is europe actually the shortcut to ecom succes

The speaker discusses the viability of Europe as a starting market for e-commerce businesses. While European markets, particularly Scandinavian and Northern European countries, offer advantages like better cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and lower spending power leading to higher profitability, these benefits come with significant limitations. Campaigns must be run natively in local languages and markets to be effective, which severely restricts scaling potential. The speaker challenges the notion that Europe represents a shortcut by examining the exit landscape: virtually all major D2C and CPG brands that have exited for over $100 million have had the United States as their dominant market, even if they operated globally. While the U.S. may have represented a shortcut opportunity five years ago during the EU dropshipping boom, the speaker argues this is no longer true. The broader e-commerce space has become saturated worldwide, making the space less favorable overall. Rather than pursuing European markets as a shortcut, entrepreneurs still need to develop and master all core e-commerce skills. The speaker emphasizes that the U.S. market is the inevitable end-game for successful brands, noting that even successful international entrepreneurs running six or seven-figure monthly revenues across other markets consistently express the desire to expand into the U.S. This suggests that entrepreneurs should skip the European detour and focus directly on the U.S. market from the start.