| ▲ | larsnystrom 6 hours ago |
| There seems to be a huge business opportunity in Europe right now, to sell support and customization of open source software to government players. Has anyone heard about a European company that’s been successful in this area? |
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| ▲ | wickedwiesel 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Sure. Nextcloud GmbH seems to be one of the winners. It sells a customized version aimed at government agencies. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nextcloud |
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| ▲ | BrandoElFollito 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | If what they sell is the open source Nextcloud, it is a horrendous product. Its architecture is weird, with a proxy inside you can harden only by editing data inside a container that is volatyile by design (and has to be).
There are numerous issues opened on that topic, Nextcloud response is "live with it". |
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| ▲ | pkulak 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Matrix has done a bunch of work with the French government in the past. Hopefully they can capitalize on this sentiment. |
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| ▲ | nonethewiser 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just goes to show how many structural problems there are to starting tech companies in Europe. |
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| ▲ | yardie 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, the problem is capital. US has loads of it and Europe does not. So a lot of European startups have 3 options: remain niche, get bought out buy US investors, move the corporate seat/brain trust to the US. There are many small European startups who do not have infrastructure to take on large European multinationals as clients. A lot of EU labor laws have hard requirements at 50 and 100 employees so startups stay below those lines and remain tech lifestyle companies. | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Well the other large advantage is that the US is one single market with one common language (English) and while there are variations by state, pretty much one set of rules. So by starting a company in the United States you of course have access to incredibly deep capital markets, but you also have access to 350 million people mostly operating under one set of rules with one common language and largely one common culture. It's the same market advantage that China has, by and large. | | |
| ▲ | ifwinterco 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's one of the big ironies of the EU - every time it gets larger (good! increases market size) it also gets more fragmented in terms of languages, retained local rules etc. (bad, obviously). Now up to 24 official languages and still potentially growing in the future (although this is a bit of an overcount because some of them are mutually intelligible to various degrees, it's still a lot). It's interesting to think that at the time of original ECSC treaty there were only four languages (French, German, Dutch and Italian). That's just about manageable, now it is a bit of an issue |
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| ▲ | scottyah 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Also culture. I had a friend try with several German companies, but she said the leadership would default to "no", and every decision would need too much review. She even worked with some that opened offices in SF hoping to learn to move fast, but even those were way too cautious to succeed. Lots of premature optimization, and trying to establish structures and systems before any proof of concepts could be made.
Obviously, this is just anecdotal but she had a real desire to have European growth in SF communities. | |
| ▲ | caycep 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I kind of wonder, capital wise. the GDP isn't too far off US and there's def companies/families w/ insane amount of capital esp in luxury goods etc. Unless they're just hoarding it like Smaug and not investing it back into the economy, in which case the problem isn't capital but business culture. |
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| ▲ | dbl000 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That seems to be the intention of https://mosa.cloud/ |
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| ▲ | PassingClouds 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It could be similar to when China kicked out a lot of non-domestic players. They even had a nickname for it. From the link below. Fengkou fēng kǒu 风口 n. wind tunnel; an area or sector where, for a period of time, all investors want to invest in.
Everyone stands a chance to fly when there is favorable wind blowing from behind. https://www.newconceptmandarin.com/learn-chinese-blog/chines... |
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| ▲ | Zigurd 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I had an occasion to speak to some of the wire.com people a couple years ago. They seemed to be really dedicated to security and privacy. |
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| ▲ | dataviz1000 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > to sell support and customization of open source software to government players Time to start a Drupal consulting firm again. |
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| ▲ | pstuart 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah, this is a win/win opportunity and could drive more sponsorship of those projects as there'd be more interests invested in seeing them thrive. |
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| ▲ | mrits 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| If so it will be acquired by a US company |
