Comment by marcus_holmes

I bumped into this when using the YC cofounder finder a few years ago.

In Australia we share the Poms' attitude to failure and success, and have refined it into "Tall Poppy Syndrome". In Australia, it is bad form to boast of your successes too much. You need to have some humility, some awareness of luck and privilege, give credit to others, and don't come over too egotistical, to succeed here.

Obviously in the USA the opposite is true; any failure must be explained away, talk about as much success as possible, and claim all the credit for yourself.

It resulted in a few very strange conversations. I thought most of the US potential co-founders I met were arrogant, boastful, dickheads [0]. I didn't trust that any of their claimed successes were real, I didn't believe they'd done half the things they said they'd done, and I didn't want to work with them. And I'm sure they thought I was a complete loser, incompetent and unable to succeed at anything I tried.

I occasionally hear US VCs and investors complaining about this when they visit Straya; that people here don't celebrate our success, and we're not ambitious enough. I see this as a culture gap that they're not navigating successfully.

As has been said about the US/British relationship; "two countries divided by a common language"

[0] apologies if you were one of them. I'm sure you're not really!