alt Hacker NewsThe glaring number to me is only 5% of VC funds vs 52% in the US. That's 10x more opportunity despite roughly comparable economies. As long as that is true, it seems like it will always be impossible to get an organic startup industry working in the EU. Any startup that is any good will almost certainly end up getting a round of investment from the US and most likely move their base of operations there.
I wonder if recent US actions will start to influence this as there now appears to be more risk in sending your money to the US or founding your company there as a foreign entity than there used to be.
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I don’t consider VC investments to be particularly beneficial to the world. This idea of “let’s use capital to make it faster for people to exploit others with the only goal of generating more capital” does more harm than good.
That's why Mistral is not focused on raising venture capital. Instead, they prioritize securing government contracts; hence their significant political lobbying efforts.
The funding allocation is a reflection of different cultures really.
I’m from the UK but there’s no way there’s the same density, drive, and hunger to take risk, to the extent that you find in US. Also there’s a lot more synergy in the US vs a fragmented Europe.
This assumes one would want a startup industry. It's a bit like wishing your country had more private equity.
Imagine all the great investments the US VCs are missing outside of AI.
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.