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Comment by chucke1992 | Hacker News Reader

chucke1992

Nah, I don't see Europe producing their own silicon valley - EU has over-regulated and a fragmented market. Too many regulations lead to less enterprises, while fragmentation (Germany, France, etc. with their own regulations + language barriers) prevents companies from growing big in their home soil.

Anecdotally, I feel like Sweden produces more startups that grow large worldwide. I presume, they have less regulations in place + English is more widespread I guess.

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> Anecdotally, I feel like Sweden produces more startups that grow large worldwide.

Yet, they are also part of the EU.

> I presume, they have less regulations in place

Why would you presume that? Working back from wrong assumptions and biases is never a good idea.

It's still true. Or, the regulations are at least efficiently enforced in Sweden, unlike in most countries in the EU. Inefficient, corrupt, or arbitrary bureaucracies are surprisingly common.

Do you have any sources or proof of that or are you working back from biases?

There are no "backwards bureaucracy" index, unfortunately, but that's what I hear. Sweden has a smooth system. To be fair, that seems to be common in Scandinavia. Germany is a mess for sure. Have heard nothing good about Spain/Italy. France seems to have a problem with powerful individual bureaucrats. Anyway, if you want something slightly more systematic, look at the Ease of Doing Business rankings, but keep in mind that it's constructed based on how the bureaucracies are supposed to work (legislation, etc.), not the actual experience of those using them.

Germany is a huge mess. Especially their constant desire to request paper copies left and right for everything.

There is an easy way to (statistically) double the amount of successful startups in Europe by almost any metric: include Israel in the count.

Why not include the US too while you're at it? Israel isn't in Europe.

I'd love to see the map they used in your geography class.

Depending on the metric, including Israel wouldn't even double the number compared to London, let alone the whole UK, _let alone_ all of Europe.

But I wrote "successful startups"...

Define "successful startups" and we can get some figures going.

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