
The richest tech entrepreneurs in Europe - psycho
http://www.whiteboardmag.com/top-10-richest-tech-entrepreneurs-in-europe/
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pg
Interesting that these people only represent a single recent, original
European startup: Skype. The rest of the companies are either old (SAP), not
in Europe (Sun), or localized variants of things invented elsewhere (the ISPs,
the Samwers). And even Skype has been acquired.

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CookWithMe
I was interested to see what it's like for the US, so I did go through the
forbes list [1]:

1\. Bill Gates

2\. Larry Ellison

3\. Jeff Bezos

4\. Sergey Brin

5\. Larry Page

6\. Steve Ballmer

7\. Paul Allen

8\. Michael Dell

9\. Laurenne Powell Jobs (widow of Steve Jobs)

10\. Mark Zuckerberg

If the definition of old is "younger than 20 years", this represents 3
startups (Amazon, Google, Facebook). If the definition is "younger than
Skype", then only Facebook is left.

[1] <http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400>

[edit: formatting]

~~~
pg
If you want to compare, you should make the cutoff be based on net worth, not
simply take the top 10. Then you also get eBay, Tesla/SpaceX, Salesforce,
LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Square/Twitter among others.

~~~
CookWithMe
Sorry, re-reading my post it was misleading because I didn't post my
intention: I did not want to show that Europe is coming up with successful
start-ups at any rate comparable to the US, SV obviously wins by a huge
margin.

I was more interested if younger successful founders in the US faster take-
over older founders. And they don't. A large part of the wealth of the older
founders has been acquired past-IPO.

The conclusion (for me) is that to make it into the top 10 (whether US or
Europe) and stay there, you gotta grow a company successfully for many years,
like Microsoft, Oracle or Apple did in the US and SAP did in Europe.

~~~
pg
Yes, the thing that always strikes me about the Forbes 400 is how old so many
of the people are. Clearly the normal way to end up super rich is to have
something that grows fairly rapidly, and then give it a long time to grow.

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ojbyrne
Is Richard Branson too poor, or England not included in Europe?

~~~
rpm4321
I think he would more than qualify on net worth, but I'm not sure that he
should be classified as a tech entrepreneur compared to the other people on
the list. He made his original fortune in music, and Virgin Mobile is really
just him licensing the Virgin brand to a bunch of independent pre-paid
carriers. Also, I wouldn't classify an airline as high tech, and Virgin
Galactic isn't really up and running yet.

Maybe that's not fair, though, considering Virgin Galactic really did seem to
help kick start the privatization of space, at least in terms of popular press
coverage.

~~~
ojbyrne
Ah, I skipped right over "tech." Though I feel now that's kind of justified. A
few these people started ISPs, admittedly those are about technology, but just
barely. The technology was very rapidly commoditized, and then it became about
business. I don't see any significant difference between that and Virgin
Mobile.

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mathewgj
Two obvious omissions from this list are Lars Dalgaard (SuccessFactors) and
Mike Lynch (Autonomy).

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Mahn
Well, that's depressing.

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arbuge
Why is Andy Bechtolstein on this list?

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zaqcdebgr
I agree. Andy lives here and has for all of his career.

On another note - he is a really great guy and has zero ego for someone that
is so smart.

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charleshaanel
The challenge in Europe begins on the university level. As an American who
went to grad school in Europe (a technical university) - it was interesting to
compare the differences.

It begins with the fact that at European universities, there's no real support
for encouraging student entrepreneurship. In Sweden for example, they are
making some headway with the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship and other
inititiatives (side bar: here's a great lecture with Niklas Zennström, off
Skype and Andreas Ehn, former CTO of Spotify -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R_E4GYfZK4>)

There's a long way to go though!

Second is the cultural bias. If you are European (or have European friends)
you will know that failure it treated quite differently in Europe vis-a-vis
the USA.

In the USA, should you try a venture and fail, people say "well at least you
tried!".

Or, you write about it in your grad school applications and get in. Then you
have a fresh start.

Alternatively, you have a CV building experience. Often times, companies will
look at your entrepreneurial zest favorably. Or, you can specifically apply to
other startups who want people with startup experience.

Now, shall we compare that to the European experience?

European companies where you get the "evil eye" - at best you are looked upon
with suspicion. At worst, you don't even get considered.

The other issue is that many private universities in the USA are funded by
wealthy business alumni. So there remains a strong relationship between
industry and academia. The least of this is endowment money making its way to
top VC's.

The last point is about cultural bias towards profit-seeking. In the USA, many
socially conscious entrepreneurs see business and profits as a way not only to
get wealthy, but to make the world a better place - create jobs, fund
nonprofits, etc. The unhealthy notion that still exists in Europe (business
owners are greedy capitalists that need to be bled dry), just won't work.

The best engineers and business dev/sales talent in Europe still seek out
working for established companies. There's no "peer push" towards starting
your own company. The elusive job security (which is quickly fading) is what
people seek out.

Real entrepreneurs see owning a business as the secure option. Job employment
and placing your future in someone else's hands seems insanely risky to us.

Family and friends deride the European entrepreneur who has this same
mentality. This can affect relationships with loved ones and the like. Hell,
even getting a mortgage or other normal activities is harder as a entrepreneur
in Europe.

Of course, there's probably some hidden opportunity in these challenges as
well. If anyone can think of any, I'd be curious to hear them.

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kinble32
Gotta love the Samwer brothers...copy and make money :)

~~~
zalew
yeah, like everybody should wait until a US company decides to expand to
European countries and corners the market.

