A European tech renaissance

Earlier this month, the founders of some of Europe’s largest tech unicorns, including DeepL, Stripe, Wise, and Wolt, signed an open letter calling for a “tech renaissance.” It cites that, while the multitude of countries and cultures across the EU gives European tech an unfair advantage, it also works against it by creating fragmentation.?

Their vision to unify Europe’s startup ecosystem is to create a single pan-European entity dubbed ‘EU Inc’ that would standardise legal and regulatory compliance and promote collaboration and innovation across the bloc. Some of the key tasks of the new entity would include:

• Standardising investment processes to enable genuine pan-European investments.
• Establishing a unified employee stock options program to share startup success more widely.
• Simplifying cross-border operations, such as employment and capital flows.
• Fully digitising the incorporation process, reducing it to just a few hours – entirely in English and online.

This comes fast on the heels of Mario Draghi’s Innovation Report which called on the EU to close its innovation gap or face consequences. The leaders behind the petition aim to get as many signatories as possible before December 1, when the new EU commissioners begin working on their agenda for the coming years.?

As the movement builds momentum, investors like Index, Atomico, Sequoia, Lightspeed, HV, SpeedInvest, and people like Paul Graham, Niklas Zennstroem, and Patrick Collision have also signed the letter.

Of course, motivation is one thing, but what the EU will need most to fuel a tech renaissance is funding. Dealroom and Dealflow.eu recently conducted a research project into EU funding of startups. The full report is set to be available for download this December. Read about the key findings in this piece by Andrii Degeler. ??

?? EU funding powers 10% of European startup ecosystem, study finds

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