Europe’s scaleup scene is closing the global gap

In 2017, more than 1,200 new scaleups were established in Europe, an increase by 28% from 2016. This impressive figure was presented earlier this year in the Tech Scaleup Europe 2018  report by SEP Monitor/Mind the Bridge. Since the first edition of this report was published, we see continuous and sustainable growth of the scaleup base, which is reassuring.

But some results are equally disconcerting: There’s still a substantial north-south gradient in Europe! With an average growth rate of about 30%, the UK, France, Germany and Sweden contribute to almost 70% of Europe’s scaleup growth in absolute terms. Southern Europe lags behind, with a lower growth rate of only 16%.

Also the international comparison gives room for improvement. Looking once more at the SEP Monitor report, in terms of number of scaleups, the Silicon Valley is worth, alone, a little more than the entire European continent, while in terms of capital raised it accounts for almost 3 times the entire amount raised by all European scaleups. Considering all the United States as a whole, scaleups there have raised $657.5B since inception, 8 times more than the $83.2B raised by their European counterparts. Even 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.

But the European glass is rather half full than half empty! Our ecosystemsare increasingly cooperating, also across borders, and the support systems for scaleups unfold their effect. And we see entrepreneurs bringing fantastic innovations to the market that have huge potential to succeed internationally!

Last week, 10 potential deep tech unicornsreceived awards at the finals of our own scaleup competition – the EIT Digital Challenge. This year, the quality of competition entries was so high, that our juries had a very hard time selecting their winners. But now we’re very excited to welcome them into our Accelerator, helping them to grow internationally and closing the global scaleup gap even further.