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I’ve had a chat with David earlier today about how odd it is that all the web startups happen to be in the US. We both agreed that it’s mostly due to the fact that we europeans like to play it safe and we feel like we don’t have much to loose or win, because in the worst case will be just caught by the social security net. David did a great post about this issue.

Cultural differences are quite interesting. For example so often companies will put you in a ‘Well, now you are stuck with us’-situation here in Germany. When you sign for a phone plan in the US, it’s not big deal to exchange the phone for another one within a reasonable amount of time. Here in Germany they would simply laugh at you for even trying to exchange it. Once you signed up for something there is no way back, once you’ve bought something it’s so much harder to return it, compared to the US.

The more I think about those issues, the more I realise how important is to make your customers feel that they are not stuck with you. They should stay with you, because they want to, not because they have to. Feedburner seems to be doing a doing a fantastic job at that.