Last week I was having a conversation with some local college folks who were setting up our own entrepreneurial courses. I pointed out that this is really a new area.
"No it's not," they assured me. In fact, we're behind the curve.
They missed my point. Yep, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and every other big college has had an entrepreneurial track for some time now. The problem is that there's no feedback loop in place to tell if they're actually doing any good or to determine what needs adjustment in the material or presentation. Yes, the knowledge is out there. It's the performance that's never been part of the equation. Hell, I can teach you about damn near anything, and do a great job of it, as long as there's no measurement on the value of the education you're receiving. Once you start measuring traction, however, it's a different story. And startups are about nothing if not traction. If you don't have traction, you don't have a startup, you have a hobby.
I feel the same way about these accelerators, and the hundreds more around the world. Good luck to them, and I'll do anything I can help, but I am doubtful these will amount to much without some tight feedback loops and control systems in place. Perhaps a good, open, world-wide system of sharing lessons learned. We have a long, long way to go.
Are there any recent European tech startups that deserve to be called a big success?
Spotify is on my list. Maybe Soundcloud. Some of the Rocket Internet businesses(1) maybe, but is Zalando really a tech business? Was Zappos ever one?
I bet I'm forgetting one or two more though. Either way, it's not going to be very impressive.
I overheard someone say a while ago that the hottest startups in the Netherlands are all incubators.
[1] Rocket Internet is a company that starts startups that copy the concept of successful USA-targeting companies and does the same in Germany, then Europe. Zalando is a Zappos ripoff, there's also Paymill (Stripe), and a whole bunch more.
Copenhagen Suborbitals is my favorite recent successful European tech endeavor, but it's organized as a nonprofit rather than a startup. Kind of interesting to think about when to use that model versus the startup model; I don't have solid conclusions on that.
A few others: Unity (the game engine company, Denmark) was founded in 2004 and got big around 2008-09. Not sure if that counts as recent enough. Flattr (Sweden) is kind of niche-popular. One of the better attempts at micropatronage, I think, though I'm not sure I'd call it a big success.
If you count cloud infrastructure, OVH (France) is growing massively.
If you count games, Mojang (Sweden) and Rovio (Finland) are printing cash.
Oh, plenty more that deserve a mention. Spotify and SoundCloud, sure, but also other music startups like Songkick (YC) and Deezer. On the gaming side, there's Rovio, King, Supercell, Plarium, Wooga, Nordeus, ZeptoLab, Game Insight and plenty more that are kicking ass and taking names.
Others with loads of potential to become big hits include Huddle, TransferWise, 6Wunderkinder, Geckoboard, Jolla, EyeEm, Klarna, Narrative, Magine, TradeShift, HouseTrip, Trademob, Withings, Blablacar, Outbrain, SwiftKey, Hailo, Holvi, Wrapp, Busuu, Babelverse, Trustev and so on. Then there's a whole mobile payment revolution going in Europe (where Square isn't available) with companies like SumUp, iZettle, Payleven and others growing rapidly.
I could go on and on, but there's a few reasons I started Tech.eu and one of them is precisely to highlight the tech innovation that's happening across Europe. :)
I don't know about the rest of Europe, but these have come out of Sweden (many have since relocated): Klarna, Rebtel, Mojang, King, Wrapp, Soundcloud, iZettle, Tictail, Spotify, Skype. Of course, depending on your definition for "big success". For a small country they sure are, and most countries in Europe are pretty small. I doubt we'll see a Google or Facebook come out of Europe, if just because of the lack of engineers willing to relocate to another country within the EU for such a job. There is no country in Europe which can hire 50,000 qualified people like Google, except for maybe Germany.
It's the typical european approach: Spread your funds everywhere and evenly until not enough money is left to create something with enough punch to make a difference.
You can observe this approach in many places:
- Research. (Take a look at the recent billion euro graphene project. A billion is not so much if you divide it between 140 universities and spend it over 10 years)
- Education. (What was the name of the really good German university again?)
- Industrial clusters. (The US has a place for airplanes, one or two places for semiconductors, a few places for cars. What about Europe)
"No it's not," they assured me. In fact, we're behind the curve.
They missed my point. Yep, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and every other big college has had an entrepreneurial track for some time now. The problem is that there's no feedback loop in place to tell if they're actually doing any good or to determine what needs adjustment in the material or presentation. Yes, the knowledge is out there. It's the performance that's never been part of the equation. Hell, I can teach you about damn near anything, and do a great job of it, as long as there's no measurement on the value of the education you're receiving. Once you start measuring traction, however, it's a different story. And startups are about nothing if not traction. If you don't have traction, you don't have a startup, you have a hobby.
I feel the same way about these accelerators, and the hundreds more around the world. Good luck to them, and I'll do anything I can help, but I am doubtful these will amount to much without some tight feedback loops and control systems in place. Perhaps a good, open, world-wide system of sharing lessons learned. We have a long, long way to go.