Europe, entrepreneurs and conversations
A few months ago when I was flying back from California into Europe (Portugal, if you’re wondering and didn’t know) I did a lot of thinking about what the difference really was, in terms of business and innovation between the two continents. The answer isn’t really easy, and I’ve posted some thoughts on it before, but there are a few easy points to follow:
- There are less conversations between european entrepreneurs
- Europeans don’t take as many risks in terms of innovation
- US Head-hunting gets the talent out, not in
- Less VC investment to stimulate idea development
It doesn’t take much to give out some practical examples based on these four points:
- There are less entrepreneurial weblogs from europeans (to be totally honest, I only read a few, like Tom Coates’s Plasticbag) and there are few conversations between us here in the old continent.
- There’s less risking getting things out the door in the european IT industry (other industries like design or architecture don’t seem to have that problem).
- Good people get acquired or work almost exclusively for US firms – we can use our own example: over 90% of our client base is from the US.
- Even though the need for (the old kind of) venture capital is slimmer and slimmer every day, it stimulates ideas – it forces people and their projects into becoming better.
So what can really be done?
We’re going to be making a conscious effort to get the conversation going between us here in Europe. There are several parts to this effort and I’ll blog about them soon, but for now the important thing is to get out there and do things, talk to people and create. We’ve been doing our part, and would like to hear about your own efforts. Drop us emails or comments, we want to hear from you, if you’re in Europe and have been innovating.
Being from the Netherlands myself I can really acknowledge what you are saying. We have a saying here:
“Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg”
Which translates into something like “be normal, then you’re already weird enough”. It’s a strange mentality that is a curse on Dutch (and perhaps European) innovation. For people like me (i keep a blog about web2.0 and am involved in projects of that kind) it’s really difficult to get any conversation with this attitude.
Whatever you’re working on: I’m interested :)
Hey Fred,
Sproutit.com based in Prague, Czech Republic. We are Americans that actually moved from California to Prague to launch our business because we liked the climate here. I totally agree the one of the biggest challenges here is the last of a community. We frequently have to return to the US just so we can meet other people doing Web 2.0 stuff.
Although we don’t plan to stay in Europe together, I’d love to help a community off the ground here. Drop me an email and we can talk more if you want.
wow. I am a bad typed. that should be ‘lack of community’ and ‘we don’t plan to stay in Europe forever.’ Sorry.
Hi Fred, I’m interested in lighting a fire underneath the European web entrepeneurs conversation as well. What do you have in mind?
[...] Good to see that Fred is making his way through the quality of his work. He recently posted about the differences between the US (Silicon valley) and Europe (he is Portuguese) in respect to entrepreneurship. I was going to comment on his blog but decided to write a post (and pray for trackback magic) with my comments on his views so that other European (and Portuguese) people could follow this conversation: [...]
I couldn’t agree more. I also live in Portugal and face that same problems. 90% of people who finish my college (btw is IST) goes to a consulting agency do dull jobs. Currently I only know one start up in Portugal and works in aerospacial area for ESA.
Your notes regarding the situation in Europe are spot-on. I’m in Greece, and I have a pretty rough time trying to find other people here who *get* the Web platform.
Whatever you’re planning to do about it, I’m in.
It seems like in Europe two of the best places to be are London and Amsterdam. There are quite some Web 2.0 enthousiast around in the Netherlands. There’s a CocoaDevHouse coming up in Amsterdam.
The startup climate is still a bit cold (unless you’re doing PHP/webdesign).
Absolutely agree. I’m always jealous when reading about SXSW or even the latest gathering round at the TechCrunch HQ.. would love to get behind any initiatives in Europe where our limited startup funds can fly budget!
Fred et al
I am probably having the same conversations as you with regards to re-igniting the flame…..
Drop me a line to discuss…..
p.s. for those that have left comments above – I am working on various initiatives in Europe to highlight the innovation and to make sure it stays here.
we all know the banking systems, the taxes, the governments etc all balls it up for us entrepreneurs but if we make a stand we can change the very things that make us want to move stateside….
Europe has always been far behind development, especially on the web, except for London really. Something that has bothering me lately is that so many web 2.0 initiatives are for the US market only. Also still no Google Maps for euro countries except for England :(
I’m glad CarsonWorkshops (Ryan Carson) has started some initiatives, ie. The Future of Web Apps where a lot of US based developers also came to talk about what the future could hold for us.
We at Eight Media have been involved with new technologies, but always for our customers.
At last light has dawned for us and we’ve started on something for ourselves too. ;)
Are you talking tech only? What about nano-tech, bio-tech in Cambridge? Skype? Fon? The guys talking abpve this post? If you’re talking new media there are areas where Europe is miles in front of the US. France – Loic LeMeur – 6A, biggest blog network in Europe, my little effort – Technorati top 1% in
less than 6 months.
The problem is the US doesn’t recognise much outside its own borders – IMO.
Fred.
I totally agree with you. I think that a part of the problem is that the critical mass of users lives in the US and so for European companies it just makes sense to target the US market.
I believe there is a lot of innovation hiding out in Europe (David Heinmeier Hensson is from Denmark, isn’t he?) but the most of the people are just not ready for it yet.
We are developing 2 web2.0 products. One is Makidi.com and one is a Californian based startup. Unfortunatley we believe both will be mainly used by US population…
I still think it is a good idea to maybe start a European association/guild/team of web enterpeneurs and innovators.
I work part of the year in Switzerland, and have found a deep pocket of talent in Zurich. The Oscom folks are headquartered there…but Fribourg where I stay could use some ‘organizing’…pockets of talent, but all by themselves.
Calling from Croatia. Totally agree with you on that. The spirit is different over here. Web entreprenuers are innovative as well, but their ideas are not followed by interested local user base.
I co-founded croatian blogging service Blog.hr which is huge succes over here, establishing himself as most popular web site behind major portals in Croatia with full citizen reporting and 180.000 daily unique visitors.
But still, there’s still not to many connections among entreprenuerst and we are all doing it on our own.
Entrepreneurship in Europe and US: spot the differences…
European Frederico Oliveira, who runs a web design and development company, spots the differences between Europe and US in terms on entrepreneurship. Frederico has been in the Bay Area, so he knows what he is talking about: “There are……
Hello Fred,
Found your note and comments posted most interesting. I am a French entrepeneur who lives on the west coast of Ireland. (nearest European point to the US!). I left my job 4 months ago to start a web adventure. I spent the first 2 months to define how my concept was revolutionary and the following two to complete the business plan. Part of my dev work is to convince administrations from different countries to change their way of working by using new web applications. It has been and is a struggle but it is possible! The fight is hard but people accept the change if its right.
I am now moving into the creativity, design, choice of web apps … the exciting part of building a website! I expected this to be the most enjoyable phaze when discussing ideas and meeting with developpers. At my surprise, what I found is a lot of fears and conventional thinking. After 3 weeks of meetings, I am nowhere near where i want to be and am now looking to the US for inspiration…
I’ve started a Europe 2.0 wiki here, in case anyone would like to join in: http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/europe_2_0