IMHO, it's mainly the lack of any and all venture capital. There just is nowhere near enough cash available to do the classic VC route, much less investing 100 freaking million dollars to an app that does nothing but broadcast "Yo".

And even engineers at BMW or similar don't get paid in stocks, which means that the supply of engineers made rich by big exits is next to zero. Just look who founded all the hot startups in SV - it's mostly ex-Paypal/Google/FB/MS/BigStartup employees who found or invest the boatload of monies into new startups. And regular salaries may be enough to pay off credit on a house, but not enough to save for funding and bootstrapping a company.

Here, basically the only way to fund a company if you don't happen to have rich friends/family is by a line of credit - and thanks to EU banking regulations the banks now require real deposits of securities (eg a house/car) for a credit line; this again reduces the eligible persons to rich people. No way to see a poor immigrant fund a multibillion dollar company like in US... given the more and more xenophobic neonazi appearances (Pegida, AfD) immigrants actually more have to fear for their lives. (Okay, I've exaggerated here, but the xenophobist trend even in government massively worries me)