Tobi Lütke: uncertainty

Transcript context

…But in Germany — Germany’s not a tiny nation. The EU is, of course, a large market. Enough of you speak English to have a common language. I would love to know. Honestly, I think about this a lot, but I don’t know if I’m the best person to analyze it. What I’m hearing — and it makes sense — it’s just that tech is something that Americans do, from the perspective of Germans. I really don’t think the general population believes that tech is adding a lot to life. This may be a reflection of areas I go to visit. Again, I mostly visit family and friends in smaller areas. It’s not the tech centers of Germany having these conversations. There is very much a pessimism about the future that, I think, means you cannot build tech companies. You have to be optimistic about the future. Otherwise, why would you want to contribute to progress and make it come faster? That’s one thing. I think it’s very hard to hire staff that’s willing. In North America, I found that people take big chances. If they believe and have conviction in a company doing something, they would leave an excellent career to give it a go. It seems to not be true in Germany, so access to excellent talent is simply harder, based on them making cultural decisions differently, partly because startups are a low-status pursuit from the best I can tell. Say we compare Germany to the Netherlands, which is culturally pretty similar, very close to Koblenz. They have ASML, Adyen. Netherlands is a smaller country. Why have they done relatively better? Or you could cite Sweden, again, culturally not so distant from Germany.…

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