capital in Europe. But nobody wants to take the risk. Meanwhile in the US, people are putting 10-100x the capital at risk. So you can say what you want about it looking scary to you to invest in the US, but the people with capital to invest clearly don't see it that way.

More often when you hear VCs give interviews, they are saying the opposite: that never-ending EU regulations introduce more business risk than anything the US president could possibly do.

[blitzar]

> never-ending EU regulations

Does anyone ever say what these regulations are? Or are they like "red tape" / "regulations on bendy bananas" / "WMDs" / "the war on christmas"?

[solarkraft]

There needs to be a signal for bureaucracy critics to use if they’re not bullshitting.

Because without it, they will quickly be grouped into the “I want to do things which SHOULD be forbidden” crowd, which is a pretty vocal one.

[tjwebbnorfolk]

Laws are laws. Regulations aren't laws. Usually they are just extra hoops you have to jump through to do normal things. Paperwork, studies, government reviews, agency approvals, etc. These things slow down and encumber normal business. Some of them are important and necessary. Many are not.

I am not arguing for any law to be changed to allow someone to do things most people wouldn't want them to do. I don't think the VCs are arguing for that either. And that's not the case in the EU anyhow: laws are pretty similar on the major stuff among western countries.

I don't know why you're assuming that's my position, and I don't know why it's on me to avoid being "grouped" in with anyone. Assuming things that aren't true when you get defensive is your own personal issue, not mine.

[deaux]

They are exactly like the things you named. If you talk to a bunch of EU founders (not just a single loud one on X) you'll find regulations are low down on the priority list of things that make it harder in the EU.

[tim333]

My dad was a farmer under EU regulation and there was a stack of paper about 1 ft think to grow some barley. I don't know how that relates to AI. Another thing in Italy it's near impossible to fire people which makes people very reluctant to set up some business where cashflow for employment varies much.

I live in the UK where we seem quite good at inventing things but not that good at global profit making with a result that companies like DeepMind and ARM get bought by foreign investors.

[deaux]

> Another thing in Italy it's near impossible to fire people

It's just as impossible to fire people in Japan and Korea yet I'm quite sure they're doing quite a lot better at the startup per capita ratio when compared to population under 40.

Italy is also infamous in the EU for its bureaucracy, together with Germany. Look at how half of Italy's football stadiums are falling apart to a degree not seen in neighboring Spain or France.

Farming is unrelated to tech. I believe your dad.

[tjwebbnorfolk]

Just one example of a series of regulations (that the EU has decided to relax today): https://www.ft.com/content/75073836-d923-4b3f-a1ca-5ae83dcd7...

[enejej]

I’m not all that convinced on the regulation part.

Ultimately it’s all about investing money to create real assets that generate cash flows. One can side step regulations to some extent whilst developing a product (nobody cares/notices until you are actually growing fast) and then deal with regulations later. Uber already showed this and the leading AI firms are following the same act - having ripped off a lot of content but nobody threw a fit until a legit asset came out of it.

[shimman]

Yes, let's ignore regulations that provide people with stable jobs, societies, and countries. Afterall what good is democracy when the alternative is making more money?

[valkmit]

A lot of these are mostly well-meaning but have backfired. The only way an international business is going to consider investing in French workers, for example, is with relatively low salaries to offset the inability to fire them.

It's counterintuitive but if you allow "failing fast", you lower risk of new engagements, and this allows for more speculative bets on ideas and people.

Make it difficult to evict tenants? Expect more stringent requirements from landlords

Enact rent control? Initial rents are going up, new builds are are disincentivized.

Strong worker protection? Expect fewer highly paid roles (wage compression)

I'm not saying these regulations are unilaterally bad - I'm saying don't be surprised that there are 2nd-order effects that are arguably just as bad, if not worse.

[ivan_gammel]

I would push back on a few things from what you mentioned.

> The only way an international business is going to consider investing in French workers, for example, is with relatively low salaries to offset the inability to fire them.

> Strong worker protection? Expect fewer highly paid roles (wage compression)

For European startups it’s different motivation. Lower salaries than in USA are an advantage, but job security isn’t a show stopper. First team is hired in fixed contracts, which may be converted to permanent with growth. In scaling phase you add external support, with e.c. 20% of workforce coming from outstaffing, so that you can react on the market and scale down when needed. If you are big enough to be called international business, you will not hire in one of the most expensive locations in the world (USA) unless you have a good reason. There exist other easy-to-fire tech hubs, and it’s not a big problem in Europe anyway (it’s just some more effort to execute, but even with payouts it’s probably cheaper than in US).

> Make it difficult to evict tenants? Expect more stringent requirements from landlords

In Europe there’s less homeless people. It doesn’t work like that.

>Enact rent control? Initial rents are going up, new builds are disincentivized.

It’s not rent controls that make markets inefficient. They are reaction to NIMBY regulations and disincentivized home ownership like in Germany. Root cause is uncontrolled extraction of scarce resource (land) and the solution is actually to scale down for-profit rental market while aggressively subsidizing ownership and construction.

[weakened_malloc]

This is something you talk to people about that are in the western world but outside of the US (which includes me) but whenever I have the conversation people just can't grasp it.

The US, by having bad worker protections and privacy abusing tech companies, etc. have been able to pave the way for extreme amounts of innovation that just wouldn't happen anywhere else. The rest of the world then effectively has innovation subsidized since they import the finished product.

[fakedang]

I also found most US startup opportunities to be practically enabled by shitty service provided by the incumbents, whether it is the state or the banks or the healthcare system.

Take Cost Plus Drugs, for instance. Or companies enabling faster cash transfers over the internet, like Paypal. Or healthcare insurance plans from Oscar Health or prescriptions from Truepill. Or videos made by Khan Academy, which are currently in use in many schools across the US.

[kriops]

You can not regulate either of the above into existence. What good are rhetorical questions when they are nonsensical?

[tjwebbnorfolk]

Yes, let's ignore all nuance in the discussion and presume that the people saying EU has too many regulations must be saying that the only alternative is ZERO regulations.

[tjwebbnorfolk]

No one is saying "ignore regulations". The US has regulations also. Every country does.

The EU has taken it to another level.

[peyton]

Makes sense. You’re saying why would regulations matter when clearly they can just be ignored.

For venture ultimately it’s a soulless moneyman’s game. Really they have to pick winners, and anybody can look at the landscape and see there’s just not gonna be a Pierre Zuckerberg or a Klaus Kalanick. And if there ever is, he’ll need to raise lots of money anyway, which would come from venture.

[latexr]

> there’s just not gonna be a Pierre Zuckerberg or a Klaus Kalanick

Which is very much a positive. Those two aren’t a boon to humanity, they very much made everything worse at a global scale. We need fewer people emulating them, not more.