When I try to think of European tech companies I think SAP and Spotify. There’s just nothing remotely comparable to Silicon Valley in Continental Europe, Switzerland included. London and Tel Aviv are each very far ahead of the closest European startup hub, Berlin and there’s just nothing there.
I understand the urge to look for something to find pride in somewhere but aiding regulation isn’t something normal people are aware of, never mind proud of.
> 4/ So the panel discussion turned to "What should the EU do?"
> And the more or less unanimous conclusion (except for the entrepreneur) was "We are going to build on the success of GDPR and aim to be the REGULATORY LEADER of machine learning"
I don't disagree with your remarks about startups and big "software" companies, or rather the lack thereof in the EU.
However, that's not even what Schwarz is targeting here. They are targeting the IT departments of existing companies that aren't necessarily in the tech space at all. I know of a bunch of companies who'd love to move a lot of their stuff into a managed cloud, but wouldn't touch a US-owned cloud for compliance reasons. They stay aware from Telekom, because... well... Telekom. They stay away from Hetzner because Hetzner is not considered "serious" enough for now. So they often end up running their own infra or at most do unmanaged colo.
The GDPR I do like, and are a bit prideful that the EU made it happen.
But it isn't about pride here so much anyway, as it is about political and regulatory realities.
Schwarz has to convince their potential customers that they are "serious" (and Schwarz is considered pretty serious in the business space), that they can execute on promises (and Schwarz again has a reputation for that too, though in the retail space) and that they can offer a cloud that is compliant with regulations, even if at first it's not much more than some managed vms/colos.
> However, that's not even what Schwarz is targeting here. They are targeting the IT departments of existing companies that aren't necessarily in the tech space at all.
This is just giving up. AWS and the also rans are better at everything than companies whose executives play golf well, the serious companies you speak of. If the business plan is to target businesses that aren’t really in software and they don’t plan to have customers who are growing fast either what’s the point?
Is their business plan really to be IBM for the cloud, but German?
This entire thread reads like people actually believe that a business does not have any value until it pulls in billions in revenue.
There are plenty of corporations in Germany that chug along since generation with essentially no profits on their balance sheets.
As long as salaries are paid, you provide a living for your employees, as long as customers are happy, you provide value to the economy. When you have your established niche you do not need growth.
The reputation when it comes to "tech" as in "IT" is not stellar for sure, but it's not unrecoverable bad, and you're forgetting political dimensions.