BattistaLuciani

Librarian. Italiano, English. 中文.

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

@WarMonitors This one is undoubtedly your worst take

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

@curaffairs Someone finally found his guts

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

Now do weapons imperialist stooge

[Vanessa Beeley @VanessaBeeley]

China apparently sells more to #Zionist genocidal squatter state than any other country, even #US.

Just saying...

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I just read this WSJ article on why Europe's tech scene is so much smaller than the US's and China's.

I'm afraid that, like most articles on this topic, it largely misses the mark.

Which in itself illustrates a key reason why Europe is lagging behind: when you fail to understand the root causes of an issue, you have zero chance to solve it.

What makes me competent to speak on this topic?

Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, I founded and led HouseTrip which at the time was one of Europe's top startups. We were the first historical startup in which all top 3 VC investors in Europe invested.

So I have a pretty intimate knowledge of the European entrepreneurship ecosystem and what it takes to create and grow a tech company in Europe.

We were pretty promising as a startup. In fact as promising as it can possibly get.

We had a similar concept to Airbnb (with some notable differences I won't bore you with), except we created the company 1 year before they did. Which means we were the first-mover - globally - with a multi-billion-euro concept, strong financial backing by the 3 top investors in Europe and, at some point, a team of 250 people with some of the brightest minds in tech in Europe. Everything we needed to succeed.

And yet we didn't succeed: ultimately we were essentially crushed by our American competitor Airbnb in our home turf - Europe - and we had no choice but to sell ourselves to another American company, Tripadvisor.

Believe me, I've reflected long and hard on how that could have happened. In fact after I left the company in 2015 I even spent 3 months in isolation in the Annapurna mountains in Nepal to reflect full time on exactly that 😅

And I then moved to China, where I spent the next 8 years and where I had the chance to study their ecosystem to understand why they're successful and Europe isn't.

So all in all, I think I have some degree of legitimacy to comment on this topic.

The WSJ article says that Europe lags behind due to the usual suspects, the reasons you constantly hear about: too much regulation, fragmented European markets, limited access to financing, a culture that isn't conducive to the startup grind, etc.

Some of those are true, but imho all are secondary.

Take excessive regulations for instance, which gets mentioned all the time. If they were such a hindrance to startups, why would American startups succeed in Europe - like Airbnb in our case - and European startups not? We all face the same regulations 🤷

Or take fragmented markets. Same question: how could US startups successfully conquer these fragmented EU markets when European startups can't?

Because that's the real elephant in the room, and really the story of the European tech scene since the advent of the internet: US startups have shown a remarkable ability to capture European markets despite the supposed barriers, making many of the "usual suspects" explanations for Europe's tech struggles very unconvincing.

In other words, logically, any explanation where both US and European startups face identical barriers fails to address the fundamental difference in outcomes we consistently observe.

Based on my experience, the key problem faced by European startups can be summarized in one word: patriotism.

There is virtually none in Europe, and more than anything that's what's killing EU startups, or preventing them from developing.

It used to drive me absolutely nuts at HouseTrip. What a startup needs first and foremost, especially a consumer-facing startup like we were, is marketing, to become famous.

At first, when I created the company and before Airbnb was even a thing, I used to pitch the company to the media and the general response I would get was almost one of contempt, as in "why would I belittle myself to write about your startup? And furthermore, who would be stupid enough to stay in an apartment when there are hotels? You guys have no future..."

And then Airbnb got launched and the American media started their thing, hyping the company like it was the greatest innovation since sliced bread, like they were national heroes, giving them hundreds of millions in free publicity.

That's when European media started to take notice. Not of us, god forbid, but of Airbnb. The concept was promoted by Silicon Valley, see... so now it was valid.

So I went back to pitch HouseTrip to European media. This time around I was met with a different kind of contempt: "So you guys are like Airbnb? Why would we cover a European copycat when we can just write about the real American original?" Luckily I'm not violent but lets say those moments really tested my civility 😅

All in all, we arrived in the absolutely grotesque situation where, despite Airbnb not having yet set foot in Europe, they were already a cultural phenomenon there, promoted by European media, for free, when the European original - yours truly - had to spend millions on paid marketing (mostly to Google and Facebook, American companies) to achieve a small fraction of the brand recognition.

Which means that, insanely, Airbnb was probably doing more business in Europe than we did before even opening an office there, simply on the back of the free publicity they were getting. How on earth can you even compete with that?

This dynamic was at play with general European elites too. I remember very clearly having dinner next to a legendary European entrepreneur and investor - who I won't name, a man who supposedly, on paper, is dedicating his life to furthering the European tech ecosystem. We naturally got to talk about HouseTrip and he literally told me, and this is an exact quote: "you know I don't really like copycats, they really hurt the European ecosystem." Another big test for my civility that night...

And even if we had been a copycat, so what? That's how China got started, there's nothing to be ashamed of. You need to learn to walk before you can run.

In fact if you study the history of innovation you'll find that every major tech power, including the US, started by imitating and adapting others' innovations before developing their own.

Speaking of China, again a country that I know in depth for having lived there for 8 years after HouseTrip, I've come to the conclusion that patriotism, a deeply rooted mindset of sovereignty, is truly the magic ingredient behind their success.

Contrary to popular belief, they don't do it in a stupid way by just banning competition. Those cases are actually very rare and only occur if the companies in question violate Chinese law in pretty egregious ways.

Most of the time it's the exact contrary: they welcome foreign companies and competition, but create conditions where local alternatives can thrive alongside them, giving Chinese users and businesses legitimate options to choose domestic champions.

Which means you end up with, for instance, Apple doing well in China but simultaneously allowing the rise of Huawei or Xiaomi. Or Tesla doing well in China but simultaneously allowing the rise of BYD or Nio. Etc.

And China is, interestingly, more comparable to the EU than most people realize. It is, again contrary to popular belief, extremely decentralized when it comes to doing business, with various provinces competing against each other much the same way EU countries compete against each other.

But they do it in such a way where, again, the overarching sense of Chinese sovereignty never gets sacrificed at the altar of provincial competition. And where the ultimate goal is to develop Chinese champions which can successfully compete on the global stage.

So there you have it, the dirty little secret behind Europe's lag. We're essentially witnessing a "colonization of the minds" whereby Europe has structurally internalized its technological inferiority, celebrating American startups while dismissing its own homegrown companies.

Why does this barely ever get talked about? Think about it: do you seriously think that the Wall Street Journal would start advocating for, essentially, policies hostile to American tech dominance?

Much better to focus on the usual red herrings like too much regulation or fragmentation which, conveniently, would primarily result in clearing obstacles for American tech giants to dominate European markets even further, rather than nurturing homegrown competitors. This article is, in itself, an illustration of the "colonization of the minds".

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I rarely praise Trump but this is a genuinely incredible speech https://t.co/H1EPlwbF5h

I've been arguing for close to a decade that the single biggest reason for the growing divide between the West and "the rest" was the West's inability to accept diversity (the genuine kind, not the fake ersatz of it sold to you under liberalism). Diversity of cultures, traditions, civilizations, governance systems, etc.

Incredible, and kind of disturbing, that Trump is the first Western leader who seems to understand this and to criticize the West's missionary zeal to remake others in its image.

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

I Agree! Been saying this since the Merkel administration!

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: 🇺🇸🇪🇺 President Trump says "Europe is nastier than China."

[Fredda @PunishedFredda]

This kid grew up and is why India is losing in the air, they're calling him the ghost of Islamabad

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: Trump says there will be a 'earth-shattering' announcement to come in next few days

[Crìsdean MacEanraig @NosrednehTemple]

So a OSINT account in the Netherlands falsely identified a quarry in Yemen as a Houthi bunker. The US then bombed the quarry and killed 8 civilians including children. The OSINT account apologises and gives some money to charity. Am I understanding this correctly?

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

@henryblachman Because you are ignorant of Chinese politics

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

That’s because they can also become submarines

[Disclose.tv @disclosetv]

JUST IN - F-18 falls overboard from U.S. aircraft carrier in Red Sea.

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

Oh is that part of the year again?

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre has died of suicide

[🍓🍓🍓 @iruletheworldmo]

it’s over

turns out the rl victory lap was premature. new tsinghua paper quietly shows the fancy reward loops just squeeze the same tired reasoning paths the base model already knew. pass@1 goes up, sure, but the model’s world actually shrinks. feels like teaching a kid to ace flash cards and calling it wisdom.

so the grand “self-improving llm” dream? basically crib notes plus a roulette wheel: keep sampling long enough and the base spits the same proofs the rl champ brags about, minus the entropy tax. it’s compression, not discovery.

maybe the endgame isn’t better agents, just sharper funnels. we’ve been coaching silicon parrots to clear increasingly useless olympiad hurdles while mistaking overfit for insight. hard not to wonder if we’re half a decade into the world’s most expensive curve-fitting demo.

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

The most servile people I have ever met.

[Japanese Politics 🇯🇵🗾⛩️ @Nihonpolitics]

The constant humiliation.

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

@AFLoyals Cicero: “The ugliest and most stupid race I ever saw.”
That’s how they described you.

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

@Pontifex You were the best pope we could have ever hoped. Despite not being religious, you showed me the virtues of a good man, rest in peace.

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

@CPBritain I have yet to see one “communist” down here point out why this is incoherent.

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

@Jiankui_He @CathyTie What kind of photoshop is this?

[BattistaLuciani @BattistaLuc1]

@Jiankui_He Fuck you. You promised us Wolferine.