The CEO of Europe’s most valuable tech startup has criticised the mentality of European startups saying they are not working hard enough to achieve success and value a work-life balance too highly.

The criticism from Revolut co-founder Nik Storonsky follows comments made last week by the co-founders of payment giant Stripe, who made a plea for capital markets, regulatory, and labour reform across Europe, saying the continent was facing an “existential” crisis.

Europe’s startup ecosystem lags behind the US in terms of investment, access to capital and talent.

For example, in 2023 European startups raised less than half the funding, $52bn of those in the US, $138bn.

Speaking on a podcast with Henrique Dubugras, founder and chairman of fintech Brex, Storonsky was questioned about the lack of successful startups and tech firms emanating from Europe compared to the US and China.

Storonsky said:

“I think it is a cultural thing. People are more kind of, you know, protected, entitled, and they value kind of work-life balance much more compared to US or China.

“As a result, you just don’t have people working hard enough to achieve success.”

Allied to that, Storonsky said that Europe was behind the US in terms of wealth but Europeans had better job security due to regulations which made it “harder to build a large company”.

Stroronsky, who is Russian-born, also said Europe’s fragmented geography and fragmented regulatory regime, meaning that startups had to launch country-by-country, unlike in the US, was also a hindrance.

However, the CEO pointed out that, in terms of recruitment, there was still talent in Europe at the elite level to help build successful startups.

Last year, Nicolai Tangen, the boss of Norway’s $1.6tn Norges Bank Investment Management (The Petroleum fund), said:

“Europe is less hard-working, less ambitious, more regulated, and more risk-averse than the US, with the gap between the two continents only getting wider.”

In August last year, Revolut was valued at $45 billion, following an employee secondary share sale, making it Europe’s most valuable startup.