#27 – Start-up and investment landscape in Europe – the good, the bad and … the reasons for optimism Tech Deciphered

We deep-dive into the nuanced - and somewhat less than stellar - history of Tech in Europe and how start-ups and investors are making up for lost time, leading to an ever maturing ecosystem, with significant reasons for optimism. Finally, we discuss the increasingly intertwined destinies of US and European Tech.Navigation:Intro (01:33)Section 1: Framing the European start-up and investment landscape (02:20)Section 2: Investment Approach in Europe (17:18)Section 3: Movements from US to Europe (51:19)Section 4: Movements from Europe to US (59:02)Conclusion (1:05:39)Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder at App Annie, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news

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Intro (01:34)

Nuno: Welcome to episode 27 of Tech Deciphered. We're going to address the tech landscape in Europe, focusing on the investment landscape, as well as the startup landscape, we will go into the typical entrepreneurial approaches as well as investment approaches in Europe, the mindsets, the tactics, the profiles, as well as the typical exits, we will then deep dive into the present state of Europe and how we see it evolve over time.  


Bertrand: Thank you Nuno, good to be here today with you and to discuss this fascinating topic for us, we are both Europeans. Obviously I'm French, you're from Portugal. We have seen the European landscape changing dramatically over the past 20, 25 years. So that will be very exciting to talk about this. 


Section 1 - Framing the European startup and investment landscape 
(02:20)

Bertrand: I guess maybe we can start about controversies that happened a few months ago in June when The Economist had a big cover on the state of the investment in Europe and how Europe was really not doing much in the tech industry. interestingly enough, there was a quick swift reply from the founder and CEO of Stripe Patrick Collison, who is not just running Stripe from the U S but he's also a European citizen being Irish  


Nuno: Yeah. His comment was basically saying, all of the points that you raise are great, I think you haven't really shown the case for optimism right? Where there's a lot of great successful companies coming out of Europe. He was mentioning a few that, are obviously runaway successes, like Spotify, Klarna, N26, UIpath, wise and a few others. 


And he also obviously talks about Stripe and its role, although Stripe is more of an American company, to be honest, but Stripe in its role in working with very innovative companies in Europe as a counter position to the economists headline and main articles in that edition. 


So to be honest, I think he is onto something in saying there is a case for optimism that wasn't duly manifested in that edition of your magazine or newspaper as they call it. It's very funny cause they call the economists still the newspaper, although it's in my view of magazine.  


Bertrand: Maybe you want to restate the position of the economist. 


Nuno: Yeah. The position of the economist is that basically the U S has taken over, right? You have companies like apple that are worth more in their view than 30 firms in the German blue-chip Dax index combined. Obviously we have Amazon, we have Microsoft, we have Google all these are multi-trillion dollar companies now, actually. 


And so their point is, in some ways, Europe has lagged behind. I think their point was very focused also on the old Europe and where, even the big emerging tech winners,