Its cultural thing, but I guess it also depends on the country , not just US/EU. In Prague, people, my friends are very entrepreneur and we work all the time too, lunch, dinner, party, exachange cards, talk about new opportunities, exchange information, and also discuss whats happening on the big scene.

Also having that Silicon Valley culture around you all the time is also problematic, it closes your eyes to real world problems, to normal things. Its abnormal to be surrounded by one type of person.

I don’t know the statistics but even if most start-ups don’t work late, there must be some that do and none of those (correct me if I’m wrong) achieved the size of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Apple … (and so on), which means it can’t be the only reason.

I’m a Portuguese living and working in UK and from my European experience I would say that we’re pessimist about life and organizations. I find lots of people that complain and take no action.
We complain because of the government, we complain with our benefits, we complain… we actually argue “who has more problems”, “who had the worst day”, “who works for the worst employer”, “who gets less benefits” and we usually answer “Me!”.
It sounds as we were too concerned with problems instead of solutions…

On top of this, we’ve built an imagine of wealthy people that doesn’t help.

In Portugal, they have places to eat until really late, really cheap infrastructures with conditions for twitter like companies, etc but it still doesn’t work. A common comment to hear is “I’m not going to contribute to my boss’ wealth while he sits all they talking to the phone” and other variants of the same mindset.
We want a “safe” job with the benefits of being a successful entrepreneur. Risk is a bad thing here.

On the other end, we still have places where we work at least here we work a lot and I must admit, it gets hard when you’re trying to make a prototype of something after working 10 – 12 hours and sleeping less than 6h. But it’s worth doing

Employees, founders and investors voluntarily going above and beyond for the cause is a by-product of having strong leadership who have clearly articulated their vision and empowered their team.

I think the Valley has an advantage over London/UK in that the talent pool is small-company savvy and individuals will vote with their feet as soon as it is apparent the endeavour is not viable. At-will employment works well for investors by killing the weaker small companies quickly.

It is completely lacking all scientific proof. Where is the proof that Silicon Valley startups are more successful than those in Europe?
Where is the proof that working all those hours makes them more successful? IF they are more successful.

And I also find it utterly disgusting in its lack of ethics. Sure be an asshole and work your employees to death. You’ll get rich if you sell, and they get?

PS: In case you were wondering about my political color, I am a capitalist and in general hate socialism.

@Rene: As far as I see, the post itself clearly states that working hard doesn’t literally means “working”, but also thinking and looking for opportunities everywhere and all the time.

Everyone has its periods of bad condition but “it’s a matter of life and death” for your start-up to overcome them without excessive amount of complains and self-excuses.

Being an European I agree one more time that we must stop to concentrate on the problems, lack of entrepreneurial ecosystem, etc… but start to think on solutions, building this missing ecosystem, and hard-working/thinking.

Despite being controversial and about one-year-old, I personally see the following post as still being very current:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/13/joie-de-vivre-the-europeans-are-out-to-lunch/

P.S.: The fact that the LondonVC is anonymous doesn’t bother me at all

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