William Schnoor’s Post

Such a great post. One of my favorite parts, not surprisingly: "Experienced founders are often most likely to fund new branches of the tech tree. In Silicon Valley, more than 60 per cent of the partners at top venture capital funds were previously founders and chief executives; in Europe, by contrast, the figure stands at a dismal 8 per cent." 

"Things need to happen urgently as time is running out to stay in the race. Europe must now build these remarkable vehicles of scientific progress and economic growth — not only to grow the tech industry, but to power its nations to be more prosperous as a whole."

Excellent piece by Ian Hogarth. - Europe (UK included) will only be able to continue to prosper if it leverages technology-driven growth - It has a good chance along the technology tree if it manages to unleash serial founder led growth - It is this duality of focus on technology and risk-embracing serial entrepreneurship that has accelerated US growth at a time when Europe (UK included) has stagnated

If we want to follow the American footsteps, we will always be second class. None of the great entrepreneurs with whom I've worked over 25 years of backing entrepreneurs ever wanted to follow anyone. One cannot win unless and until one creates the rules of the game. Every successful entrepreneur knows this. This is why understanding the Design of the Era is so important. EcosystemEconomics(r) is our Investment Strategy VIVA Investment Partners AG and FTE® Capital Markets. This is the Playbook, the Pair of Glasses that one must have to understand how to build a winning strategy given the underlying design of what is happening in the world. The reason why some companies are growing faster or have a network asset value greater than the industries that they have disrupted is that they are organising the Economics of the Ecosystems where they are positioning themselves at the heart of the Ecosystem. To include all participants at the unit economics level - including individual data as a participant, and then scale using distribution which could be through an incumbent not generated as the digital platform, enables a platform to become an ecosystem and then an Ecosystem Economics(r) winner. To join us in exploring this, come to Lake Zurich from 26-29 January FTE® Capital Markets

Really great article on the European startup market and why we haven't been able to succeed at building a trillion dollar company like silicon valley does repeatedly.

“It’s time for Europe to stand up tall”. Regulation is only part of the problem. Europe must back experienced founders, and their appetite for highly ambitious missions and highly risky investments. Excellent read.

To Make European Industry Great Again (Maiga) we need urgently a real Capital Markets Union, but a Single Financial Market needs unique rules to apply: a European Constitution, a European Civil Code, a European Commercial Code, a European Consolidated Finance Text ... to boost a more prosperous and resilient European society with more shared wealth to create or invest in innovative businesses, stop selling the most precious companies abroad and turn an already powerful innovation engine into a harder-edged ambition to keep scaling in Europe. #UrsulavonderLeyen, #ChristineLagarde, #AntonioCosta, #MarioDraghi, this is your job!

Enjoyed Ian Hogarth's piece and couldn't agree more that we need our companies to stay independent for longer. As a 20-year European VC "dinosaur" just wanted to offer an optimistic context here: - European technology entrepreneurial ecosystem is about 25 years younger than the US one with first VCs systematically appearing in the US in early 1970s and in mid to late 90s in Europe, so a significant maturity gap is to be expected - Whilst in the early 2000s we started seeing appearance of first billion dollar European companies like Oracle MySQL and Skype that were aquired, by 2010s we have seen the advent of first $10bn+ companies (e.g., Zalando, Spotify, Adyen) that have gone public and stayed indepdendent and now, in 2020s, some of them and the likes of Revolut are on the path of becoming our first $100bn+ homegrown companies - that is major progress - Momentum is building as we have more repeat success role models like Daniel Ek, more experienced managerial talent to help companies scale into $1bn+ of revenue and thousands of employees, and more growth capital than ever before (yes there is still a big gap to the US there but has gotten much better) The ecosystem now can organise itself around some of these huge power-law outcomes. In Eight Roads portfolio alone, we have a number of independent companies like HiBob, Fever, Lighthouse, Owkin, Fireblocks that continue to build global market leadship out of Europe and hopefully many of them will stay independent and remain acquirors rather than acquirees of other signficant companies. Future for Europe is bright and I hope it is trillion dollar bright 😀 🚀

Enjoyed your article Ian Hogarth. A couple of points to add: 1/ We need the IPO market to return as a financing event for younger companies. The valuation thresholds and regulatory burdens in the U.S. are just too high. Fixing this issue leads to a higher probability these young companies can stay independent and not fall into the hands of an acquirer. 2/ The fund cycle expiration for VC firms should extend beyond 10 years. This was always an arbitrary length of time for partnerships to achieve full liquidity. But to build a trillion dollar company will take time and patience and relieving the pressure for institutional venture firms to return capital to limited partners will help.

Must read today as the new European Commission enters into office. A passionate plea for supporting founders: "Europe needs to celebrate and support experienced founders who are building and investing in the highest-risk, highest-reward ideas."