
How The EU Lets Startups Slip Through Its Fingers - dwynings
http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2010/01/06/outsourcing-entrepreneurs-how-the-eu-lets-startups-slip-through-its-fingers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29
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bjelkeman-again
The interesting thing with Y-Combinator is that it is by techies and
entrepreneurs for techies and entrepreneurs. My experience in the European
funding market is that there are not enough techies and entrepreneurs that
have made good money, and therefor don't/can't invest themselves.

The funds in the UK and Sweden (where I have direct experience, as well as San
Francisco) are handled by people who are one step away from
entrepreneurship/tech stuff, which IMO means that the people handling the
startup funds don't connect as well with the entrepreneurs.

In Stockholm, Sweden, we are seeing a lot more activity in the last couple of
years, with investors/entrepreneurship support like STING
<[http://www.stockholminnovation.com/>](http://www.stockholminnovation.com/>);
and Venture Cup <[http://www.venturecup.se/>](http://www.venturecup.se/>), but
it is nothing like in California, or even Massachusetts.

The investors in Sweden are also too small to be able to handle investments at
the scale the US investors do. And the investment market is fragmented over
several European geographical locations. UK investors don't have good
representation in Stockholm, for example.

It is harder for entrepreneurs to move to a different location in the EU where
the suitable money is, than it is in the US. Y-Combinator used to make
everyone come over to Cambridge/Boston for a while when working on the startup
(maybe they still do). This is harder in Stockholm, than in Cambridge, Mass.,
where the cultural barriers for someone from say Portugal or Ireland, are
higher. There seem to be no investment movement between the UK/Scandinavian
market and Germany for example.

Furthermore, there are less available "exits" in European market, as most
successful "exits" in the IT industry happens in the US. Which again makes
things harder.

It is clear to me that the talent in the UK/Swedish market is there, but the
infrastructure around the investments and the cultural barriers are higher,
which makes it harder.

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teralaser
"To put this into better context, the total current population of Europe and
the United States is estimated to be 831m and 308m respectively." ? Say what ?
EU is maybe 450-500m - you can't accuse the EU of doing bad things in
countries outside the EU.

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bjelkeman-again
But does he really accuse the EU of anything? As far as I can tell he is
talking about "European regions", which isn't limited to the EU. But I wonder
whether that 831m is a typo though, as Wikipedia says 731m.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe>

But comparing Europe to the US, is fairly arbitrary, why not compare it to
North America?

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ohashi
I think we are starting to see more in the area of seed funding. Just 2 days
ago I was meeting with one of the people starting
<http://www.startupbootcamp.dk> a seed fund in Denmark, seemed very much
modeled at YC/TechStars model. There is definitely demand, and people are
starting to pick up on it. One of the biggest challenges is one of critical
mass. There is small communities at least in my region here, but nothing big
enough to attract others elsewhere or attract me somewhere else (other then
back to US).

