Rebels, Rocky, and the Europe Start-Up Block with Nils Beers
This article is written for the latest episode of the Hypergrowth Podcast. [here]
The story of a startup, in popular culture, is dominated by an American narrative. The narrative of American Tech is a romanticized one: a university- drop-out in his garage wearing sandals and building a computer with his friend, or a guy in his dorm room connecting faces at Harvard. America loves the stories of clever resilience, and rightly so. Our film heroes have gumption and courage, they defy challenges as they come to them: economic, social, personal. It is not hard to conjure images of a fighter like Rocky (shoutout Philly), or Forrest Gump on his non-stop race against the perceptions people have of him. All of these narratives are romanticized rebel stories.
The once-upon-a-startup companies, like Apple and Facebook, are the most large and powerful leaders of Global tech. Europe is looking to catch up to the startup growth the US has seen for the last 30 years, and they have ‘fangs-out’ (had to).
If you take the top 85% of the stocks in the US, UK, and France, the US has 28% being tech companies, which is huge compared to 1% in the UK and 7% in France. This clearly marks tech’s dominance in the US economy versus Europe and gives insight into the $5 trillion GDP gap between the EU and US. [Sifted]
These numbers are the evidence of the startup stories which have played out in the US 30 years ago and are beginning to flourish in Europe today. Government sponsored programs like Macron-backed Scale-Up Europe, recently has been announced to help enhance the growth in the ecosystem. However, programs like this are part of a double-edged sword that while pushing Europe forward, is simultaneously pulling entrepreneurs back with too much of a focus on re-education. It begs the question, who is responsible for the ecosystem?
In our latest podcast episode, with Nils Beers (entrepreneur and co-founder of TechLeap in the Netherlands) we discuss this dichotomy, who is responsible and the narrative of the EU startup block: that scaling in Europe is more difficult. While there may be some truths in this, Nils, tells me that “Scaling in Europe is NOT difficult”. And there’s proof. The proof is in the fact of successful startups here like Spotify, Gorillas, and the best proof is in the American startups like Lime Scooters who are all over Europe.
The GDP gap and the gap between large tech players exists, for the EU, even with Y-Combinator! The question is, for Nils, is Europe doing the right things? In the podcast, we cover what are the right things that can be done to close it. [Spotify, Anchor]
What strikes me most about the conversation with Nils is his passion for entrepreneurs to focus on taking action and never quitting — saying ‘If my competition gets $500M in funding, then I am going to get $500M in funding, or I quit’. And the true entrepreneur never quits. The true entrepreneur is a rebel. And Europe, known for the Renaissance and scientific rebels, now needs the tech ones to step forward.
Like Nils, I do not buy the fact that European entrepreneurs are less driven, or have less obstacles to overcome, or need to be taught how to keep going. Just this morning, I had a conversation with another entrepreneur, in France, who had just launched his third company!
It is very clear the entrepreneurial spirit is very much alive, and the fire continues to burn. As Nils mentioned, Clubhouse is evidence of this truth. As I myself continue learning more about the ecosystem, I will continue to look for the ‘hero’ to compare the spirit to.
Maybe it’s Lucky Luke, the comic character who “shoots faster than his shadow”? Shooting the shadow version that tells European entrepreneurs that growth is hard, raising money is hard, or whatever the story is that’s reiterates the mindset of difficulty.
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