Entrepreneurship Ecosystems in Europe vs the US

a Lancia vs a Ford — what are the parallels with European vs American startup cultures?

I spent the summer deep in the trenches of silicon valley as a Summer Fellow at Lightspeed Venture Partners in Menlo Park. Having spent my pre-MBA career in the tech scene in London and having deep roots in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in EMEA, I thought it would be interesting to discuss the contrasts I saw across these two ecosystems.

Firstly, we need to acknowledge the structural differences between the two ecosystems:

1. EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) is very fragmented and includes 116 countries — so clumping them as one is assumption-laden. In most of the following article, I’ll mainly be referring to startup culture in Western Europe with a few references to more ‘emerging market’ startup culture. I also acknowledge that the US is 50 states, so a lot of what follows tends to speak to Bay Area culture.
2. The existence of strong unions in Europe means that there are stronger labor laws that protect employees from being laid off, granting them large severance packages and long notice periods compared to a much laxer regulatory environment in the US. Despite this being great for workers, it makes it very difficult for young businesses to operate in a lean fashion and cut staff when there’s a need to restructure. The regulatory context here is apt and important to bear in mind in the discussion below.