There is an important difference between European and American appetites, in addition to those for fast foods: risk taking. “Investments in Start-Ups Pick Up Pace,” reports the New York Times after surveying the high-tech financing scene here in America. “Europe Struggles to Foster a Startup Culture,” reports the Wall Street Journal. It seems that in contrast with “multiple rounds of fund-raising [in the U.S.] in months, rather than years,” Europeans are “valuing prudence … and leisure time over flamboyant risk-taking.”

“Any time you’re raising over $8-12 million, you need to leave Europe,” says Peter Smith, who had to go to the West Coast to raise $30 million for his Blockchain, a bitcoin company that now processes transactions valued at $2 billion per month. Some observers put the top amount that European investors will risk on a startup at closer to $5 million, more than a little short of the $100 million billionaire investor-activist Carl Icahn just bet on ride-sharing Lyft’s ability to compete successfully with the much larger Uber. This unavailability of risk-taking capital was the loudest of the complaints I heard from fledgling German entrepreneurs at a meeting in Berlin.