The Bad And The Ugly: Entrepreneurship In Europe and In Northern Europe
This is one of those issues that is always topical and never gets a clear answer. Why do we comparatively suck so bad at building companies in Europe and especially here in the arctic latitudes vis-a-vis our cousins in the US. In the age of the Internet and 'born global' it has to be more than the size of the home market. Now, I'm not saying things have to be that way, nor am I saying that things are not changing. They are and we, but to what extent and what is it exactly that we need to change?
Here's a video of a group of prominent European and US entrepreneurs arguing around the topic. The one just below is from this year's LeWeb and the one below that from 2008 (when we took the Sauna Truck to France with a group of Finnish startups). Both videos are insightful, but even more than that they are entertaining. Make sure not to miss these.
The third video is Mårten Mickos' brilliant talk about entrepreneurship in general and entrepreneurship in Finland in particular from last night at Aalto Entrepreneurs Society gathering. The talk is a must see for every single entrepreneur regardless of the continent they are building their startup in, but it also sheds light into the cultural challenges that are in the way of building world's biggest anything.
Aaltoes Talk with Mårten Mickos from Aaltoes on Vimeo.
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This always makes a great discussion topic. Europe has been a center of innovation for centuries but the perception is the US is ahead in 'entrepreneurialism'.. Maybe it is the atitude, I think it is more down to access to capital. We don't necessarily suck at building businesses, we suck at allocating capital.
I think the difference is that we always think & complain that we suck, whereas the US think and assume the best and only at everything—whether this is true or not.
In fact many companies & services are created in Europe (or anywhere else in the world) but you don't hear about it because the US media doesn't talk about it. It seems that, unless you're on techcrunch or Times, you don't exist. Think Spotify, Skype, Zara (not in tech but still an empire), etc. Think all the centuries of innovation before even the USA existed.
We just spend too much time looking towards the USA and missing what we have here. Then the good ones go to the USA lead by that illusion and innovate there.
typo:
"I think the difference is that we always think & complain that we suck, whereas the US think and assume they're the best and only at everything—whether this is true or not."
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