INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Atomico, the European venture capital firm founded by Skype Niklas Zennström, has released its latest annual The State of European Tech
report, published in partnership with Slush and Orrick.
As part of the report, the authors surveyed 5,000 members of the ecosystem —
including 1,000 founders — as well as pulling in robust data from other sources, such as Dealroom and the London Stock Exchange .
This
year, the report reveals that the European tech ecosystem continues to mature and shows no sign of slowing — particularly highlighting the
contrast from five years ago when the The State of European Tech report made its debut
Almost every key indicator is up and to the right, except, rather depressingly, diversity.
The data shows, for example, that competition for
talent and access to the best founders has increased ferociously
And from a funding perspective, European founders have more choice than ever, especially with U.S
and Asian VC firms investing more and more in the region
Progress with gender diversity stalled, however, such as 92% of funding going to all-male teams.
I caught up with the report author Tom
Wehmeier, Partner and Head of Insights at Atomico (also sometimes jokingly referred to as the &Mary Meeker of Europe&), where we discuss in
more detail some of the key findings and why, it seems, that the rest of the world has finally woken up to Europe tech potential.
But first,
a few headlines from the report:
European technology companies are on track to raise a record 30$B+ in funding in 2019, up from $25B the
(Source: Dealroom)
Despite failing to match the level of venture-backed exits of 2018, there was a record number of 40 $100M-plus deals as
of September 2019, a size that many European tech sceptics did not believe was possible
(Source: Dealroom)
A number of multi-billion-dollar non-venture backed companies like Nexi and Trainline made their debut on the public
markets.
European tech policymaking remains a mystery to many European founders.
When asked to describe the top priority of the European
Commission in terms of tech policy, 40% of founders and startup employees say they don&t feel informed enough to comment
(Source: survey)
Despite this reported lack of awareness on policy issues, all respondents voted EU competition commissioner Margrethe
Vestager as the person who had the most influence on European tech in 2019, good or bad
(Source: survey)
European parliamentarians aren&t talking about fintech and digital health, two sectors which investors poured a combined
$12.7bn into last year (Source: Politico and Dealroom)
Europe diversity figures are still grim reading.
In 2019, 92% of funding went to
all-male teams, a similar level to 2018
(Source: Dealroom)
There is still only one woman CTO in the 119 companies (
