Welcome to Europe, Silicon Valley!

Never before have I seen European regulations taken over so enthusiastically as it has happened with the new GDPR. I consider it a new era, a time when US wild-west capitalistic companies from Silicon Valley are being constrained to the glorious social democratic European values.

Welcome to Europe, Silicon Valley! I have put together a welcome package of 5 things you need to know to help you innovate in Europe.

Europe is not aggressive

Europe is not aggressive. Europe is passive aggressive. Here in Europe, our politicians never say dumb things like “The Germans are bad, very bad â€¦â€ (T. Trump), instead, we let our actions, our policies and regulations speak for themselves. If we don’t like Facebook or Google being very bad, we regulate, control and fine them. And fine them well.

Europe is not aggressive, we accept everyone in Europe. Every immigrant is always welcome to Europe. That of course in case they make it here. Instead of being aggressive toward immigrants, for example, we only use positive affirmations like supporting Turkey with billions of euros to help refugees. While using that aid, they should, of course, make sure not to let anyone over the European border.

It is only logical that Europeans control every company

Europe likes innovation

Europe really likes innovation. But it likes it under control, better yet, underground. Just like The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, nicely hidden underground.

It is very much in our blood to keep things under control, and anyone trying to do things that are not fully regulated or government controlled, scare the hell out of us.

So if you want to innovate and test your new startup idea, do it in your (or government provided) closed, controlled lab — not on the streets of Europe. Just listen to Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive: “Don’t mess with Europe!”

Read also: Report: Estonian Digital Infrastructure

Regulation is the King

In Europe, regulation is the solution to everything. Even to regulation itself.

In the past, I could easily order stuff from Amazon UK. But then in 2015, Europe decided to introduce a ridiculously complicated new regulation that required VAT to be charged in the country where products are bought as opposed to the country where they are sold.

This forced online platforms to either comply with 75 different VAT rates present in Europe or choose the easier way out — stop selling in the EU.

Many chose the latter and for people like me, who are from a tiny European nation with 1.3 million people, we are no longer able to enjoy the services of many global digital companies (like Amazon) because the market is just too small for them to open a subsidiary in here.

However, I need not worry, Europe is always here to protect its citizens. And the solution for any problem in Europe (even to the ones it created itself) is more regulation. So from December this year, a new geo-blocking regulation will be put in place to stop e-commerce companies discriminating me and others based on location, forcing them to offer delivery to the whole EU region.

Additionally, just to be sure, there will be some more regulations for cross-border portability of online content services (June 2018) as well as cross-border parcel delivery (January 2019) that will all be introduced to “boost e-commerce” (yes this is how we boost businesses in Europe). All is under control and my rights are well protected, glorious!

Europe loves its citizens

Europe is a loving mother that is sometimes harsh, but always fair. And it very much loves its kids, its obedient citizens. It loves its citizens so much that it often doesn’t even let any strangers — shady business owners and lobbyists — near the decision-making processes. All to protect its kids from bad things happening to them.

GDPR is a great regulation, aiming to protect its citizens from bad things to happen. However, as is common in Europe, politicians forgot to debate and compromise with the evil private sector, especially the non-European tech companies.

To understand it better, here is a little comparison of how public debate happens in the US vs Europe:

A public debate in the US

Public (starting the debate with exaggerated demands): “We demand Stricter Gun Laws!” (because banning guns would obviously be too extreme — there is no way a country can exist without guns).

Private sector: “Rifle companies would lose billions, we can not let that happen.”

Leaders: “No we can not! Let’s give guns to teachers and solve the issue for good.”

Public: “Ah yes, the gun companies, no we can’t let that happen.”

The result (compromise): Some minor changes that have minimal effect on the gun industry revenues like tougher control for a tiny fraction of population (see Extreme Risk Protection Order for an example).

A public debate in Europe

Public: No need to say anything, Big Mother already knows.

Leaders (starting the debate with exaggerated demands): We need to protect our citizens and their data! Let’s give the ownership of the data to users, enforce everyone to double-confirm their acceptance, make every website to create a detailed Privacy Policy together with Terms & Conditions, make it really hard for users to subscribe or share their information so that they would be discouraged to do that, enforce full user data usage reporting together with deletion whenever users ask for it as well as when they do not.

Private sector: Missing (not allowed anywhere close to decision making).

Result: Regulation accepted fully!

Europeans are really smart

Europeans are really smart. They never ask dumb questions like where does Facebook earn its money. They know very well how Facebook is earning (too much) money from European citizens. Europeans know that they are very smart, and so it is only logical that Europeans control every company, especially the ones that are not European companies.

There is probably no other place on earth where a politician can ask politely from a foreign company owner to consider giving up part of his business (in Russia and North Korea, they won’t ask, they take) like Guy Verhofstadt from European Parliament asked Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark Zuckerberg had no idea how to answer this question, so he said that he will get back on this. I can imagine how he went back to the US to throw this question to his army of lawyers and all of them (for the first time) were literally speechless. Until after a while, some brave young lawyer said: “We don’t know! Perhaps we should ask Europeans”.

See also: Join the discussion in Innovation Leaders group on Facebook

The beauty of blending European and US values

The beauty of integrating Silicon Valley to Europe is that over time Americans and the rest of the world will start to realise that is possible to own your private data and not give it away for free. Secondly, to expect companies to take responsibility for their actions as well as social issues like work & unemployment protection (resulting from automation for example). And also, in the long run, to find a way to bring its wealth inequality gap under control to build a stronger society.

I wish I could say the same for Europe — that Europeans will learn to be more open, innovative and entrepreneurial. But probably not. They are already too smart to learn anything new.

Welcome to Europe, Silicon Valley!

Need help growing your ROI from innovation in Europe? We are here to help! Contact us on rubiksdigital.com