This post feels awfully pedantic. While it may not be clear to non-Americans, when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia.
(Just like when Americans talk about Asia, they aren't usually thinking of India.)
Of course, that's geographically inaccurate -- but it's what we usually mean. The Europe that Americans refer to does mostly use the Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers, and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of its parts.
Just because Europe is made up of lots of countries, and there are lots of different ways to define it, doesn't mean you can't make statements about it. Perhaps the main point of the post was, be aware that Eastern Europe exists?
> The Europe that Americans refer to does mostly use the
> Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers,
> and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of
> its parts.
Well, no it doesn't. Italy and Greece are extremely different to Scandinavia. At least regarding to things like temperament and culture. They are much more like Bulgaria and Turkey, though they may not really be willing to admit that. You can't really sell to Italians by operating in Denmark. That's not to say that you can sell to Italians by operating in Bulgaria either. Especially true for things like enterprise software, eg. accounting systems.
"Better distributed wealth" and "use the Euro" do not alleviate the law and language bariers. What these two things do help about is only not having to carry 10 different currencies in you pocket. Which is not at all true if you have to visit one of the non-Euro states.
There is though one type of company that greatly benefits by the situation. And that is the international mega-corp. They can afford to produce or provide services from Bulgaria and sell to the whole world. IBM, HP, VMWare, Ubisoft, Crytek and on and on... All have offices in Sofia, Bulgaria. This is a result of the non-uniform wealth distribution. They can sell to Western Europe and U.S.A while being close to them, using workforce that speaks English and has tradition in technical sciences, while at the same time being relatively cheap.
As a result, Bulgarians don't have ambivalent feelings toward enterpreneurs at all.
So no, you can't generalize. You will be wrong every single time.
Disclaimer: As it should be obvious by now, I am a Bulgarian.
Germany has over three millions SMEs (small and medium enterprises, called 'Mittelstand'). I can assure you that there are no ambivalent feelings against 'entrepreneurs'. Exactly the opposite. You find world-market leaders in small towns all across rural Germany. You can guess that people are extremely proud to work for these companies.
99% of all companies are in the Mittelstand. "Roughly 95% of all German firms are family-owned. Of these, approx. 85% are managed by their owner."
> When Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too.
This doesn't hold true for any of the Americans I've met (and I've met a lot). Also, one of the countries Martin Varsavsky mentions in his examples is actually the UK.
If it were true that the American definition of Europe doesn't include Eastern Europe, what part of the world do the many Americans who visit Budapest believe they're in? Asia?
> The Europe that Americans refer to does mostly use the Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers, and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of its parts.
Western European countries that don't use the Euro: Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway (and then there's the UK, but of course that isn't part of your definition of Europe).
> Perhaps the main point of the post was, be aware that Eastern Europe exists?
No, the main point was, if you visit e.g. the UK, don't make general observations about Europe based on that.
The main point of the post was: Even if applied to western Europe or the European Union the original post he's responding to is grossly overgeneralizing and wrong.
Otherwise you're right: When talking about europe, most western europeans don't include russia or respectively those part of russia that geographically belong to europe and most probably ukraine and other eastern european countries are not included as well.
When Americans talk about Europe, they talk about Europe, this is the problem. Someone who knows Europe geographically and politically often means with "Western Europe" the European countries with a strong economy. (Why would you exclude UK?) Others might use this term to refer to all countries west of Poland. What I am saying is: even the term "Western Europe" is really unprecise.
And even if you only talk about Western Europe without UK, it's still a very heterogenous landscape. Please, why do you think the EU exists? Why do you think two World Wars basically originated in Western Europe? Germany is really different from the Netherlands. Everything is different, houses look different, cities look different, job market is different, just about everything is different.
I'm sorry, but almost everytime I hear Americans use the term Europe, the sourrounding statement is almost always wrong. To illustrate it a bit: imagine I would make statements about the continent America like: in America xxx. There is almost no chance that such a statement holds any informational value... :-)
"All of this wouldn't bother me so much if it weren't for the fact that I see these kinds of generalizations all the time. It's not uncommon for Americans who've briefly visited one or two countries in Europe to say, "In Europe they..." or "Europeans are...". This makes me cringe every time, because it is the equivalent of a European person visiting a city in Mexico and going, "In North America they..." or "North Americans are..." solely based on their experiences in that Mexican city."
A better analogy is the way Europeans come to America, visit New York City and L.A., and think they know everything about the nation as a whole, as if the U.S. is a homogenous culture, rather than a conglomerate of roughly 10 or 11 different cultures. The worst part is that the majority of Europeans (yep, I'm generalizing) I encounter seem to think that the massively exported American pop culture is representative of U.S. culture, when it is absolutely not. I grew up in rural Appalachia (West Virginia, western Virginia) and the culture for both business and informal activities is vastly different than that of the Deep South, West Coast, Mid Atlantic, etc.
You just proved OP's point. What's "Eastern Europe"? I'm guessing you'd consider anything east of Germany/Austria/Italy to be "Eastern", right? Well, in Poland and the Czech Republic people consider themselves "Central Europe", which makes sense given that geographically Europe extends to the Ural mountains.
when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia.
Likewise, most people across the world seem to use "American" and "U.S. citizen" interchangeably, even though Canada and Brazil, for example, are in the Americas, making Canadians and Brazilians American, as well.
Hmm. Perhaps you could stop generalizing about people generalizing about Europe. Varsavsky has lived and built businesses in Madrid since 1995, so I think that his contrasts between the European market and the American market from the entrepreneur's point of view are really pretty trustworthy.
Your points about European diversity are quite valid, although I think they're beside the point. But your ad hominem "Oh my, another American is butting his nose into Europe" framing is less than persuasive.
Have you followed the HN discussion about Varsavskys post? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4968589 He takes his experience from Spain and UK and glosses it all over europe with some hearsay in between. Some of his statements may apply to spain and the UK, but pretty much all of them don't apply in germany - even the ones about germany. So it's not an ad hominem attack when the author says "another one that falls in the trap."
> his contrasts between the European market and the American market from the entrepreneur's point of view are really pretty trustworthy.
They're not. And I've run businesses in lots of different countries as well. Martin is on the ball when it comes to comparing Spain the US, but his contrasts between the European and the American market from the entrepreneurs point of view are way off the mark.
He should have simply titled his post: "what it's like to be an entrepreneur in Spain" and there would have been no issue at all.
Btw, Varsavsky isn't an American, he's had quite a few business dealings in the UK and in Spain but as far as I know doesn't hold a stake in a company in any of the other EU countries that he's writing about and I really don't understand what it was that he was trying to achieve with his post.
If you don't believe me go visit Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Tampere, Paris, Stockholm, Bucharest, Warsaw or a hundred other places and compare those contrasts for yourself.
On the whole there are very few of Varsavsky's points that hold water, a summary between the US business climate and the EU one from an entrepreneurs pint of view could be made much shorter:
- in the EU it is a lot harder to be a dick to your employees
- in America you will (due to the larger and more homogeneous home market) likely have a much better chance grow fast
- in Europe you will have to think internationally from day 1
- in Europe it is less dog-eat-dog and more cooperative
It's amazing how many from the USA insist that the inner diversity in the USA is comparable to the one in Europe. I've heard this many times, namely here in HN. It is not comparable. PERIOD.
Even if the poster goes a bit to the extreme of bringing Russia in to the conversation, even inside the EU, there is still no comparison on how how diverse Europe is (e.g. Portugal to Norway, Greece to France, Spain to Germany) compared to the USA. Some countries, like Austria and Germany do have some similarities, but - to the untrained eye - Canada and the USA will seem relatively similar also, when compared to Mexico!
Perhaps the diversity of the USA is not the extreme of Europe, but I would be quick to point out that the regional differences in the US are quite notable even to an outside observer.
There are 5 major regions of the US: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West. Each of these regions has noted differences in: dialect, culture, food, general behavior, economy, and quality of life.
Now regardless of US or Europe we have to factor in the population density of a location. It's no secret that urban culture is very different from rural culture be it in Oregon or in France.
Granted: we mostly speak the same language, we all share a common currency, and we all answer to the same federal body which represents us.
There is more diversity in Europe, that much I am sure of. But there is no problem with a comparison of the two.
I think a lot of us need to admit that the author is right. I, for one, do generalize about Europe. I think of social democracies with high taxes. I think of arcane rules and regulations to start and run a business. And most of all, I limit the term "Europe" to include about 20 of the 50 European countries. I will never think of Russia as a European country. If I entered a contest and won a vacation to "Europe" - and the destination turned out to be Albania - I'd be thinking "Wat?!? That's not Europe."
From the outside, the term "Europe" is a confusing morass of distinctions. There's Europe, the Eurozone, the EU. The UN also has a geoscheme that is different than all three of those. Hell, half of Americans probably don't know the difference between England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom.
I am an African currently living in Europe. When you think that my home country ( just 1 out of 54 in Africa ) is made up of over 500 tribes which were really separate and distinct nations pre-colonializiation by the British, you come to realize that any generalization made of a continent is rarely (if ever) a representation of the observed set.
There is a small town very near to where I grew up where everybody speaks Portuguese. The mayor and his councilmen speak Portuguese in their chambers. There are Festas and bullfights, of which I have attended many, and even played Baritone in an Azorian-tradition marching band. The local grocery stores have food with labels in Portuguese (occasionally Spanish as a second language). The most popular sports team in the entire city is Benfica, and the most popular TV channel is RTP.
This town is called Gustine, and it is located in California.
If you are going to throw a fit about generalizations of Europe, at least have the courtesy to do the same with your generalizations of the US. After having lived in multiple corners of this country, I can honestly tell you that our majority language and our TV stations are the lowest common denominators of our culture...not defining aspects of it.
I live in Romania, and just 40 miles away from me there's an entire different country, Bulgaria, with its rivers , whole mountain ranges, TV channels, folk tales and a different alphabet than ours. We have been each other neighbors for around 1,000 years, give or take, and yet I can only understand at most 5 words of the Bulgarian language and when it comes to "shared culture" I can only relate to some Bulgarian animation that I used to watch as a 5-year old a long time ago.
Now, on the entrepreneurial side of the story, I work for a Romanian startup who seriously considered expanding in the regional market (Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria). Now, Polish and Bulgarian are both Slavic languages but use different alphabets, so we would have had to hire different local people in both countries (with all the different laws, accounting and the likes), while with Hungarian (a Finno-Ugric language) we could have hired someone from my city, Bucharest, thx to the local Hungarian minority. We finally stopped the non-sense and decided to focus on a single huge market, the United States.
I addressed all that in my post. I never claimed that Americans were one homogenous group (and by the way, I've lived in California, too). I claimed that US, despite being a melting pot, is an actual nation (which is not the case with the EU) and that there are a least some common denominators - one of them being the language which is spoken natively by more than 80% of the population.
I am from Africa - a continent of more than a billion people speaking around two thousand languages. In Africa, you find one of the first Christian nations in the word as well as communities practicing ancient forms of traditional belief systems. Climate ranges from scorching heat and arid desert to tropical rain forests. You find the very wealthy elite monopolizing all the resources as well as mass poverty. I could go on.
To make matters worse, borders between countries are artificially drawn by colonialists. That results in frequent conflicts and makes effective governance or business extremely difficult. Yet, almost everyone refers to Africa as one homogeneous (dark) unit.
Well, it's not uncommon to hear the expression "Sub-saharan Africa". That's better than nothing.
At least in Europe, we usually differentiate between Mediterranean/Maghreb/Islamic Africa and "everything below".
Actually, I believe most southern Europeans refer to "Africa" in the loosest sense of the word as being the sub-Saharan part, since the northern countries are seen as Mediterranean and are just too close to home to be thought of as in another continent. Likewise, no-one will refer to the Near East as being "Asia".
Yes, indeed they are. But they all share a common language. It's a bit like Germany, Switzerland and Austria or even the german states themselves. We all share a common language so it we've seen the same movies, read the same media, etc. Certainly it's on a larger scale than the german states, but it's on a smaller scale than europe. If I travel 200 km to the east I'm in Poland. My GF comes from a village close to the belarussian border. I can pick the car, drive there in 6 hours or so and while it's Europe and even still EU, I can't even begin to talk to her parents or pretty much any other person in the village. I don't understand a single word they say, I have very little clue about how their life was and still is. If I drive 1000 km to the south I crossed at least 4 borders and heard at least as many languages on the way. So the proper comparison would be to compare texas to mexico or any middle american state.
And you'd be right. But you'd also have admit that Americans tend to do that to themselves. "The American Way" and whatnot; less bright people even saying "Unamerican" as if that was a thing. Those aren't labels others gave you, Americans proudly confess them. And then there is this ever-present flag and/or red-white-blue. From far away those similiarities seem to kinda outweigh the differences, it's just real hard to look past that, it being everywhere and all the time.
> I could make an almost identical argument about the usage of terms like "Americans".
I hear you and partly agree, but the comparison is a stretch.
In USA, how many hours by car do you need to find a local that doesn't speak your language?
The very same ad can easily be broadcast US-wide. Never do that in Europe (not that anyone has ever tried).
Trying to impose a law on all EU countries alone is usually unsuccessful [1].
Cultures are quite different. The feeling of being part of EU is far weaker than that of being part of your European nation. We don't say we are EU citizens. We don't watch the same thing on TV. We don't read the same newspapers. We don't have the same food habits.
My point: European countries are by far further apart than US states, and as a result, generalizations are more likely to fail.
But, sure, you do feel differently about death penalty, gun control, socialism and Mormons from state to state.
For those who don't know, the Eurozone is basically those 17 EU member states who use the Euro as their currency. The remaining 10 members of the EU use their own national currency.
Can't stress enough that the 740 million figures includes Russia and Kazakhstan in the bunch. Two countries that are more Asian than they are European.
As a brazilian, I completely understand this feeling. A lot of people think Buenos Aires is Brazil's capital, when it's actually Argentina's capital. And small parts of our culture are taken as national main interest, as carnival.
But it's ok to me. In the end, there's no much to do besides correcting people. It's not worth to be upset with this behaviour. People will always generalize and will always state things about places they don't even know with total confidence.
What worries me is that some American entrepreneurs may be deterred from starting businesses in Europe based on untrue generalizations, whether positive or negative. There are huge possibilities in Europe, but in order to plan your business strategy you need facts.
True, you're generalizing when you say "Europeans are...", but you would also be generalizing if you said "Americans are...", "San Franciscans are...", "Rich people are...", "Programmers are...", and so on and so forth for any group of people you can think of. Talking about a group of people is generalizing, and generalizing is a necessary part of life, because despite the fact that doing so may cause untrue things to be said about certain people, it is also true that generalizations are true about more people than they are untrue about. That's why they're called generalizations.
People say "vc's in the bay area understand startups." Is this universally true? Of course not. But am I ignorant for saying so? Not in the slightest, because in more cases than not, it is true.
So yeah, the guy's statements might not be holistically accurate, but who's are? He's offering guidlines, and I believe that's fair.
Disclosure: I have not yet had the pleasure of visiting Europe. It is possible that my opinions might change after experiencing life there firsthand.
I would love to write a similar post titled "Americans and Europeans, stop generalizing about India". As much as I cringe every time I hear someone do an "Indian accent" (it differs vastly from state to state), drawing simple boundaries is the way we make sense of the world around us. As experience grows, we learn to make finer distinctions and the texture of life around us grows from monochrome to technicolour.
Please feel free to draw these simple boundaries around anything of importance to you as long as those generalizations are adequate for your life and those around you. Don't however think that your generalizations are absolutely real. They're real for you and may not be for others. This is what is ultimately so beautiful about the world.
I was taught at my (European-based) business negotiation course that such generalizations as the ones mentioned in the article, are a basic American negotiation strategy to undermine European confidence. I was told that Americans are aware (most of the time) that their behaviour is received as ignorant and rude. After reading the article, I'm back to wondering whether my business negotiation professor was just prejudiced or is there a grain of truth in what he told me?
The comedy to this is the extreme generalizing that goes on globally when talking about America / Americans.
We're all cowboy surfer rednecks that love our guns and religion, are all broke with maxed out credit cards and overweight with a nasty case of diabetes.
It's good, because it addresses some common misconceptions.
It's bad, because it implies that you can't generalize about anything nor anyone. Obviously, there are - broadly - common traits in Europe. The point is fine, to the extent that the broader generalizations you make, the more people will be described incorrectly - and you cite some great numbers to emphasize that.
The post makes it sound as if there is some scientific constant for maximum population size you can generalize about.
I think there's a lot of truth to this essay. As am American, I've certainly been guilty of these kinds of generalizations. To Americans (colloquially meaning U.S. citizens here), I think the phenomenon can be attributed mainly to two causes. The first is that Americans don't travel much, only a small minority hold passports. And who can travel with a meagre two contiguous weeks of holiday per year, and with real incomes of the 99% declining for the past 30 years? The second is that the political propaganda machine in the States explicitly lumps all the nations of Europe into the "un-American, thus wrong-thinking" category. You need look no further than our last presidential election for evidence of this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16583813 . There's probably a third force at work that just occurred to me: I think that in American schools, kids are not taught anything meaningful about Europe other than perhaps a vague bit about the World Wars. Namely who was "good", and who was "evil", black & white just like modern American politics. My apartment here in Berlin has a Berlin-raised caretaker who I've had a few extended conversations with. I'm astounded by how much he knows about American history, to the point of even forming opinions (historical ones, not politico-propaganda-influenced ones as far as I can tell) on individual events such as the battle of Little Bighorn. He's in his late 40s, speaks English fluently, and knows more about American history than most Americans I've met. I'm not sure that I entirely know what to make of this, but it certainly leaves me with the impression that there's an element of learning and sheer curiosity about the world that's largely absent in the States.
From the outside, Europe may seem more united than it is. I think that the difference between two randomly selected European states is the same as the difference between a random European state and the US.
Also I disagree, that there is a need for a stronger union. Free trade union yes, but other than that, every state should be sovereign.
I came to this party rather late, but here are my $0.02.
I don't pretend to be a super well-traveled individual, but I have traveled a bit.
I feel both Jonas Bentzen and the article he refutes are wrong to some degree, though Mr Bentzen seems to be making a less severe generalisation.
What I see occurring here is a classic example of metonymy and cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities vs. perceived 'real culture'.
Metonymy: A country seems to be defined by its major city or cities--to the outsider, the fewer cities represent it, the better.
Cosmopolitan cities: The problem is these major cities tend to be cosmopolitan cities. Think Alpha-, Alpha, Alpha+ and Alpha++. These types of cities tend to strive towards homogeneity. I had a history prof (who leaned towards socialism) lay out and explain how, historically, the bigger a city gets, the less unique and further away from its ancestors and traditions it culturally becomes. Cultural hegemony.
Metropolitan cities: Then there are 'medium-size' cities, or 'second major cities' that fight to keep some traditions and cultures from their respective countries. Some metropolitan cities strive to be more cosmopolitan, and have that sensation; I'm thinking of a few (very few) Beta-, Beta, and Beta+ cities here.
During the French Revolution, there were two major schools of thought in Spain. One went like this: Bonaparte wants to modernise countries and wage war on 'tradition'; let's join the French movement and abolish our backward traditions. These people, in Spain, were called 'afrancesados' ('Frenchifieds', pro-French), pejoratively. They were found in major Spanish cities.
Here is the really important part: people outside of major Spanish cities thought they were protecting the 'real' Spanish culture; they were often of humble birth, people that had given rise to what people outside of Spain thought was 'very Spanish' (flamenco, cante jondo, running of the bulls, gypsies, etc.) from a cultural perspective. They had traditions; old traditions. They were superstitious, street-smart, but they were also deceived by kings and, to use a modern term, their governments.
I don't see much has changed with regard to cultural representation.
The government projects/sells an image of their country to foreigners. Some people buy into it. The reality is that not only is each country vastly different, each region and city is.
We should be comparing cities with cities, not countries with countries.
[+] [-] crazygringo|13 years ago|reply
(Just like when Americans talk about Asia, they aren't usually thinking of India.)
Of course, that's geographically inaccurate -- but it's what we usually mean. The Europe that Americans refer to does mostly use the Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers, and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of its parts.
Just because Europe is made up of lots of countries, and there are lots of different ways to define it, doesn't mean you can't make statements about it. Perhaps the main point of the post was, be aware that Eastern Europe exists?
[+] [-] loxs|13 years ago|reply
> Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers,
> and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of
> its parts.
Well, no it doesn't. Italy and Greece are extremely different to Scandinavia. At least regarding to things like temperament and culture. They are much more like Bulgaria and Turkey, though they may not really be willing to admit that. You can't really sell to Italians by operating in Denmark. That's not to say that you can sell to Italians by operating in Bulgaria either. Especially true for things like enterprise software, eg. accounting systems. "Better distributed wealth" and "use the Euro" do not alleviate the law and language bariers. What these two things do help about is only not having to carry 10 different currencies in you pocket. Which is not at all true if you have to visit one of the non-Euro states.
There is though one type of company that greatly benefits by the situation. And that is the international mega-corp. They can afford to produce or provide services from Bulgaria and sell to the whole world. IBM, HP, VMWare, Ubisoft, Crytek and on and on... All have offices in Sofia, Bulgaria. This is a result of the non-uniform wealth distribution. They can sell to Western Europe and U.S.A while being close to them, using workforce that speaks English and has tradition in technical sciences, while at the same time being relatively cheap.
As a result, Bulgarians don't have ambivalent feelings toward enterpreneurs at all.
So no, you can't generalize. You will be wrong every single time.
Disclaimer: As it should be obvious by now, I am a Bulgarian.
[+] [-] lispm|13 years ago|reply
Germany has over three millions SMEs (small and medium enterprises, called 'Mittelstand'). I can assure you that there are no ambivalent feelings against 'entrepreneurs'. Exactly the opposite. You find world-market leaders in small towns all across rural Germany. You can guess that people are extremely proud to work for these companies.
99% of all companies are in the Mittelstand. "Roughly 95% of all German firms are family-owned. Of these, approx. 85% are managed by their owner."
[+] [-] jonascopenhagen|13 years ago|reply
This doesn't hold true for any of the Americans I've met (and I've met a lot). Also, one of the countries Martin Varsavsky mentions in his examples is actually the UK.
If it were true that the American definition of Europe doesn't include Eastern Europe, what part of the world do the many Americans who visit Budapest believe they're in? Asia?
> The Europe that Americans refer to does mostly use the Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers, and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of its parts.
Western European countries that don't use the Euro: Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway (and then there's the UK, but of course that isn't part of your definition of Europe).
> Perhaps the main point of the post was, be aware that Eastern Europe exists?
No, the main point was, if you visit e.g. the UK, don't make general observations about Europe based on that.
[+] [-] Xylakant|13 years ago|reply
Otherwise you're right: When talking about europe, most western europeans don't include russia or respectively those part of russia that geographically belong to europe and most probably ukraine and other eastern european countries are not included as well.
[+] [-] blablabla123|13 years ago|reply
And even if you only talk about Western Europe without UK, it's still a very heterogenous landscape. Please, why do you think the EU exists? Why do you think two World Wars basically originated in Western Europe? Germany is really different from the Netherlands. Everything is different, houses look different, cities look different, job market is different, just about everything is different.
I'm sorry, but almost everytime I hear Americans use the term Europe, the sourrounding statement is almost always wrong. To illustrate it a bit: imagine I would make statements about the continent America like: in America xxx. There is almost no chance that such a statement holds any informational value... :-)
[+] [-] JPKab|13 years ago|reply
A better analogy is the way Europeans come to America, visit New York City and L.A., and think they know everything about the nation as a whole, as if the U.S. is a homogenous culture, rather than a conglomerate of roughly 10 or 11 different cultures. The worst part is that the majority of Europeans (yep, I'm generalizing) I encounter seem to think that the massively exported American pop culture is representative of U.S. culture, when it is absolutely not. I grew up in rural Appalachia (West Virginia, western Virginia) and the culture for both business and informal activities is vastly different than that of the Deep South, West Coast, Mid Atlantic, etc.
See this book: http://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cult...
[+] [-] jwr|13 years ago|reply
Don't generalize.
[+] [-] edj|13 years ago|reply
Likewise, most people across the world seem to use "American" and "U.S. citizen" interchangeably, even though Canada and Brazil, for example, are in the Americas, making Canadians and Brazilians American, as well.
[+] [-] Vivtek|13 years ago|reply
Your points about European diversity are quite valid, although I think they're beside the point. But your ad hominem "Oh my, another American is butting his nose into Europe" framing is less than persuasive.
[+] [-] Xylakant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
They're not. And I've run businesses in lots of different countries as well. Martin is on the ball when it comes to comparing Spain the US, but his contrasts between the European and the American market from the entrepreneurs point of view are way off the mark.
He should have simply titled his post: "what it's like to be an entrepreneur in Spain" and there would have been no issue at all.
Btw, Varsavsky isn't an American, he's had quite a few business dealings in the UK and in Spain but as far as I know doesn't hold a stake in a company in any of the other EU countries that he's writing about and I really don't understand what it was that he was trying to achieve with his post.
If you don't believe me go visit Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Tampere, Paris, Stockholm, Bucharest, Warsaw or a hundred other places and compare those contrasts for yourself.
On the whole there are very few of Varsavsky's points that hold water, a summary between the US business climate and the EU one from an entrepreneurs pint of view could be made much shorter:
- in the EU it is a lot harder to be a dick to your employees
- in America you will (due to the larger and more homogeneous home market) likely have a much better chance grow fast
- in Europe you will have to think internationally from day 1
- in Europe it is less dog-eat-dog and more cooperative
Those are from my own personal experience.
[+] [-] jonascopenhagen|13 years ago|reply
Which is exactly why I'm puzzled by some of his completely wrong statements about Europe.
[+] [-] readme|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SeniorKlem|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erebrus|13 years ago|reply
Even if the poster goes a bit to the extreme of bringing Russia in to the conversation, even inside the EU, there is still no comparison on how how diverse Europe is (e.g. Portugal to Norway, Greece to France, Spain to Germany) compared to the USA. Some countries, like Austria and Germany do have some similarities, but - to the untrained eye - Canada and the USA will seem relatively similar also, when compared to Mexico!
[+] [-] artimaeis|13 years ago|reply
There are 5 major regions of the US: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West. Each of these regions has noted differences in: dialect, culture, food, general behavior, economy, and quality of life.
Now regardless of US or Europe we have to factor in the population density of a location. It's no secret that urban culture is very different from rural culture be it in Oregon or in France.
Granted: we mostly speak the same language, we all share a common currency, and we all answer to the same federal body which represents us.
There is more diversity in Europe, that much I am sure of. But there is no problem with a comparison of the two.
[+] [-] CrLf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhebb|13 years ago|reply
From the outside, the term "Europe" is a confusing morass of distinctions. There's Europe, the Eurozone, the EU. The UN also has a geoscheme that is different than all three of those. Hell, half of Americans probably don't know the difference between England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom.
[+] [-] alexchamberlain|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] white_devil|13 years ago|reply
.. Aaand you'd be right about France, Germany, Spain, England, The Netherlands, Denmark, Austria and Italy (and Norway, Sweden, Finland).
In other words, you'd be right about "the countries that matter" (and some that don't).
[+] [-] tacheshun|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peteridah|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saosebastiao|13 years ago|reply
This town is called Gustine, and it is located in California.
If you are going to throw a fit about generalizations of Europe, at least have the courtesy to do the same with your generalizations of the US. After having lived in multiple corners of this country, I can honestly tell you that our majority language and our TV stations are the lowest common denominators of our culture...not defining aspects of it.
[+] [-] paganel|13 years ago|reply
Now, on the entrepreneurial side of the story, I work for a Romanian startup who seriously considered expanding in the regional market (Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria). Now, Polish and Bulgarian are both Slavic languages but use different alphabets, so we would have had to hire different local people in both countries (with all the different laws, accounting and the likes), while with Hungarian (a Finno-Ugric language) we could have hired someone from my city, Bucharest, thx to the local Hungarian minority. We finally stopped the non-sense and decided to focus on a single huge market, the United States.
[+] [-] jonascopenhagen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gudukassa|13 years ago|reply
To make matters worse, borders between countries are artificially drawn by colonialists. That results in frequent conflicts and makes effective governance or business extremely difficult. Yet, almost everyone refers to Africa as one homogeneous (dark) unit.
Schadenfreude from your African fellow.
[+] [-] _pferreir_|13 years ago|reply
At least in Europe, we usually differentiate between Mediterranean/Maghreb/Islamic Africa and "everything below".
Actually, I believe most southern Europeans refer to "Africa" in the loosest sense of the word as being the sub-Saharan part, since the northern countries are seen as Mediterranean and are just too close to home to be thought of as in another continent. Likewise, no-one will refer to the Near East as being "Asia".
[+] [-] mbell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xylakant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neumann_alfred|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cllns|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] espadrine|13 years ago|reply
I hear you and partly agree, but the comparison is a stretch.
In USA, how many hours by car do you need to find a local that doesn't speak your language?
The very same ad can easily be broadcast US-wide. Never do that in Europe (not that anyone has ever tried).
Trying to impose a law on all EU countries alone is usually unsuccessful [1]. Cultures are quite different. The feeling of being part of EU is far weaker than that of being part of your European nation. We don't say we are EU citizens. We don't watch the same thing on TV. We don't read the same newspapers. We don't have the same food habits.
My point: European countries are by far further apart than US states, and as a result, generalizations are more likely to fail.
But, sure, you do feel differently about death penalty, gun control, socialism and Mormons from state to state.
[+] [-] nollidge|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cllns|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] personlurking|13 years ago|reply
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Supranati...
[+] [-] jonascopenhagen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VeejayRampay|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elomarns|13 years ago|reply
But it's ok to me. In the end, there's no much to do besides correcting people. It's not worth to be upset with this behaviour. People will always generalize and will always state things about places they don't even know with total confidence.
[+] [-] jonascopenhagen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corwinstephen|13 years ago|reply
People say "vc's in the bay area understand startups." Is this universally true? Of course not. But am I ignorant for saying so? Not in the slightest, because in more cases than not, it is true.
So yeah, the guy's statements might not be holistically accurate, but who's are? He's offering guidlines, and I believe that's fair.
Disclosure: I have not yet had the pleasure of visiting Europe. It is possible that my opinions might change after experiencing life there firsthand.
[+] [-] Kynlyn|13 years ago|reply
Stereotypes aren't just an American thing. They exist worldwide.
[+] [-] aufreak3|13 years ago|reply
Please feel free to draw these simple boundaries around anything of importance to you as long as those generalizations are adequate for your life and those around you. Don't however think that your generalizations are absolutely real. They're real for you and may not be for others. This is what is ultimately so beautiful about the world.
[+] [-] conradfr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polskibus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|13 years ago|reply
We're all cowboy surfer rednecks that love our guns and religion, are all broke with maxed out credit cards and overweight with a nasty case of diabetes.
[+] [-] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
It's good, because it addresses some common misconceptions.
It's bad, because it implies that you can't generalize about anything nor anyone. Obviously, there are - broadly - common traits in Europe. The point is fine, to the extent that the broader generalizations you make, the more people will be described incorrectly - and you cite some great numbers to emphasize that.
The post makes it sound as if there is some scientific constant for maximum population size you can generalize about.
[+] [-] brightsize|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RivieraKid|13 years ago|reply
Also I disagree, that there is a need for a stronger union. Free trade union yes, but other than that, every state should be sovereign.
[+] [-] kafkaesque|13 years ago|reply
I don't pretend to be a super well-traveled individual, but I have traveled a bit.
I feel both Jonas Bentzen and the article he refutes are wrong to some degree, though Mr Bentzen seems to be making a less severe generalisation.
What I see occurring here is a classic example of metonymy and cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities vs. perceived 'real culture'.
Metonymy: A country seems to be defined by its major city or cities--to the outsider, the fewer cities represent it, the better.
Cosmopolitan cities: The problem is these major cities tend to be cosmopolitan cities. Think Alpha-, Alpha, Alpha+ and Alpha++. These types of cities tend to strive towards homogeneity. I had a history prof (who leaned towards socialism) lay out and explain how, historically, the bigger a city gets, the less unique and further away from its ancestors and traditions it culturally becomes. Cultural hegemony.
Metropolitan cities: Then there are 'medium-size' cities, or 'second major cities' that fight to keep some traditions and cultures from their respective countries. Some metropolitan cities strive to be more cosmopolitan, and have that sensation; I'm thinking of a few (very few) Beta-, Beta, and Beta+ cities here.
During the French Revolution, there were two major schools of thought in Spain. One went like this: Bonaparte wants to modernise countries and wage war on 'tradition'; let's join the French movement and abolish our backward traditions. These people, in Spain, were called 'afrancesados' ('Frenchifieds', pro-French), pejoratively. They were found in major Spanish cities.
Here is the really important part: people outside of major Spanish cities thought they were protecting the 'real' Spanish culture; they were often of humble birth, people that had given rise to what people outside of Spain thought was 'very Spanish' (flamenco, cante jondo, running of the bulls, gypsies, etc.) from a cultural perspective. They had traditions; old traditions. They were superstitious, street-smart, but they were also deceived by kings and, to use a modern term, their governments.
I don't see much has changed with regard to cultural representation.
The government projects/sells an image of their country to foreigners. Some people buy into it. The reality is that not only is each country vastly different, each region and city is.
We should be comparing cities with cities, not countries with countries.