Skip to content

Comment on Silicon Valley aside, why are Americans more willing to risk a startup?

Comments

On a quick note...I would have to say that the laws of the US provide a unique and time-tested opportunity for startups. This has driven the US to become a destination for many of the world's immigrants, leaving their own countries less populated with potential risk takers.

The notion of a free market is what distinguished the US from its European counterparts at its inception and has since demonstrated the ability to learn and grow. The benefit of the US at that time was a clean slate economy without all of the potential 'baggage' that the European countries possessed in the monarchical systems. What's more, for the most part it didn't matter where you came from or who your family was in the US. All that mattered was market potential.

Though European countries have moved their economies in much the same direction they still have to contend with the history of their governments. Culture and history are slow to let go of a people group. New ideas take time to be successfully introduced on an indigenous level if they are to become part of the cultural paradigm and identified history.

I would agree about the market being freer in the US than Europe, but the UK's market is almost as free as the US' http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cf...

... there has to be something else that the US has got too. A population of 300 million (vs. the UK's ~60 million) springs to mind.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.