Introduction
Let me first share some good news. Scaleup Europe is growing. Finally.
In 2017, more than 1,200 scaleups were born in Europe and $22B of new capital was invested into scaleups. Of which, $2.8B was raised through ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings), where Europe seems to have a competitive advantage over the United States.
This is a substantial change of pace over the previous years: average annual gures for 2014-2016 period were 864 new scaleups and $13.7B investments per year. It looks Scaleup Europe got promoted to a new league. But, there is a but.
Europe is not yet playing in the Premier League. This growth is not enough to close the gap with other ecosystems, that remains huge. First and foremost the United States. They have 4 times more scaleups than Europe. Beyond that, the capital raised by US scaleups is 8 times larger. In other words, the US are better equipped to produce more tech giants and fuel them with capital.
If we narrow the analysis to single ecosystems, there is none in Europe that can rival with Silicon Valley and Israel. The Silicon Valley is worth, alone, in terms of number of scaleups, a little more than the entire European continent. Not only that, but in terms of capital raised, it accounts for almost 3 times the entire amount raised by all European scaleups. Israel scores better than all European ecosystems – apart from the UK – per number of scaleups and is second only to Germany and the UK per capital raised. We’ve measured good progress, but there is still a lot of work ahead of us.
We know that the innovation is not a plant that gives you harvest quickly. You have to continuously seed and work to bear fruits. And we are seeing the initial European crops.
More to come!
Brussels, July 2018
By Alberto Onetti Chairman, Mind the Bridge
