Bird is leaving the Netherlands, blaming “bad climate for tech”

Dutch tech company Bird is leaving the Netherlands, with founder Robert Vis blaming “over-regulation and a bad climate for tech companies.”

The company was founded as MessageBird in Amsterdam in 2011 but is now opting for “strategic hubs” in New York, Singapore, Dubai, Lithuania, Istanbul, and Thailand, which will be the company’s “retreat centre.”

AI-driven message service Bird, valued at €3.6 billion, is one of the most successful Dutch “unicorns” – a privately held startup company with a value of over $1 billion.

“I have to secure Bird’s future and keep the company competitive,” Vis told the Parool in an interview. “And that is unbelievably difficult to do in a country like the Netherlands.”

Bird had a workforce of 600 in Amsterdam at its height but cut 240 jobs in 2022. Some 40 jobs will be retained at the local office once the transformation has been completed.

The company’s headquarters will remain technically in the Netherlands, but Vis said he did not rule out moving it at a later date.

“I cannot reward our people like our competitors can,” he told the Parool. “Companies like Salesforce, Twilio, or other tech firms like Google and Facebook can let staff benefit from tax-friendly options so they can profit from the growth later. In the Netherlands, that is barely possible. So tech talent is not coming.”

Redundancy regulations are also unsuited to the tech industry, he said. “We pay our staff a lot, between €90,000 and €120,000 a year depending on where they are,” he said. “And that is partly due to the risk that they may have to change jobs.

“In the US, people in tech work 10, 12 hours a day, seven days a week and are rewarded for it. People can lose their job overnight but find a new one quickly as well. But that goes against the Dutch and European working culture.”

Vis has also praised Elon Musk’s email telling all federal employees that they should send an email outlining “what they got done last week” or face being made redundant.

“We should mandate this for European government employees. Bureaucracy and regulations are killing Europe,” Vis said on social media.