What is “Startup Europe comes to Silicon Valley”?

Inspired by SVC2UK (Silicon Valley Comes to United Kingdom) we are, under the Startup Europe initiative, bringing together EU policy makers (commissioners, prime ministers), the best of the new EU Scaleups and corporations to meet Silicon Valley stakeholders

A European Innovation Day followed by a week of meetings provides an opportunity to stimulate networking and business opportunities, as well as improve the understanding in Silicon Valley of the increasingly dynamic European startup ecosystem.

The goal is to create an honest and direct policy and business dialogue between both sides of the Atlantic. This will certainly benefit startups in both continents to be able to scale up beyond their borders and help create economically impactful and long lasting ecosystems where innovation can flourish.

Silicon Valley has the opportunity to tap into a significant EU market and benefit from the new generation of EU startups that can have a disruptive impact on many areas of the economy and society.

The Startup Europe Comes to Silicon Valley week is just over.

Here you can get a sense of what happened and how participants perceived the mix of meetings, presentations, workshops, keynotes … and fun.

How did it go?
Let’s do the numbers:

SCALEUPS at Startup Europe Comes to Silicon Valley:

• 14 EU Scaleups selected among several hundreds, with the support of a dozen organizations focused on bridging EU and Silicon Valley
• Scaleups are established companies experiencing hyper-growth (needed to have had 10+ employees by end of 2011, growing 20%+ YOY in revenue/employees ever since)
• Scaleups are from 10 different EU countries and cumulatively account for 1,000+ employees and 60M Euros revenue

EUROPEAN INNOVATION DAY (first day of “Startup Europe Comes to Silicon Valley“)

• 500+ attendees, 62 speakers, demo area with 33 companies showcased

STRATEGIC ACTIVITIES during the “Startup Europe Comes to Silicon Valley”:

• Scaleup Summit: dedicated roundtables on Growth, Talent, Legal, Funding, M&A, Policy, Communication with the participation of 32 experts on such topics
• Keynotes / Workshops with: Tim Draper, the President of Estonia, Google for Entrepreneurs, Andresseen Horowitz, Apple
• involvement of 27 partners

Indeed, it’s been the first of this kind.
Considering the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the companies participating, it’s probably about time to start considering version 2 of the…

..Startup Europe Comes to Silicon Valley. Stay tuned on www.sec2sv.com