As someone who has spent the last 30 years in European tech companies, mostly startups, that is news to me.
Europe does not tend to produce as large tech startups as the US, in part because a lot of promising companies leave for Silicon Valley first chance they get because funding opportunities are better there. But then neither does most of the US, partly for the same reason.
We see the same all the way down - when I worked in a UK based technology VC, we saw both people decamping from the regions to London, and from London to SV for these kinds of reasons, as well as an influx of tech companies from all over elsewhere in Europe who saw London as one of a short list of European cities to move to in order to make things easier - some of whom undoubtedly would move on to SV.
I myself moved to the UK 24 years ago because I co-founded a startup in Norway, and the VC's that invested in us adviced us to move the company to London because there was insufficient capital for tech/software companies in Norway at the time.
Europe has plenty of tech. Tech is not all, or even mostly, the tech giants. It could have more, and it could put more effort into keeping more here. But regulations will not be enough for that - it'll take more capital infusion.
Europe does not tend to produce as large tech startups as the US, in part because a lot of promising companies leave for Silicon Valley first chance they get because funding opportunities are better there. But then neither does most of the US, partly for the same reason.
We see the same all the way down - when I worked in a UK based technology VC, we saw both people decamping from the regions to London, and from London to SV for these kinds of reasons, as well as an influx of tech companies from all over elsewhere in Europe who saw London as one of a short list of European cities to move to in order to make things easier - some of whom undoubtedly would move on to SV.
I myself moved to the UK 24 years ago because I co-founded a startup in Norway, and the VC's that invested in us adviced us to move the company to London because there was insufficient capital for tech/software companies in Norway at the time.
Europe has plenty of tech. Tech is not all, or even mostly, the tech giants. It could have more, and it could put more effort into keeping more here. But regulations will not be enough for that - it'll take more capital infusion.