David asks “Where are the European startups?”. I disagree with his conclusions, but combined with my own “Where are the Boston startups?”, I’ve come up with the following maxim:

The number of interesting startups in a region is inversely proportional to its distance from the Bay Area/Silicon Valley.

And like I said in David’s comments I think this has to do with infrastructure. Both in terms of cheap and easy hardware, cheap and easy hosting, startup appropriate real estate, and the fuzzier infrastructures of engaged peers, large pool of trained talent, and cultural validation.