Here is a simple illustration of the problem: Say you are choosing between a Norwegian Facebook and an American. You have heard the Norwegian one is technically better, but the whole user interface is in Norwegian.
In contrast you got an American Facebook, which you have heard is worse, but which has American English user interface.
Which one would you have chosen?
The American one of course. "The best," doesn't win. What wins is what fits with your language and culture.
There reverse is not true in Europe. A better American movie, book or website wins over a native language service because a lot of us are already fluent in English. We can pick both. Thus European media content face a much higher barrier to success than American content.
For this simple reason American completely dominates in the media world, whether it is movies, books or the internet while Europe is still very competitive in the making of physical products. German cars are well known for their quality.
Swedes make great furniture and household appliances (IKEA and Electrolux). Norway is world leaders in offshore equipment, instruments and services.
Swedish Spotify and Skype are a bit of outliers, and have many obvious problems. Skype relied on a very creative scheme of hiring programmers in the Baltics and getting funding in London. That required dealing with 3 different countries, with 3 different languages, cultures and legal systems. The average American startup never have to deal with that kind of complexity.
Spotify struggles with hiring. Sweden is not very big and pulling talent from a population of only 10 million people is not easy compared to pulling talent from 330 million people.
Spotify has had to setup offices in the US to get enough talent. That is business which could have existed in Sweden but which cannot exist because of the tiny size of Sweden.
Contrast that with something like Silicon Valley. It was been able to grow very large, not only attracting talent from all over the US but also money. This works because relocating in the US is easy. You deal with very similar culture, language and legal framework.
Reloacating in Europe is a much more complex choice. I know because I have lived abroad and contemplating relocating. Each time I think about it, it kind of gives me headeache.
I have thought about moving to Spain many times, but the practicalities of it is daunting. I have to learn Spanish and so does my kids. Also we don't really know how well it would work. Moving the whole family to another country and realizing we hate it, is a real risk.
Ironically it would be far less risky for me to move to the US, despite it being half-way around the world, because we all speak English and I already know the culture quite well. I would know what I am going to. I know most of the pros and cons.
This applies to America in a wider sense. Amazing talent all over the world are going to go to the US first because it represents low risk. People know American culture to some extent already from movies, TV, books etc. Swedish or Norwegian culture will be alien to a lot of people. It will be a much riskier bet.
If you are a brilliant kid from India who already speak fluent English, where are you going to go? To Sweden to work for Spotify? Unless you have some peculiar obsession with Nordic cultures, you are probably going to make a pass.
I have worked with lots of foreigners in Norway and it is pretty random how they end up here. Maybe they got to know some Norwegians on a vacation. Maybe they got hired by a Norwegian company for an office abroad and later decided to transfer to Norway. It is extremely rare to find people who just decided: I am going to go to Norway and find a job.
That is somewhat changing in the latter years. When hiring I have talked to increasing number of Indians, who have learned about Norway and who want to come here because of a great culture for work-life balance combined with flat-power structures and the ability to have a real say in how products are developed and designed. But this is a late developement. We are decades behind the US in terms of attracting talent from places like China and India.
