The difference isn't that Europeans are risk-averse. It's that, if you come from a relatively privileged background and have connections in Silicon Valley, you can launch a startup without taking any real risk.
Speaking for my fellow Americans, we're as terrified of being broke as anyone else. (In fact, we have more to fear, because we don't have universal health care.) That said, these kids who become founders straight out of Stanford aren't taking any real risk. They say they are, to justify getting 100 times more equity than their employees, but their backers have enough pull to ensure a "managed outcome" (acqui-hire into a middle-management role) even if the worst should happen.
We are just as risk-averse as Europeans. On both sides of the Atlantic, there are a few people who naturally tend toward creative risk (who are usually socially rejected, there and here) and a much larger set of people who climb the ladder that's put in front of them, follow the rules, and get into positions of power or influence the old-fashioned way (two parts schmoozing, one part birth, two parts luck). The major difference is in the window dressing. In Europe or New York, that ladder tends to be banking or consulting. In Palo Alto, it's programmer or PM to executive to founder to angel investor to VC... but if you go to the right schools, you can skip a couple of the bottom rungs. The actual willingness of the people to take risks isn't any different in one place or the other.
Of course, when it comes to risk attitudes around capital, it's a different environment entirely. Europe is too conservative and cynical for its own good, and California is too optimistic (and thus prone to "capital evaporation" by socially well connected types) and far too trusting of the wrong sorts of people.
Speaking for my fellow Americans, we're as terrified of being broke as anyone else. (In fact, we have more to fear, because we don't have universal health care.) That said, these kids who become founders straight out of Stanford aren't taking any real risk. They say they are, to justify getting 100 times more equity than their employees, but their backers have enough pull to ensure a "managed outcome" (acqui-hire into a middle-management role) even if the worst should happen.
We are just as risk-averse as Europeans. On both sides of the Atlantic, there are a few people who naturally tend toward creative risk (who are usually socially rejected, there and here) and a much larger set of people who climb the ladder that's put in front of them, follow the rules, and get into positions of power or influence the old-fashioned way (two parts schmoozing, one part birth, two parts luck). The major difference is in the window dressing. In Europe or New York, that ladder tends to be banking or consulting. In Palo Alto, it's programmer or PM to executive to founder to angel investor to VC... but if you go to the right schools, you can skip a couple of the bottom rungs. The actual willingness of the people to take risks isn't any different in one place or the other.
Of course, when it comes to risk attitudes around capital, it's a different environment entirely. Europe is too conservative and cynical for its own good, and California is too optimistic (and thus prone to "capital evaporation" by socially well connected types) and far too trusting of the wrong sorts of people.