Well, there is not too much on a global scale besides SAP.
In general Germany tends to have more small companies that are serving ultra-narrow niches and fewer huge companies that the average person would know.
those companies can’t compete with US companies simply because the US intentionally let their corporations grow without limits in the past so they would be essentially without competition worldwide because of their size.
They will just buy those Startups. End of story.
I am not talking about startups, I am talking about companies that have been around for decades in many cases but sell one very specific service or product to everyone who needs that world-wide. Often they are not even publicly traded.
I think my point still stands for both cases (even though it was originally directed at startups): if a US company considers a startup or an decades old hidden champion somehow valuable, they will buy that company. They just pay the original owners a shitton of money.
That is not what has been happening in Germany. Stop spreading misinformation.
What are you talking about? Are you honestly telling me that there are no US companies investing (buying) companies in Germany?
Again, this is an article about German startups. But you claim that this also applies to established mid-sized (usually family-owned) companies that are the opposite of startups: They have successfully saturated the demand for the niche that they are specialized in and neither potential nor interest in expanding further (within their niche, at least). So far, you have provided no justification for your claim, besides ”surely, no one would refuse a lot of money“.
How will they buy a family owned private company? That would require the family willing to sell and that’s simply not the case 95% of the time.
The real problem is that those hidden champions can not grow further because they already dominate their small niche. Often they inhabited this position for generations already and are very conservative and don’t really innovate.
This wouldn’t happen by force - they would just offer a lot of money to convince them. I never claimed that those transactions would always be successful, did I?
you claim them to happen at relevant scale,when they dont. Your entire argument is based on something being normal that is not. so shifting the goalposts to “well it happens sometimes” is silly.
Yeah I think that’s an issue in Europe and the rest of the world. Personally I’d like to see successful European companies, but not monstrous unregulated lobbying corporations like in the US. Hopefully EU legislation will level the playing field by making the corpos abide by fair legislation, but I don’t know if that’s gonna help in all instances, and we all know how legislation is always lagging behind by at least 10-20 years.
Telekom (including t Systems)? Siemens? Bosch? Those are all even bigger than SAP.
Within Germany, those are typically seen as extremely old-fashioned, “verkrustet”. Bad at innovation, not modern in culture, etc.
I have no idea how true that is, but it’s a perception that doesn’t help them attract talent.
The other issue is that big tech are money printing machines. Google makes a profit of more than $300k per employee (that’s already after paying the high salaries!), Bosch less than $5k.
Tech companies are paying much better because they can also afford it, unlike everyone else.
You’re not wrong, about the money printing, but it’s not a fair comparison since Bosch does its own manufacturing. I.e. they’re simply smaller but still have part of the supply chain google let companies like Samsung and Lenovo have. So you’d have to correct for that and see how much the “tech core” of Bosch brings in. It’s hardly 300k, but likely more than 5k. And they do pay fairly well by European standards.
About the culture difference: I think there is some truth to that but it’s not as bad as most people think. Google‘s Montessori culture is great to produce lots of innovative products, but bad for reliably producing hardware.
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If any of the rest are even similar to SAP then please don’t compete, dealing with SAP is bad enough
