Good morning. I’m in Monaco this week, speaking with leaders from 46 countries competing in EY’s World Entrepreneur of the Year competition, which takes place tonight. Being here is a reminder that U.S. leaders may be too quick to write off Europe as a place to invest, hire or expand. For all the complaints about regulatory costs, labor laws, risk-taking, energy costs and other challenges, there are merits to creating companies here. A new EY study found 60% of businesses surveyed expect Europe’s attractiveness to increase over the next three years. Here are some perspectives from successful CEOs there who help explain why.
Johannes Reck is CEO of GetYourGuide, a Berlin-based travel platform valued at more than $2 billion, with 50,000 supply partners, over 200,000 experiences and more than 33 million bookings logged in the past year. Reck has turned down multiple offers to move to Silicon Valley since the site launched in 2009 because Europe has clear advantages. “It’s where most of the international tourists actually go,” he told me recently, noting that the continent also boasts a strong immigration system and deep pool of multilingual talent. “We see a lot more loyalty of staff in Europe versus the U.S. If I look at longevity and turnover costs, it’s much, much lower here …The U.S. is fantastic if you want to scale really fast. But for a business like ours that takes decades to build, Europe has a lot of advantages.”
