Your welcome. Some additional info. Most all of this applies to Germany, and most to most EU countries to some extent.

All regular jobs (including all white collar jobs) are union (guild) and collectively bargained. So startups cannot pay people shit wages with a promise of stock later.

Austrian firms must also all provide full medical benefits, severance pay, 5 weeks of vacation and virtually unlimited sick pay, etc. from day 1. So you cannot make a profit as a startup while your employees are hoping for a payout that never comes while forgoing going to the dentist or doctor because they don't have insurance.

Austria has incredibly good social benefits. Those are paid for by taxes. What Austria discourages is startups who make a couple of people VERY wealthy, while the employees are barely scraping by.

As a long time owner, I've done well for myself. But my employees (all union, as with most every job in Austria) have also all done well. This makes for a very nice work climate instead of a "boss vs. worker" mentality.

Circling back to your question...Certainly the US "unicorns" like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, PayPal, Google, etc. could have made it. The difference is that instead of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk each having $200 billion, they would have $10 billion, and the other $570 billion would be divided up amongst Amazon, Microsoft, Paypal and Tesla employees, and there would probably be multiple competitors to each of them.

I'm old enough to remember how Netscape got shafted by MS, and that Internet Explorer sucked for 5-7 years afterwards because there was no decent competitors.

I don't think it was "delusion." I think it was just greed and understanding that the US system allows massive speculation and rewards speculators, very often even if their idea goes bust.