EU startups fail because their press refuses to hype them up

This feels like an orthogonal point. The OP make a very specific comparison to his travel company and Airbnb, and how people ignored them or even belittled them but adored Airbnb despite being very similar companies.

Europeans use Airbnb. Trying to to say he was trying to "apply the American mindset to the European market" as a bad thing doesn't really hold water here when the American product literally won.

Yes, the kind of companies historically started in Europe are very culturally different to startups. The point being made is that really for no good reason, Europe does not culturally support the existence of startups and is often actively hostile towards them.

The solution being "just don't do startups in Europe" is like, ok sure I guess you can do that, but it doesn't actually address the problem that was presented: cultural incompatibility and unwillingness to change.

Ironically, you're trying to apply a German mindset to the entire European market. That doesn't really work either.

In the sense that Mittelstand is more than just SMEs, I don't think it ever really existed here. There's no cultural fascination with being a middle business or having a family-owned business. A similar word ("middenstand") was used a lot, but it referred to shops only. In American TLA-speak: SMEs with a D2C model. The term "middenstand" died a slow death in the last 25 years. It's rarely used nowadays.

Good riddance too. The whole term reaks of limited social mobility. In Dutch "stand" has a much stronger feudal vibe than "klasse".

Great post. The German audio product company u-he sounds like your digital mittelstand. They make synthesizers nobody can quite emulate.

Entropy tends to increase over time (or, so I heard). The cultural analogue of that would be that all cultures--given the prevalence of internet, and on top of that, the US being one of the "loudest"--will either become or approach that of the US. And it'll bring along everything that's good and bad. That means, decadence, greed, gluttony, enshittification, are unavoidable, however unlikely and alien they seem at present time. In less generous terms, the sick tend to infect the healthy, more than the latter can heal the former.

Europe does not have a monolithic culture.

As far startups go it has much less to do with culture or hype but with the fact that Europe even with the single market has far more localized and ring fenced markets than the US.

So you end up with smaller overall markets with a well dug in established competition.

Sorry, but it's a typical German detached from reality attitude. We are going to find some magical niches that no one else will dare to touch allowing us to live quietly in a village and print money just like that (not a lot of money of course, we don't want to be TOO unrealistic, just enough for a comfortable life).

Not going to work in an innovative digital economy. We can see how resilient Mittelstand is by the current wave of bankruptcies and the general state of economy.

An interesting and useful perspective. There seem to be a lot of parallels with Switzerland in that regard.

I don't see how the OP's startup couldn't become a "digital mittelstand".

Aussie in Norway, and have been part of a founding team here, as well as lead teams in companies you've definitely heard of.

I think the OP on X gets it right. It for sure is a marketing problem. The media machine in Europe is most likely fractured by languages. So take Norway. Sure we have our fair share of tech blogs/news/etc. but all are in Norwegian. Which cool for the local market, but outside that it's not the language that others are speaking. Where as the US publish in their native language, which so happens to be something most people speak globally.

I'm not suggesting that the local tech journalism is doing it wrong. But what is lacking is some kind of large European tech journalism, or heck even all the smaller ones writing about each other's cool new startups.

It's also a lot easier to invest in compliance when you've already got product-market-fit in the regulation light US.

also because American companies get into Europe when they are already somewhat established and can afford paying well staffed legal departments

US startups also don't care about US regulations. AirBnB, Uber, Tesla, Coinbase and many others break the laws in the US they don't like. I'm not making the moral argument that breaking laws is always wrong. Instead I'm simply pointing out that breaking "bad laws" is culturally accepted in Silicon Valley but not in Europe. Silicon Valley startups do what it takes to win.

US startups can devote 100% of their energy to getting their product and operations right. Then when they enter the European market they already have that part down when they start dealing with your governments. European startups attempting to compete don't have that luxury.

> US companies in Europe generally don't care about EU regulations.

They care as much or as little as European companies.

When you're trying to make it in business you should not spend too much time trying to comply with all possible regulations. Focus on growing the business and avoid serious and costly breaches.

I still remember a business course in university (in Europe) during which the lecturer told us: "By law you must file this whatever every year but the penalty for not doing so is cheaper than spending time doing it so don't bother". Very direct and frank but that's how it is.

Why is it "required"? What's so desirable in the american mindset that folks so badly need in EU?

A saying of my own: America is superficially conservative and deeply liberal, while Europe is superficially liberal and deeply conservative.

Tangentially, it’s why I don’t think authoritarian reactionary stuff will “take” here for any length of time. The instant Americans figure out it’s anything more than a stylistic performative way to “own” the other side — the instant they are actually told what to do — it is over.

Peeking out of my bubble a bit:

Why do we need startups?

Why do we need so much that the thought of wrapping the mentality of a whole society around it comes to mind before questioning its legitimacy in a certain context? So serial startup-making can be executed like chain smoking. What are the big benefits that this very form and specific brand of organization type deserves special treatment, other formations or no formations, single persons, departments in a keep-going company, co-ops, semi-chaotic group of enthusiast, or whatever will never ever produce without absorbing proper startup mentality to the core of the society?

I am sceptic, yes, not least because I was in a startup of a serial startuper where half of the efforts were spent on being a proper startup. How startupers do, how they act, what they do in what stage, what is the proper procedure for being a startup? There is even television series that was used as reference. Remaining efforts went into other detals, one among those was product development. Asking another startup founder about where he sees the company in 5 years the answer was 'Sold!' without a second of hesitation. I was phrasing wrong, I assumed I was asking about the product roadmap that happened to be made in the formal setting of this organization, but that was not in the focus of the minds apparently.

Americans can have an inflated positivistic style pulled on when they want to anyways, to be enthusiastic for the sake of enthusiasm, in selective situations, easily shifted to and away from anything. I wouldn't rely on that too much, but especially wouldn't use as reference for transforming a different society that may be a bit more repelling with the same thing of all things.

>A bottom up cultural shift is required to change startup culture in Europe.

History and the study of Volksgeists shows that's almost impossible without any major revolutionary event.

The status quo Europeans have had for centuries was their lives being at the mercy of some higher monarchic power, be it emperors, kings, lords, etc, then revolutionary communists, fascists, dictators, etc, and post-WW2 at the mercy of the social welfare state to handle everything for you. There was never a period our relatively recent history where we could just do whatever we wanted, without the ruling powers interfering some way or dictating the rules till the next regime change, and so the Volksgeist inherited and passed on that status quo across generations, kind of like Plato's cave, or like a fish in the water. That's why many Europeans who felt held back or persecuted by the status quo fled to the US decades/centuries ago.

This is totally opposite to the American way of life since 1776 where the state was mostly hands-off to leave you alone and would not help you out, nor get in your way, you'd live or die based on your own individual actions. I realize this is different today for Americans, with the government having way more taxes, regulations and social services than in 1776, but the original Volksgeist around minimalist government, individualism, personal freedom and self-responsibility still prevails.

So people can say "we need to change" all they want, but the reality is that's never gonna happen, Europeans aren't gonna become Americans and Americans aren't gonna become Europeans, the cultural inertia is too powerful, and you can't fight against the stream.

I don't know what country is it, but being in Germany I've had to interact with customer support (for internet providers, banks etc.) a lot. At the quality was not top notch at all. The companies are well alive and thriving.

> In US, you can start a LLC, get a bank account, a tax ID, all within a few days. The process is completely online. Taxes? A single form for the whole year when you’re starting out. Hiring and laying off employees is relatively easy. How many European countries can claim the same?

In Poland, for example it's remarkably similar. I had an LLC, bank account and EU VAT ID without leaving my home.

Hiring gets a little bit more tricky because we like having accessible health care and don't like throwing people under the bus so you have a notice time of anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months depending how long that particular person has been your employee.

Taxes? You pay once/month but even then you most likely have an accountant handling that for you.

There is definitely a cultural aspect.

There is a much bigger resistance to change and to new things in Europe and iften the first reaction is indeed to shoot down new ideas.