What Europeans can learn from SF

What Europeans can learn from SF.

4 days here. Already 7 events.

Codex meetups. Stripe's Startup Build Days at the AWS HQ. GTM events with Exa.

I have good news and bad news for Europe.

This is the density and serendipity everyone talks about. Here is what it actually does to you.

1) You realize you can just do things.

Everything around you was built by other humans. Not smarter than you. Not more talented. They just started earlier.

→ That one realization makes you 100x more ambitious. → I already applied it. OXYGEN is organizing a GTM event here in SF very soon. More on that shortly.

The boldness and audacity to just do things.

2) Urgency and hustle.

I hate it. Europeans especially hate it. European summer is coming, people are chilling in cafes.

→ Meanwhile people here are just outworking us. → Longer hours, and somehow not a worse quality of life.

3) The raising culture (the real culture shock).

The numbers people throw around here are wild.

→ $30M seed rounds. If I'm getting it right, that's a Series B check in Europe. → Half of it seems completely unreasonable to me. → But I get the logic. Massive rounds buy a shot at massive impact.

Points 1 and 2 are the real bad news. Europe is behind on both. The raising culture I'm still undecided on.

Now the part I didn't expect.

It's been a long time since I've been this happy. Surrounded by like-minded people. The weather is nice, the people are supportive, the energy is on fire. Everyone is here to build.

I've met people from Australia, Europe, Asia. All here for the same reason. Build their company, be around the best people in the world.

This week I grabbed coffee with fellow founders and three of our integration partners. Exa, Bright Data, Ocean.io. All a bike ride away.

Startup here feels like easy mode. It's always hard. But it's way harder when you're alone, with no capital and no network of customers. SF removes that.

The good news for Europe:

I've been fairly unimpressed by the product quality of what's being built here.

SF people are louder and more connected. The products aren't actually better.

And product is what wins the market. Everything else is the stepping stone.

So this just pushed me to double down on product. Bring the Swiss and German quality into it. Grow with SF distribution, but European quality.

Not that we don't have quality. They're just less focused on it.

If you're building in SF this summer, hmu :)

PS: The homeless problem is real, but not as bad as everyone claims. 4 days in, zero issues, and I've felt pretty safe in the city.