No, you can't. Since GDPR was rolled out, venture capital investments in the EU have dropped by a third.[1] According to that paper, the companies most hurt are early stage startups.
That presumes all early stage startups (as made in the US) are created equal, and any regression in their success rates is bad.
Given that 9/10 startups fail even without GDPR, it's not surprising that early stage cos form the Lion's share of failures, and it surely can't be good for any data that was slurped up during whatever these experiments at market fit were doing.
And given that the ultimate goal of GDPR is to protect privacy, it doesn't make sense to exempt startups, especially when the early stage stakes are high and a failure to squeeze out every drop of value legally possible out of your data (while your competitors do) could mean the death of your venture.
As such, comparing to American standards or even current European standards doesn't quite work when there's a clear shift of the moral bar for GDPR compliance.
From that paper: "Of course, there are caveats to these findings. First of all, GDPR has only been in effect in the EU for a short time, and the effects we’ve observed may be temporary, with investors potentially taking a wait-and-see approach."
Given the year-over-year trends shown in [0] I feel like one should not overemphasize the timeframe that article looked at. The decline seems to be relatively contained at best and future development is unclear at best. And honestly, who cares, even if we suddenly got 20% of startup failures due to GDPR concerns alone. If those concerns are reasonable I'm totally fine with that.
ggreer|6 years ago
1. The Short-Run Effects of GDPR on Technology Venture Investment: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278912
maldeh|6 years ago
Given that 9/10 startups fail even without GDPR, it's not surprising that early stage cos form the Lion's share of failures, and it surely can't be good for any data that was slurped up during whatever these experiments at market fit were doing.
And given that the ultimate goal of GDPR is to protect privacy, it doesn't make sense to exempt startups, especially when the early stage stakes are high and a failure to squeeze out every drop of value legally possible out of your data (while your competitors do) could mean the death of your venture.
As such, comparing to American standards or even current European standards doesn't quite work when there's a clear shift of the moral bar for GDPR compliance.
tastroder|6 years ago
Given the year-over-year trends shown in [0] I feel like one should not overemphasize the timeframe that article looked at. The decline seems to be relatively contained at best and future development is unclear at best. And honestly, who cares, even if we suddenly got 20% of startup failures due to GDPR concerns alone. If those concerns are reasonable I'm totally fine with that.
[0] https://news.crunchbase.com/news/decade-in-review-trends-in-...
ganzuul|6 years ago