“But right now, it’s still the place to beat when growing a company.”
Analysts say that Europe’s smaller pool of venture capital may have helped the region’s start-ups to avoid some of the excesses of Silicon Valley, where
many new companies have received millions, if not billions, of dollars — often at eye-watering valuations — only for their business ideas to fall flat.
“Some macroeconomic ups-and-downs are not going to make a big difference.”
European tech start-ups received a combined $17.1 billion in venture funding last year, an 11 percent rise over 2015 and more than four times the amount
that start-ups pocketed in 2012, according to Tech.eu, a website that tracks regional fund-raising.
“Going forward, Silicon Valley won’t be as important if you’re an entrepreneur building a start-up,” said Jeppe Zink, a partner at Northzone, a Scandinavian venture firm
that raised a new $316 million fund last year and was an early backer of Spotify, the Swedish music streaming service.
Despite the bullish growth, Europe’s fund-raising efforts were still dwarfed by those in the United States,
where tech companies raised a combined $40.9 billion in 2016, according to CB Insights, a research firm.
In another sign of that sentiment, Niklas Zennstrom, a founder of Skype who now runs Atomico, a venture capital firm,
on Thursday announced a new $765 million fund, one of Europe’s largest-ever tech venture capital fund-raisings.
Funds have continued to raise large amounts of money to finance start-ups from Berlin to Bratislava, despite the rise of populist parties ahead of elections in France
and Germany this year, questions over Britain’s exit from the European Union and terrorist attacks that have left many on edge.
