Europe - wake-up !
Writing with mixed feelings in Lausanne.
This year's START Summit is just around the corner and I hope to see as many of you as possible at Europe's largest early stage conference in two weeks' time. START is actually much more than a conference - Warren Buffet might call it the Woodstock of early stage capitalism. Why it is relevant? Most of the tech giants of today did not exist 25 years ago, just as the tech giants of 25 years from now are emerging today. So why isn't Europe home to Amazon, Google, UBER, AirBnB, etc., etc.?
I keep hearing that there is not enough growth capital in Europe. This is just about the biggest nonsense going around in our chatty industry. The more mature a company is and the more capital it can deploy productively, the more capital flows across countries and continents. Almost all the major US investors are present and investing in Europe.
What we need is patience and European champions who want to remain independent and go public. Fortunately, there are more and more of them. Staying the course can sometimes be tough, but it's worth it. I wrote about the "power of time" last year in the follow-up to START. In that post, I wrote that entrepreneurs are important agents of change. This is the absolute belief of b2venture and our b2venture angel community. Today I'm writing about something personal that has been bothering me for some time, because it seems to me that we in Europe are like frogs who don't realise that the pleasant water we're bathing in is about to boil.
Why Europe needs to wake up - now:
We have lost our way as a society in many areas and are dealing with things that are completely irrelevant compared to the really big challenges we face. A few examples: The vast majority of banks and public investors in Europe have a ban on investing in "defence startups". I know an entrepreneur who is building a system to protect countries by bringing down enemy drones. This startup could not open a bank account in any EU country for months. The new NATO venture capital fund cannot be a stand-alone solution. Not to mention the serious debate about whether there should be three different types of public toilet. Such discussions alienate "citizens" from "politics". We have to stop this, otherwise we will systematically push voters towards the AfD & Co. Why not follow Macron's idea of a European army, which he proposed to Merkel ... in 2018 (!)?
And Switzerland should make its contribution in the spirit of a give-and-take partnership. But we Swiss citizens must also wake up and stop pointing the finger at our neighbours with their rising public spending ratios, national debt, etc. While I am proud of the fact that we, the Swiss people, clearly rejected the "6 weeks holiday for all" popular initiative in 2012 with 2/3 of the vote, I was deeply shocked last Sunday evening that the Swiss electorate shamelessly took advantage of the next generation. I recommend that supporters of all parties familiarise themselves with the arguments of Andri Silberschmidt-Buhofer .
Back to START: The gap with the USA is growing exponentially . All the more reason to START building strong companies in Europe. Make this 500 million inhabitant region really strong. We stand for freedom and are now taking responsibility for it.
See you in St.Gallen in two weeks time!
Founder de Karcadan. | Miembro de START Fellowship | Fundador Danta Labs
8 个月I couldn’t agree more Florian Schweitzer. While I cannot talk about the EU geopolitical situation, I can talk about my own backyard here is LATAM. We, as Latin Americans have traditionally co-dependants of the US market. This has placed us in an awkward position geopolitically speaking because it has divided people between those supporting the dependence on the US and those who reject it. This has been specially common in startups in the region, either they operate locally (within the border of Latin America) or they rejected entirely and move to the US. I believe that there might be a better solution to strengthen the individuality of startups while encouraging international collaboration. I had an eye-opening experience when I travel to Switzerland for the first time with the START Fellowship. I saw a completely different vision of what a startup was and how it could grow. Different to our fellow Americans, I learned that the goal of the incubator was not as much as getting resources down to another market, but rather teaching how to grow and how to develop ways of improving the fellows local economies.
VC engaging with entrepreneurial minded people. We also help professionals to use institutional-grade investment fund and securitisation platforms: free your minds from admin. hassles - focus on what matters most.
8 个月"... we have lost our way as a society in many areas and are dealing with things that are completely irrelevant compared to the really big challenges we face..." and "...All the more reason to START building strong companies in Europe..." Am 100% with you Florian. We're happy to support any investor(s), such as VC, CVC, PE investors in Europe incl. Switzerland, with a tried-and-tested concept, how to set-up a Luxemburg domiciled on-chain fund within 8 days with breathtaking efficiency gains. In Florian Schweitzer words "Make this 500 million inhabitant region really strong...
CEO at MoreThanDigital | Keynote Speaker | Board Member | Futurist | Government & Economic Policy Advisor | Published Digital Transformation Expert | Change Management Author | A. Professor
8 个月Florian Schweitzer we were always too big for all the "I want a simple SaaS that is profitable" investors in Europe and will also go to the USA. Realized too late that the mindset here is about minimizing the input (so valuation and money invested) rather than maximizing on the potential and Output.
?What we need is patience and European champions who want to remain independent and go public. Fortunately, there are more and more of them.“ ??!!
AI for weather-dependent energy trading, Co-founder @ jua.ai
8 个月Form my perspective as an entrepreneur, you are correct in saying that I can raise from foreign investors and I will. As the caring citizen you try to project yourself to be, the argument to transfer a big part of the value I create abroad makes not sense, even more so in geopolitically relevant technologies. I think you need to review your logic.