Ask HN: is it harder for startups originating in smaller countries to succeed?

Hey folks.

I've been wondering. Is it harder for startups that originate from smaller countries to succeed?

My argument towards this is that when first pushing a product to the market you usually don't have a huge marketing budget and have to rely on guerilla marketing or local connections, like local press, events or people you know.

If you live in a big (or big-ish) country, like USA, UK or even Poland, you probably have connections here and there that formed over time. And you can leverage those.

For example if you get into local press for Poland - your total population (max reach) is around 43 mil. people. Even if the sharing of the news stop around the borders (due to language barrier) - that's still a pretty impressive potential user base.

Try that in some small country, (e.g. Baltic states) - you get your max reach capped at around 3-4 mil. people.

And if you live in an English speaking country - you don't even have the language barrier, so something that guardian.co.uk features can easily move on to USA, Australia and eventually - the whole world.

So... Do you agree with my point? If not - why? If so - any ideas what can be done to change this?

Cheers!