It’s a fascinating time to take stock of startup innovation in the Netherlands, a rare turning point where you can watch the hard work of the past give way to the immense promise of the future.
Behind London and Berlin, the Dutch startup scene is already considered to be one of the most prominent in Europe. (If it feels unfair to weigh an entire country against individual cities, consider that the Netherlands has 17 million people crammed into an area half the size of South Carolina.)
The world of startups is intricately linked to technology, software, and Silicon Valley, but at the same time, it’s a world that’s very far away from me. The working hours, the insecurity, the minute chances at success – I would never opt for such a life.
Which is why people like me don’t found the next Apple or Google.
As a person who works in South Korea, I really admire Europe in general for being a decent place to establish high-tech start ups.
It’s still a lot harder to find money in the Netherlands than Silicon Valley.
What I think it really crazy is what PayPal in Silicon Valley did just before the Dot-Com bubble:
“We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend. This got us hundreds of thousands of new customers and an exponential growth rate. Of course, this customer acquisition strategy was unsustainable on its own — when you pay people to be your customers, exponential growth means an exponentially growing cost structure.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-paypal-paid-customers-20…
It doesn’t say so in this article but I’ve heared in an interview where Thiel said something along the lines of:
“We had 15 million in funding and our customer acquisition cost was 20 dollars. PayPal said to customers: ‘Always secure, always fast and always free’. Basically they had no business model. And only 6 weeks until we ran out of that 15 million.”
They raised a 100 million… just before the bubble burst.
It most be hard work spending other people’s money 😉
Now they are known as the PayPal Maffia. For example Elon Musk has at least involved in 3 big companies that were doomed to failed that almost did fail before they grew big: Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City.
Silicon Valley is a special kind of crazy that skews everything, and I say that as someone working for an SV startup.
The startup scene outside of SV is actually quite healthy, but because it’s not concentrated in a single place and full of crazy it’s less visible, and people compare “Silicon Valley” to “not Silicon Valley” and think Silicon Valley is the mean, when it really isn’t.
Because I think the technology behind Bitcoin is interesting I sometimes wonder if these VC are crazy or really smart:
http://www.coindesk.com/state-of-bitcoin-q1-2015-record-investment-…
Europe in general? I think Netherlands is the exception rather than the rule.
Certainly you can include the UK in that list. There’s plenty of startups here, and not just in London.
Sure, but the thing is I don’t know if UK or the Netherlands are representative of Europe as a whole.
UK and the Netherlands are business friendly innovative countries and always were… but I’m not so sure about the rest of Europe. I think they are more an exception than a rule.
But hey, maybe I’m wrong, cause my opinion is based in my experience a couple of years ago… maybe today’s Europe is very different and small business are thriving (I really hope so cause that’s the way to go!).
Happily governments have become very competitive about encouraging start-up businesses, because they have begun to understand that most economic growth comes from small to medium businesses rather than behemoths.
The start-up scene in Britain has become a lot easier, for example. By many measures its easier and cheaper to set up in the UK than anywhere else in the world. Last I checked you could set up your own company with Companies House for £30, which would clear in 48 hours, with only one signature necessary. And so long as you’re half competent various state funders will match 30–40% of any private investment you can glean for tech projects.
Two reasons why HM’s Government felt it had to make it so easy, which may apply to Holland as well;
1) Unlike the USA businesses in the UK could easily set up or move to Amsterdam, Dublin or Berlin without that hampering local business.
2) The British financial establishment is traditionally very conservative with investments and loans, which makes life very hard for young turks. Hence HMG trying to level the playing field.
Now if only the banks weren’t such Jurassic arseholes life would be pretty good for start-ups!