The State of European Tech 2015 Magazine

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SLUSH & ATOMICO THE STATE OF EUROPEAN TECH

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#WHATSNEXT4EUTECH SLUSH & ATOMICONOVEMBER 2015 THE STATE OF EUROPEAN TECH
I. Executive Summary
II. Who We Are
III. Data Partners & Survey
IV. Europe
V. Entrepreneurial Mindset
VI. Tech Community
VII. Talent
VIII. Capital Flows
IX. Success Stories
X. The Future
XI. Final Thoughts
I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
CONTENT
Like successful companies, successful ecosystems go
through distinct stages. Having conducted one of the most
comprehensive studies ever undertaken into European
tech, it is clear to us that 2015 has been a breakthrough
year in which our major hubs have gone to a new level.
5 years ago, legitimate questions were being asked about
whether, in the words of The Economist, “Europe’s tech
industries will become big enough to do the things that
its entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and policymakers
dream of”. Could Europe give birth to significant numbers
of companies with real scale? Could it produce enough
qualified graduates, and overcome the cultural barriers to
entrepreneurship? Could it attract significant levels of VC
funding - and would the IPOs ever come?
AS THIS STUDY SHOWS, EUROPE HAS CONCLUSIVELY
ANSWERED THESE QUESTIONS, WITH 2015 ON TRACK TO
BLOW PAST A SERIES OF REMARKABLE MILESTONES:
• 10 European software companies reaching billion-dollar valua-
tions (making a total of 35 since 2003)
• $10B invested by VCs
• Over 5000 active angel investors
• 1.6m developers
• 25,000 tech meetups across Europe
• ...and over 100 tech IPOs in the last five years
Achievement unlocked. But not mission accomplished.
The next stage will bring its own challenges for a Euro-
pean tech ecosystem now in its prime. Having proven our
ability to create a series of billion-dollar companies, how
do we produce companies in the tens or hundreds of bil-
lions? How do we bridge what remains a significant late
stage funding gap? How do we ensure investors are keep-
ing pace with the scale of ambition and technical expertise
in frontier technologies like AI, as well as backing proven
business models? How do we unlock more of our potential
by building closer links between our disparate hubs, and
overcoming an alarming gender imbalance by attracting
more women to become the engineers, entrepreneurs and
investors of tomorrow? And, by addressing these challeng-
es, can Europe create an ecosystem self-sustaining and
robust enough to weather any future economic shocks?
As the data demonstrates, 2015 is a significant tipping
point for a European ecosystem that feels very different
to that of 2010. Our collective challenge is to ensure that
we are saying the same about 2020 in another five years’
time. By setting out where we are today in an unprece-
dented level of detail, we hope this study also helps to
show the way to what’s next.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED.
BUT NOT MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
RIKU MÄKELÄ
CEO
Slush
NIKLAS ZENNSTRÖM
Founder & CEO
Atomico

4 5
II. WHO WE ARE III. DATA PARTNERS
THE SURVEY
Atomico is an international investment firm, focused on helping the
world’s most disruptive technology companies scale and become
global leaders. Founded in 2006 by Niklas Zennström, a co-found-
er of Skype, Atomico has made over 50 investments across four
continents.
Slush is a not-for-profit technology and startup event, organized
annually in Finland, Japan and China. In 2015, the Slush event in
Helsinki drew together 15,000 entrepreneurs, investors and jour-
nalists from close to 100 countries. The mission of Slush is to en-
courage the next generation of brilliant minds to become entrepre-
neurs, and to catalyze tech communities across the globe.
CrunchBase is the leading platform used by millions of entrepreneurs,
investors, and analysts looking to discover innovative companies and
the people behind them. Founded in 2007 by Mike Arrington, it began
as a simple database to track startups covered on TechCrunch. Today,
CrunchBase delivers market insights to millions of users and businesses
around the world. The CrunchBase Dataset is constantly expanding
through contributions from its community of users, investment firms,
and network of global partners. CrunchBase accelerates innovation by
bringing together data on companies and the people behind them. For
more information, please visit www.crunchbase.com.
Meetup is a global network of local communities, built by ordinary
people around the things they care about the most. Using the Meetup
app or website, you can find people in your town who are into the same
things you are, and build a real community around that interest. There
are currently 24 million members in over 200,000 Meetups in over
180 countries. Meetup believes that people can change their personal
world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are
powerful enough to make a difference.
Glassdoor is the most transparent jobs and recruiting marketplace that
is changing how people search for jobs and how companies recruit top
talent. Glassdoor combines free and anonymous reviews, ratings and
salary content with job listings to help job seekers find the best jobs
and address critical questions that come up during the job search,
application, interview and negotiation phases of employment. For
employers, Glassdoor offers recruiting and employer branding solutions
to help attract high-quality candidates at a fraction of the cost of other
channels. Glassdoor, which has over 10m reviews, salaries and other
types of content across more than 190 countries, operates one of the
most popular job apps on iOS and Android. The company launched in
2008 and has raised approximately $160 million from Google Capital,
Tiger Global, Benchmark, Battery Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, DAG
Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, and others.
Stack Overflow is one of the smartest and most helpful corners of the
Internet. It’s the place where millions of developers go to learn, share
their knowledge, and advance their careers. With nearly 30 million
monthly visitors and 10.2 million programming questions, Stack Overflow
has unparalleled insights into how developers think, what matters to
them and what gets them excited. Stack Overflow’s Developer Insights
team works with employers around the world to help them understand
regional and localised distribution of technical talent and provides
consultancy services around attracting and engaging with programmers.
4
When it comes to the state of European tech, facts and figures can only get
you so far. They can help you identify how much is being raised and where the
investments are going but they cannot help you analyse how people are feel-
ing, how confident they are and whether their mindsets have changed. These
are all important questions and so we decided to supplement our fact-finding
analysis with a survey of entrepreneurs, investors and other tech stakehold-
ers. In October 2015, we sent out the survey to people in our European net-
work and received over 800 responses from people with a direct interest in
European tech. We have incorporated the findings into this report.
To provide additional context we also interviewed some of Europe’s leading
entrepreneurs and investors and you will find their insights throughout.
55

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“We are already seeing a change
in attitudes and it is pretty amazing.
We are seeing that people don’t just
want to work in a start-up, but want
to create a start-up.”
ANTHONY DOUGLAS
Hole 19

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The opportunity for entrepreneurs
in Europe is huge. It is worth taking
a moment to remind ourselves of the
size, shape and opportunity of the
European tech market by looking at
the population, GDP, Internet usage
and smartphone usage of the region.
IV. EUROPE
EUROPE IS A HUGE AND PROSPEROUS REGION, SIMILAR TO THE US IN
GDP PER CAPITA AND INTERNET AND SMARTPHONE PENETARTION
Population: 321m
GDP: $15.40 trillion
Internet users: 279m
Smartphone users: 176m
Population: 1,367m
GDP: $9.20 trillion
Population: 1,252m
GDP: $1.82 trillion
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Population: 506m
GDP: $17.97 trillion
Source: World Bank, ITU, Eurostat, GSMA Intelligence 9

10 11
Achievement unlocked:
culturally acceptable
in Europe to be an
entrepreneur
What’s next:
investors need to keep
pace with scale of ambition
V. ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET
EUROPEANS EMBRACE ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS
A CULTURALLY ACCEPTABLE CAREER CHOICE
AS IT FINALLY PASSES THE “PARENT TEST”
EUROPEAN FOUNDERS ARE READY TO TAKE RISKS AND
FAIL, INSTEAD OF CHOOSING THE SAFE ROUTE
Statement: It is culturally acceptable in Europe to be an entrepreneur
Statement: I would rather take risks and fail than choose the safe option
CHRISTIAN HERNANDEZ
White Star VC
8%
16%
4%3%
Disagree Agree
76%
89%
76%
16%
20%
75%
I don’t know
8% 9%
Startup employeesFounders
AllInvestors
“Being an entrepreneur is now a viable career choice. People are
ready to take risks and are just going off and starting companies”
10 Source: Slush & Atomico Survey
#WHATSNEXT4EUTECHNOVEMBER 2015

12 13
INTERNATIONAL MINDSETS
EUROPEAN FOUNDERS HAVE INTERNATIONAL AMBITION,
BUT MANY FOCUS ON DOMESTIC MARKET FIRST BEFORE
THINKING OF EXPANSION
EUROPEAN COMPANIES HAVE TO INTERNATIONALIZE
TO REACH $B+ VALUATION AND TEND TO DO IT MORE
QUICKLY
Q: How would you describe the international mindset of European entrepreneurs?
BRYNNE HERBERT
MOVE Guides
DANIEL EK
Spotify
“I just had this itch, I wanted to fix a problem. And be-
cause this was something that people in all countries
face, I had to take a global approach in order to fix it.”
“The decision to start MOVE Guides in London has
always been about three things: time zone, connectivity,
and talent. On talent, London gives me and MOVE
Guides a diversity of perspective. London is a natural
melting pot of people from across Europe and from
other countries. We feel very strongly that that brings
unique perspective into the company and fosters
innovation. It provides diversity in teams, which gives
a lot of different benefits to the organization. At MOVE
guides, we have about 30 different nationalities on our
team today, and it’s absolutely contributed to many of
the pieces of innovation that we’ve fostered, and also,
is a big part of our culture.”
IN
THEIR
WORDS
43%
"Entrepreneurs mostly
think and act with a
domestic mindset"
46%
9%
"Entrepreneurs
always think and act
with a global mindset"
36%
44%
"Entrepreneurs
mostly think and act
with a global mindset"
3%
"Entrepreneurs think
and act domestically,
but have some
international ambitions"
"Entrepreneurs only
think and act with a
domestic mindset”
10%
1%
8%
0%
Investors
Founders
• Many European founders will
focus on their domestic market
and nearby markets first,
before thinking about going
global
• While almost no founders or
investors believe European
entrepreneurs think only
domestically, there is still room
to improve the global mindset
of Europe’s entrepreneurs
It’s incredibly rare to build a domestic $B firm in Europe… …so startups from small markets must internationalise faster
96%
18%
81%
77%
23%
4%
USAsiaEurope
• Historically, having a huge domestic market, such as the US or China,
was a major advantage. But entrepreneurs from smaller European
countries have found a way to level the playing field, by being faster
to internationalize
• In many cases, European founders aim to solve global problems and
think internationally from the outset
• International expansion is faster when you come from a small market
- averaging just 1.4 years for companies with a domestic population of
less than 50m, less than half the time of companies from countries
with a population of over 50m people
• This is critical to success - every company from a country with less
than 50m population went international before hitting a billion-dollar
valuation
InternationalDomestic only
% of $B+ companies that scaled internationally to reach $B+ valuation Time to international expansion in years, by home market population
3.3
2.9
1.4
150m+50-150mUnder 50m
13Source: Slush & Atomico Survey
Source: Atomico
13

14 15
“In my first five years I got a lot of really poor advice, and I just
hate the fact that there may be talented people out there with
the opportunity to grow a global business, receiving poor advice
too. That is why I am more than happy to give advice to others.
It feels like the right thing, and of course it gives me energy as
well. I get a lot of energy from meeting these people that are ten
years younger than me and are doing something really cool and
new and fresh and they’re not suffering from the challenges you
have as a larger company.”
VI. TECH COMMUNITY
A HIGHLY ENGAGED AND GROWING
TECH COMMUNITY
EUROPE’S LEADING HUBS HAVE DEVELOPED ACTIVE
TECH COMMUNITIES
AND THERE ARE ALSO DOZENS OF HUBS WITH GROWING
TECH COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE CONTINENT
TOP20 hubs with tech-related Meetup communities, 2015, ranked by # of attendees at Meetup events
Top 15 fastest-growing hubs by number of tech-related Meetup communities
Annual growth
,000 of tech meetups
SEBASTIAN SIEMIATKOWSKI
Klarna
+125% +108% +106% +97% +89% +78% +76% +72% +72% +71% +70% +65% +65%+93% +74%
3617
1712
23
5963
1213121717131217
98
115
35
35
68
175
191
374143
6366
5552
86
Lisbon
Hamburg
Copenhagen
Istanbul
Lyon
Bucharest
Prague
Zagreb
Munich
Madrid
Moscow
Ljubljana
Cologne
Stuttgart
Frankfurt
2013
2015 YTD
# of tech-related Meetup groups by city
over 25,000 meetups in
2015
What’s next:
build closer links between
our disparate hubs
14
Source:
Source:
25.7
Paris
46.4
Berlin
London
62.6
Hamburg
12.5
Barcelona
Brussels
10.0
Zurich
10.5 6.9 6.28.4
Copenhagen
Oslo
16.818.0 16.0 15.9
Budapest
Stockholm
Munich
Madrid
13.5
Dublin
Amsterdam
14.4
160.5
167.6
Other
5.1 4.9
Moscow
Istanbul
Manchester
Vienna
6.1 5.3
Bristol
3912 1519 1543 872 609 571 384 480 549 475 398 530 296 222 336 213 168 11504549 541 172
More than 630k people have attended one
of 25k tech-related Meetups in Europe in
2015*

16 17
BEING IN A TECH HUB VIEWED AS A MAJOR BENEFIT,
BUT PROPER LINKS BETWEEN HUBS ARE YET TO BE
ESTABLISHED
FOUNDERS BELIEVE THEY CAN BUILD THEIR
COMPANY IN EUROPE
Importance of tech hubs and interconnectivity
Q: If you were to start over, where would you choose to found and build your company?
IN
THEIR
WORDS
FLORIAN MEISSNER
EyeEM
CHRISTIAN HERNANDEZ
White Star VC
“There are a whole set of European companies today
that actually will produce significant wealth, which can
then permeate back into the ecosystem as role models
the people will aspire to follow. We will then see the
kind of momentum that leads LPs to want to bet more
actively in Europe and provide more supply and capital
at the later stages where we’re still lacking.”
‘Apart from personal relationships that founders have
with friends, there’s no exchange going on at all. For
example, people from London are not coming to Berlin
or Stockholm or wherever to exchange knowledge. At
best they may pop in for a coffee when they happen
to pass through but there is no structure. It is a huge
responsibility that falls back to the VCs and the people
that fund companies across the region because they
have the key network and they are the link between the
companies’
11%
70%
20%
69%
No real di erenceDisadvantages
outweigh advantages
22%
71%
Advantages outweigh
disadvantages
9%
18%
8%
41%
54%
37%
46%
Emerging links
8%
Weak links
57%
46%
Strong links
4%
7%
AllFoundersInvestorsAllFoundersInvestors
Q: Do you think it is important for a company's HQ to be
located in a major European tech hub?
Q: How would you describe the degree of interconnectivity
between Europe's di erent tech hubs?
7%
17%A di erent European city
I would choose to stay where we are now 62%
A di erent US city
2%Elsewhere
12%Bay Area/Silicon Valley
17Source: Slush & Atomico Survey

18 19
THE TALENT PIPELINE IS STRONG
EUROPE’S KEY HUBS ARE BUILDING A CRITICAL
MASS OF DEVELOPERS...
...AND IMPORTANTLY A LARGE POOL OF
MOBILE DEVELOPERS
# of professional developers per hub and density of professional full-stack developers
per country – data from Stack Overflow Developer Insights
# of professional mobile developers per country
– data from Stack Overflow Developer Insights
“You’ve got some of the top universities in the world in Europe.
You no longer have to go to Stanford or Harvard or MIT to get
great engineering talent. You can now go to Imperial, Cambridge
in the UK or ETH in Zurich or Max Planck Institutes in Germany
or Ecole Polytechnique in France.”
VII. TALENT
BRENT HOBERMAN
Founders Forum
3.50.2
Full-stack developers per ,000 people
38,194
Moscow
22,944
Istanbul
9,990
Lisbon
27,333
Madrid
71,497
London
40,538
Paris
15,915
Berlin
11,346
Stockholm9,586
Oslo
London, Europe’s largest
developer hub, has 71,497
professional developers
compared to 83,262 in
San Francisco
According to Stack Overﬂow
Developer Insights, there are
1.6M professional developers
in Europe today
1.6m professional
developers in Europe
What’s next:
address alarming gender
imbalance
18
Source:
Source:

20 21
BUT TECH ENTREPRENEURSHIP STILL HAS
AN ALARMING GENDER IMBALANCE
Q: What is your gender? (founders only)
11% 89%
“We’ve seen the share of female attendees at
Slush grow from 5% to 25% just a few years, but
amongst founders the change is painfully slow.”
Riku Mäkelä, Slush
THERE IS A CLEAR COST ADVANTAGE TO BUILDING
A TEAM FROM EUROPE
Median annual base salary in US$ thousands
Source:
CHEAPER - AND OFTEN BETTER BRIGHT FUTURE, BUT ALARMING
GENDER IMBALANCE
EUROPEAN TALENT EXISTS, YOU JUST HAVE TO KNOW
WHERE TO FIND IT
Availability and quality of talent in Europe
Source: Slush & Atomico Survey Source: Slush & Atomico Survey
Source: Eurostat
EUROPE IS NURTURING A STRONG TALENT
PIPELINE FOR THE FUTURE
Sr SW Engineer x 2
SW Engineer x 3
UX Designer x 1
Data Analyst x 1
OperationsProduct
376
118121
1,078
334
Sales & MarketingFinance
85
Engineering
474
17 member team
752
110
1,477
10877
LondonSan Francisco
Product Manager x 1 Operations Manager x 1
O ce Manager x 1
Finance Manager x 1 S ales Director x 1
BusDev Manager x 1
Sales Associate x 1
Marketing Manager x 1
Customer Service x 2
The total base salary cost of
a 17 member team is ~1.5x
higher in San Francisco than
in London, according to
salary data from Glassdoor
S

22 23
ALAN AND NAMI
TrueCaller
ANTHONY DOUGLAS
Hole 19
“One of the reasons why Lisbon is great is
that we have access to great talent, partic-
ularly in the design and development side of
things; we have really talented engineers from
really technical universities, like the superior
technical institute here in Lisbon. We usual-
ly hire graduates straight out of the Institute,
we work closely with those guys.”
IN
THEIR
WORDS
“Today we have a very diverse team - about 40
nationalities. And we have kept this strategy as it’s
been helpful for scaling the company around the world
- it’s been much faster because we have the in-house
knowledge of these markets. For example, when we
scaled into India, Alan and I had never been there,
and the same goes for Lebanon. And these have now
become key markets for our growth - so it’s really
helpful to have an international base.”
2322

24 25
VIII. CAPITAL FLOWS CAPITAL FLOODING INTO EUROPE
Deal volume and value across Europe
Q: How has the experience of raising capital in Europe changed?
RICCARDO ZACCONI
King
“I think the investment landscape in Europe is dramatically
different. There is much more money in the market than a few
years ago, but also much more competition”
$10B invested by VCs
in 2015
What’s next:
bridge the late stage
funding gap
24
CAPITAL IS MORE READILY AVAILABLE IN EUROPE
18%
8%
"It is hard to
raise capital"
18%
9%
58%
8%
"It is the best time
ever to raise capital"
47%
20%
"Capital is more
readily available
today"
53%
22%
"The capital
environment
is unchanged"
"It is harder than
ever to raise capital"
22%
3%
12%
2%1%
Investors
All
Founders
• 55% of entrepreneurs and 80% of
investors believe that there’s more
capital available than a few years
ago
• Investors are noticeably more
positive on the current situation of
capital availability
• 51% of founders that have previously
started a company think capital is
now more readily available versus
40% of ﬁrst-time founders
Source: Slush & Atomico Survey

26 27
EUROPE IS WITNESSING THE RISE OF
ENTREPRENEUR-LED INVESTING
A NEW BREED OF INSTITUTIONAL VC FUNDS IS RISING IN
EUROPE
EUROPE’S LEADING HUBS ARE BUILDING STRONG
POOLS OF ANGEL INVESTORS
Founder-funder transactions per year and # of European startups funded by entrepreneur-led VCsNew institutional tech VC funds launched in Europe since 2011 with a minimum fund size of US$ 40m
Active angel investors per city
THE GROWING PHENOMENON OF
ENTREPRENEUR-LED INVESTING
A HIGHLY ACTIVE VC ECOSYSTEM
LEADING US VCS ARE BECOMING ACTIVE IN EUROPE
Source: Dow Jones VentureSource, Press releases
Source: CrunchBase
Source: CrunchBase, avc.com Source: Angel List, FiBAN

28 29
EUROPE STILL LACKS CAPITAL RELATIVE TO
THE OPPORTUNITY
THE LACK OF CAPITAL IS MOST PROMINENT
AT SERIES B & BEYOND
VC funds in the US raised 5.4 times more capital than their European counterparts
VC funds raised in Europe and US, by investment stage
BUT PARTICULARLY AT LATER STAGES,
EUROPE IS STILL PLAYING CATCH-UP
VC funds raised 2010-2014, US$bn
~5x
13.0
Multi-stage
46.8
10.0
Later-stage (Series B+)
42.3
1.8
24.3
~14x
~3x
Early-stage (Seed/Series A)
USEurope
• The US produces 3x as many $B+ companies
as Europe, but raises 5x as much capital
• The relative availability of capital varies
significantly by stage. At the Series B stage and
beyond there is a significant di erence in
terms of available capital (14x US vs Europe)
relative to the number of companies reaching
$B+ valuations
• As a result, there are relatively fewer local
firms able to fund the increasing number of
European winners on their path to global
category leadership
Source: Atomico, DowJones VentureSource
Source: Dow Jones VentureSource

30 31
IX. SUCCESS STORIES
30 31
PETTERI KOPONEN
Lifeline Ventures
ILKKA PAANANEN
Supercell
“I’d say that today it’s easier to raise capital. Mostly
because most top-tier investors have already done at
least their first investment into Northern Europe. So
they’ve gone over that entry barrier, they know the lo-
cal ecosystem and it’s much easier after that.”
IN
THEIR
WORDS
“It absolutely has become easier to raise funds as an
investor over the past five years. A good track record
is crucial for a VC investor when she is fundraising; we
can see a huge difference between now and four years
ago when we were raising our first VC fund. Overall,
there are more European VCs with a solid track record
so it’s easier to raise funds.” Europe is already a success story - it has a thriving tech ecosystem
and more billion-dollar companies are being produced on the
continent than ever, with 35 companies to date since 2003, 10
this year alone. There is clearly lots more to be done if Europe is to
achieve its full tech potential, but that’s what makes our tech scene
so exciting.
on track for 10 $B
valuations in 2015, making
a total of 35 since 2003
What’s next:
companies valued in the
tens and hundreds of
billions

32 33
MORE GLOBAL WINNERS NOW COMING FROM EUROPE
EUROPE’S NEXT GENERATION WILL CREATE EVEN
MORE SUCCESS STORIES
$B+ companies by year founded
BILLION DOLLAR BABIES
EUROPE’S CHALLANGE IS TO BUILD THE NEXT
GENERATION OF GLOBAL WINNERS
EUROPE IS DELIVERING THE END PRODUCT, $B+ COMPANIES
EXITING EFFECTIVELY, RAISE MORE IN IPOS THAN US ONES
Share of global $B+ companies and categorization of $B+ companies founded since 2003
Operating status of $B+ companies founded since 2003 and total proceeds raised via IPOs
Source: Atomico
Source: Atomico
Source: Atomico
Source: Atomico, CapitalIQ

34 35
X. THE FUTURE
EUROPE HAS LAID THE FOUNDATION
FOR A BRIGHT FUTURE
THE BEST TIME IN HISTORY TO BE A EUROPEAN
TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEUR
Q: Are you more or less optimistic today about the future of European technology than 12 months ago?
Statement: Now is the best time in history to be a technology entrepreneur in Europe
36%
43%
Strongly
disagree
I don’t know
17%
10%
Disagree
11%
17%
12%
36%
3%
5%
14%
2% 3%2% 1%
27%
Agree
46%
40%
Strongly
agree
27%
50%Founder
Public sector
Corporate employee
Investor
• Founders and investors have the
most positive view on the current
situation: 50% of investors and 40%
of founders agree strongly
• Employees of corporations and the
public sector are positive, but not
quite as much
Repeat founders had a noticeably more
positive view than ﬁrst time founders
34 Source: Slush & Atomico Survey

36 37
36 37

38 39
XI. FINAL THOUGHTS
NOW IS THE BEST TIME IN HISTORY
TO BE A EUROPEAN TECHNOLOGY
ENTREPRENEUR
“It is easier to build a global technology company from
Europe than six or seven years ago for a number of
reasons: it is easier to raise money, it is cheaper to
build and operate products and services thanks to in-
novations like cloud platforms and it is easier to get
global distribution thanks to app stores and the Inter-
net. And, very importantly, there are role models these
days, people who have successfully built globally suc-
cessful companies, who inspire others to do the same.
“In other words, the importance of geographic loca-
tion has decreased significantly. And interestingly, we
do have an advantage in Europe that has to do with
geography. Europe is a fragmented home base with
many languages, cultures, and small domestic mar-
kets. Because of this it seems to be more natural for
Europeans to think global from day one. For example,
no startup entrepreneur in Finland would ever build
anything just for the local home market because it is
simply so tiny. So we need to, and want to go global
from day one. It feels natural for us. I don’t think it
is the same for entrepreneurs who have larger home
markets.
“Over the next ten years there will be a lot more suc-
cessful companies out of Europe. And I think that
people will have stopped wondering about this rise of
European tech, as it has become something of a norm.
We won’t have the debates on European versus Amer-
ican technology entrepreneurship, and people will
definitely have stopped questioning Europe’s role in
global tech. I think people will take it for granted that
all technology entrepreneurship is global by nature,
including entrepreneurship in Europe.”
ILKKA PAANANEN
Supercell
38 39
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
What’s next for European tech?
#whatsnext4eutech
@atomico
@SlushHQ

40

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The State of European Tech 2015 Magazine