The web erupted in a fierce conversation (see especially the comments) on European* vs. US entrepreneurial culture after the Le Web in France. The conference itself was a disaster in terms of organization, even if many people dislike admitting it, even though the speakers were of high quality. I won’t go into ranting about it, since the ‘few hiccups’ have been well documented by others. Helene Auramo, the CEO of Zipipop, summed it well on her Tweet on why she got a very high fever and cold after the conference: “…cold and not getting any food in LeWeb for two days… What can you expect?”.
That said, I personally enjoyed the conference, largely because of the great people who showed up. I also believe that is the most important bit so, despite Loic Le Meur got a lot of shit for the organizing, I believe he got the most important bit somewhat right.
I don’t believe I have ever enjoyed any panel as much as I did enjoy the Gillmor Gang panel at the end of Le Web’s second day (see video below). This was mainly thanks to Michael Arrington, the infamous editor of TechCrunch, calling it as he saw it. He gave Loic a run for his money when Loic tried to tell different truths to different audiences. A minor disappointment was how the panel ended in loud music and everybody tapping each other on the back and all the important issues were talked only half way though. After what was very refreshing stance from Michael Arrington during the panel, he also got soft at the end and started praising the organizers. That said, as I told Mr. Arrington after the conference, it was very very refreshing to see someone brave enough calling it as he sees it, which at the end helps everybody improve their game.
A more serious point in this storm-in-a-tea-cup discussion was the stage of entrepreneurship in Europe versus in the US. I believe there is a cultural path dependency in Europe, which has set the course for generation after generation regarding the working culture. Thus, people who work over 60 hours a week are pitied and seen as unfortunate. In effect, not having life. Whereas in the US the opposite is true. They are seen as having the time of their life when they go after their dreams with all they have, not counting hours. I remember living in London, which is surely the most Anglo-American city in Europe (in fact, some people don’t count UK in Europe at all). In London you could ‘taste the blood’ in a sense that people were willing to sacrifice something to get the other, whereas the sentiment in Helsinki is that you should be able to have the cake and eat it too. People believe, right or wrong, that you work to live, not live to work, and doing the latter is seen as unacceptable social behavior. I don’t think either one’s any more right than the other and that we’re all different in that respect. Only the path dependency that I talked about earlier has shifted the culture to be very critical for those that choose to live to work. This is very unfortunate as we many people I know love their work and want to make it big whatever the cost and are thus looked down on or criticized. In fact, most of these people who work beyond 80 hours a week don’t even consider it work. They love what they do and are grateful for every hour they can spend on doing it.
I, for one, like to have more life than just my work and personally struggle with the trade off as does Robert Scoble (see video here), a famous American video blogger who says it’s really hard if not impossible to have a healthy balance, let alone manage it, if you want to be on top of your game. That said, I know people who are willing to pay the price and build the next big European success story and I very strongly believe we should respect these people for their choice in life instead of criticize and look down on them. The culture needs to change. Europe is a patch work of countries and national cultures. Therefore, we should not impose one working culture on the continent either by thinking we know what’s best for everyone. There are room for both: Those who value the quality of life as defined by leisure, free evenings and weekends as well well as those who define quality of life by being able to work 80 hours a week to build something bigger and follow their dream.
Even though some of us, not least the LeWeb founder Loic Le Meur, might have had his ego bruised in the process, I believe the panel at Gillmor Gang and especially Michael Arrington’s stone cold comments did us a great favor by bringing an important conversation to the fore.
I am, yet again, dumstruck by how easily the local media here in Finland dismissed all the efforts by us and
by the whole Finnish startup community to raise the awareness of the local startups and the formation of a startup culture here in the Nordics. First we set up the biggest startup event Finland has ever seen which was a big success and now we took a whole Finnish Sauna (video here and here) full of startups to Paris with Tommi Rissanen of Digibusiness.fi, just so the Finnish media can ignore all of it. This happens while at the same time tens of millions of euros are poured into programs to help Finnish startups, but most of this money go to those who know how to game the Finnish system and have the time to go through the endless rounds of red tape. Tommi Rissanen, who was pivotal in bringing the sauna to LeWeb, is the only person working for one of the supporting institutions in Finland, who I have met who knows and is interested in what is happening at the grass roots level in the Finnish startup scene and is willing to bust his butt to help out the startups. And I follow this space every single day.
Another sign to get the pulse: Christine Lagarde, the French minister of economy came to visit Le Web 2008. She actually came even to the stage to have a chat with Loic (previous years French President Sarkozy himself has visited the event). We in Finland, on the other hand, got an email from the Finnish President’s assistand telling us that the president is too busy to visit the Finnish startups.
*Where I talk about Europe, I mean what we know as the Western Europe. I can’t speak of the Eastern Europe, since I have not lived or worked there.
iWillStudy.com
Unita
Nice post Ville. My view on the Arrington comments about the US vs the EU is that they lack nuance. We can’t expect academic levels of rigour from a journalist but his comments were a bit “pub” level. This all comes back to a debate that was kicked off by Jason Calacanis, who said that in an economic downturn you should fire people who aren’t workaholics. That lead to a backlash from people defending work/life balance. The point was that the US is more successful than Europe in the web space because the people there are willing to work harder. I agree the US s much more successful (who wouldn’t?) but better explanations are:
1) The US has a market of 300m.
2) The Valley has a world class university. I think most would accept that Stanford is better for Tech than any European university (as is CalTech and as is MIT if we’re on the other coast).
3) The Valley has a huge density of tech savvy people. This is largely historical accident.
4) There’s more money in the US and far more goes into high risk ventures.
There’s more to say too. Of course you have to be prepared to give it everything you’ve got if you want your venture to succeed BUT I don’t think work ethic is even close to the biggest reason the US outperforms Europe.
As Marc Andreassen has said, the single most important determining factor in whether a start up is successful is whether there is a market.
There’s so much to say on this but I’d better shut up. My 2 cents.
FYI: Getting better now. =) No fever anymore.
And I have to say that the presentations were great and also the crowd. Met many interesting people. I think it was one of the best conferences I have been to so far. I guess the organizers were just unlucky this year… Hope it is better next time.
And Le Sauna was just great! :D
@Jon: I agree with your points. The reasons are manyfold and one single comment nor blog post could ever describe them in the depth they deserve.
But I do believe the historical backgrounds of these two continents are the biggest drivers in difference. The people who left Europe to populate the new continent did take a risk and thus if more risktakers go somewhere the density tends to be higher. Somewhat of a simple explanation, but I do believe there is a lot in this point.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t do us any good that we moan and groan about the bad situation we are in. I really like the quote I picked up from Next Web’s newsletter by a Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius; “Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.”
All in all, what I’m trying to say is we should put all this explaining behind us and start looking for ways in which we can use these cultural differences and attitudes in life to our advantage in bringing up a healthy and aggressive startup culture. We all want the same end result – it’s just that there are many ways to reach it; the US way is one, the Israeli way is one, what will be Europe’s way?
I agree with the most of what Michael Arrington’s posted on the US-Euro blog entry. I’m surprised it generated such a strong response in us Euros. When we were on the bus from LeWeb to the airport everybody from the Finnish startup scene was laughing at the “two hour lunch” as ridiculous.
There is quite a bit difference in culture between Northern and Southern Europe. Part it might be due to the Protestant work ethic in the Scandinavian countries where indulging yourself is pretty much frowned upon.
Totally agreed with Jon’s comment about the market size. It is by far the most important reason preventing scaling up easily.
Interestingly I was reading The Monk and The Riddle (http://bit.ly/b8zF) on the flight back, in which a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and angel investor talks about the need to follow your passion and to avoid the “deferred life plan”. The fallacy of “once I’m successful, I can have all the things I want” is completely true.
The only thing we can’t have more in life is time. It will eventually run out for everyone of us. Best to live to do the things that you care about (whether that is to make your startup world’s biggest success, or to do it smaller and not become a stranger to your kids).
Thanks for the great words Jussi. I can’t but agree on every step with you on what you say about need to follow your passion and to avoid the ‘deferred life plan’. The Monk and The Riddle is a grea book as Randy Komisar is a great entrepreneurs-cum-VC.
Jon,
I do agree that market size matters. But I think it would show a failure attitude to hide behind the small market size argument as an excuse for the lack of success stories. There are some who have seen that actually as an opportunity and are working hard to make that opportunity a success right now. Think Fruugo.
I believe there are combination of factors where market size is one determining factor, but there are others. And the pragmatism I am, I urge to focus on those determining factors that we can influence. Working hard is one of them. I am not saying that working over 80 hours a week is healthy on any measure, but I strongly urge we respect and support those whose passion and dream includes working those long hours, even if we might not agree with the life style. Inf fact, I believe we should encourage that behavior since at the moment those people are made feel like they are part of a sad outcast. They are not. They are just entrepreneurs and by definition these people are different.
Not everybody should work that hard. Certainly not even most should work that hard. But in order for us to compete on a levelled playing field we should support those who are willing or who actually can’t wait to do it, if only the social culture would allow it and they would not be pitied by their immediate social circle for the life style they have chosen.
I can’t tell you how many times I have received the ’stop working!’ messages or advice from the people I live among, and I am certainly not one of the hardest workers in here. Similarly I get to read similar Jaiku messages from many people in Jaiku, when some of the Finnish entrepreneurs are working long hours on Sunday night in the office and Jaikuing about it. These people mean well, but the entrepreneurs that put in those hours because the have to and because they love to, could certainly use a little encouragement. This would be absurd behavior in Twitter, but in Jaiku and among my friends I see and hear it all the time.
This is what I mean about the entrepreneurial culture. Supporting and respecting the different, sometimes even down right odd, life style that people choose to love. Again, I am not saying it’s healthy or that it’s any more right than any other, but I am saying we need to support and encourage it because the entrepreneurs of us are going to lead their life like that anyway and they need our support in making their dreams come true against the massive odds they are up against.
I think you guys all make very valid points about culture. I think the one point Arrington makes that I agree with (and that Ville makes too implicitly) is that if an entrepreneur acknowledges that there are certain environmental factors that act against an entrepreneur in Europe, then there is a danger that they use it as an excuse for failure. I’ve often heard people give “there just wasn’t a market” as a reason why their business failed. Of course it might be true BUT I think it’s an unhelpful mindset. You can only know for sure there wasn’t a market if you executed perfectly and no-one ever does that. The correct question to ask whenever you fail at anything is “What could I have done better?”.
Looking back this is probably what Arrington meant but instead of saying “this is true but it’s an unhelpful mindset for an entrepreneur”, he said “it’s a loser mindset”. It’s not a great choice of words.
Of course a lot of this comes back to a Calacanis post about firing the people who aren’t workaholics and the controversy that caused. He subsequently expanded that he didn’t want good people on his team, only great people. The implication was that parents who spend time doing family stuff can’t build great companies. It pissed me off for obvious reasons. Arrington defended him and this whole thing is just an extension of that as far as I can see.
Once again I’ve gone on again. I’ve yet to master the succinct blog comment.
I think Arrington was doing what he does best – stir up some conversation. I think the fact that it’s escalated to more than just a show on the stage is a surprise to everyone, including himself.
Regarding the market size that Jon mentioned, I must say I don’t agree with that. Europe has twice as large population as the US, it’s just very fragmented. In terms of money, I would argue that Europe has more than the US, but while the US has all the VC’s in a few square miles we have them spread across multiple countries, bound by different laws and speaking different languages. That’s why the European startups end up being bought by Silicon Valley companies – there’s just enough money piling up in one place.
If you look at what Facebook, MySpace and others are doing, they are in fact trying to capture the EU market. They simply cannot grow big enough in their home market alone. I think this is where we in Europe have an edge and we should make sure to fully utilize it. We need to create services that fit the multi-cultural and multilingual market from day one.
We would also need to find ways to move the capital across borders more efficiently. Currently most of the Finnish startups are talking to Finnish investors only, and that is what really makes the difference between being in Silicon Valley or in EU. At least personally I’m finding that once you are able to get sufficient funding, being in Europe is not quite as limiting as I was feeling before.
I personally don’t mind much about the “hiccups”, as long as there were a lot of interesting people and discussions to listen to. In general, Le Web was really positive. US people focus more on the opportunities in downturn market, and there were a lot of EU success stories, too.
Criticisms from Michael Arrington were only to push everyone (maybe including him) to work more efficient in order to win.
I guess that in a way or in the other we are all struggling a little bit with work and life ;) … Although now at least in my case, life and work are merging pretty much
Andrea