Silicon Valley - why many Europeans don’t understand how it works

I just read an article in the German newspaper FAZ saying that Silicon Valley is back. The article talks about Apple mainly, also mentioning a few well-known others such as Oracle, Intel, EA and - at least one that is not that well-known to the public - NetApps. This article is one more proof of how little people in Europe understand the high-tech center around San Jose, now spreading further north into San Francisco as well.

Why is it so difficult for Europeans to understand the Valley?

From my own experience having lived and worked there for a few years there are many reasons why authors like the above one have a hard time understanding it.

• Opportunities come and go — and many more go. One has to accept that and be willing to move on. No harm to try things out many times. It is simply not possible to foresee where the route will lead when you start. This is difficult for many Europeans to accept as they tend to be more long-term in thinking and planning, and accepting a lot of uncertainty as normal is hard for them.
• Total focus. When you work for a startup that needs to create value and reach milestones quickly there is no time to do anything else really. I had to work on weekends to reach a set beta milestone and we even introduced shift work in R&D. We also needed to use the -then limited - office space effectively. Now imagine what would happen if you did that in Europe? You might easily be sued for exploiting your knowledge workers. In Silicon Valley each employee in a startup has stock options, so is part-owner in the company, and reaching an exit (trade sale or IPO) will mean lots of money for everybody. So no-one would be bothered about working even harder when necessary.
• Stock options. This is partly a funny one. I have seen many European startups where only the management has stock options and the other employees, regardless of how important they might be for the company, did not receive any, but also did not get bothered about it at all. Unthinkable in the Valley. A startup would not be able to hire any good people without stock options, in fact probably no-one even slightly qualified would join them. Now how’s that for a difference?
• Infrastructure. This is one of the historically strong points of the Valley. You have the ideal setup for a startup industry: venture capital/angel investors, startup experienced lawyers, top universities (Stanford, Berkeley plus other very practical industry-focused educational facilities), real estate owners providing lots of office space, local airports (San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco), networking events and associations, established high-tech firms (Oracle, Intel,  HP, Apple, Cisco, EMC, EA, eBay, Google, Applied Materials, LSI Logic, Symantec), government facilities (NASA Ames, Moffett Field)
• Talent. Due to its worldwide reputation, Silicon Valley attracts some of the smartest and most qualified engineers and marketing experts. One has to also mention here the huge amount of Indians and Chinese who build the engineering human resources backbone. Smart immigration politics have enabled Silicon Valley to build links to China and India like no other area. Europe cannot compete here at all.
• Attitude. These immigrants show a totally different risk-taking mentality, being used to working hard and to constantly trying new things. Something that I also experienced and highly appreciated was the great weather (practically always sunshine and blue sky all year around), which has a very positive mental effect on you: I think people are simply more positive thinking and willing to take more risk due to that mental state. I bet this could be proven as well if someone would investigate it.