Why do founders struggle in Europe vs US? 

I found this article in the Financial Times by Ian Hogarth an engaging and thought-provoking read. Published last month, it looks at why Europe has not built companies on the scale of the big US technology companies such as Apple, Alphabet, or Amazon.

Ian Hogarth’s answer focuses on the role of founders and the need for an environment which celebrates their roles and successes. Successful founders are often experienced – successfully and unsuccessfully, and there needs to be an environment in which this experience can be gained. And as success stories scale up, this needs to be possible without the temptation to sell early being too strong. The article has a message of hope – the potential for opportunities in different technologies where Europe could have an advantage. The prize could be huge, not only for entrepreneurs but, as is noted, for wealth generation that can help fund public services (and probably deliver them differently too, I would add).

However, there is a real challenge here. How can Europe “cherish the role of experienced founders, celebrate when they fund the riskiest and most important tech…” and incentivise against early selling, and why are the right conditions not already in place? Part of the answer I believe may be because governments are more focused on working out what transformative technologies they should support than on developing an investment culture which can fund innovation and bring it to market. It is a difference between a dynamic and a more statist view of the economy. But this is not the whole answer.