written on October 21, 2025
Plenty has been written about how hard it is to build in Europe versus the US. The list is always the same with little process: brittle politics, dense bureaucracy, mandatory notaries, endless and rigid KYC and AML processes. Fine. I know, you know.
I’m not here to add another complaint to the pile (but if we meet over a beer or coffee, I’m happy to unload a lot of hilarious anecdotes on you). The unfortunate reality is that most of these constraints won’t change in my lifetime and maybe ever. Europe is not culturally aligned with entrepreneurship, it’s opposed to the idea of employee equity, and our laws reflect that.
What bothers me isn’t the rules — it’s the posture that develops form it within people that should know better. Across the system, everyone points at someone else. If a process takes 10 steps, you’ll find 10 people who feel absolved of responsibility because they can cite 9 other blockers. Friction becomes a moral license to do a mediocre job (while lamenting about it).
The vibe is: “Because the system is slow, I can be slow. Because there are rules, I don’t need judgment. Because there’s risk, I don’t need initiative.” And then we all nod along and nothing moves.
There are excellent people here; I’ve worked with them. But they are fighting upstream against a default of low agency. When the process is bad, too many people collapse into it. Communication narrows to the shortest possible message. Friday after 2pm, the notary won’t reply — and the notary surely will blame labor costs or regulation for why service ends there. The bank will cite compliance for why they don’t need to do anything. The registrar will point at some law that allows them to demand a translation of a document by a court appointed translator. Everyone has a reason. No one owns the outcome.
Meanwhile, in the US, our counsel replies when it matters, even after hours. Bankers answer the same day. The instinct is to enable progress, not enumerate reasons you can’t have it. The goal is the outcome and the rules are constraints to navigate, not a shield to hide behind.
So what’s the point? I can’t fix politics. What I can do: act with agency, and surround myself with people who do the same and speak in support of it. Work with those who start from “how do we make this work?” not “why this can’t work.” Name the absurdities without using them as cover. Be transparent, move anyway and tell people.
Nothing stops a notary from designing an onboarding flow that gets an Austrian company set up in five days — standardized KYC packets, templated resolutions, scheduled signing slots, clear checklists, async updates, a bias for same-day feedback. That could exist right now. It rarely does or falls short.
Yes, much in Europe is objectively worse for builders. We have to accept it. Then squeeze everything you can from what is in your control:
Select for agency. Choose partners who answer promptly when it’s material and who don’t confuse process with progress.
The trap is not only regulation. It’s the learned helplessness it breeds. If we let friction set our standards, we become the friction. We won’t legislate our way to a US-style environment anytime soon. But we don’t need permission to be better operators inside a bad one.
That’s the contrast and it’s the part we control.
Postscript: Comparing Europe to the US triggers people and I’m concious of that. Maturity is holding two truths at once: they do some things right and some things wrong and so do we. You don’t win by talking others down or praying for their failure. I’d rather see both Europe and the US succeed than celebrate Europe failing slightly less.
And no, saying I feel gratitude and happiness when I get a midnight reply doesn’t make me anti-work-life balance (I am not). It means when something is truly time-critical, fast, clear action lifts everyone. The times someone sent a document in minutes, late at night, both sides felt good about it when it mattered. Responsiveness, used with judgment, is not exploitation; it’s respect for outcomes and the relationships we form.