. SEEDTABLE

November 22th | #51

This week in Europe: Europe has Major Bragging Rights

Yesterday, Atomico in partnership with Slush and Orrick launched the 2019 State of European Tech report.

Everyone’s talking about the report, and they should. It’s a fairly big deal. But I’m not going to regurgitate the typical stuff everyone’s saying. Yes, Europe raised a whopping $34 billion in capital this year, but we’ve been talking about record numbers for months. If you want a real analysis, you can go read the Report’s executive summary, or a real newspaper.

In true Seedtable spirit, I’m going to take a different route. But there’s one thing I’m certainly going to regurgitate: it’s the golden age for startups in Europe.

“It does feel like we are in a golden age for Europe now: the quality of talent, the level of ambition and availability of capital are at a completely different scale” – Sonali de Rycker, Partner at Accel

Here’s some rough numbers you can take home and make sweet, sweet love to:

• In 2015, Europe had 22 $1 billion+ VC-backed companies. In 2019, the number of unicorns is now 99.

• From 2010 to 2014, tech startups raised a total of $34 billion. The 2015-2019 period saw a 3x increase to $113 billion, of which $34 billion were raised this year alone.

• In 2014, we had 9 $100 million+ mega rounds, versus 40 in 2019.

• From 2010 to 2014, venture capital funds raised $20.5 billion. From 2015 to 2019, that number more than doubled to $50.3 billion.

• Europe had 76 $100m+ exits from 2010 to 2014, but 148 from 2015 to 2019

The report made one thing crystal clear: Europe now has Major Bragging Rights.

All this said, there are 3 specific angles we are not discussing enough, so naturally, I’m going to focus on those.

1. Europe’s growth trajectory

2. Gender diversity in European tech

3. China, the US and Europe’s role

Let’s dive right in.

1. Europe’s growth trajectory: upwards and onwards

The headlines are clear: Europe raised a record $34 billion. But unless you are Adam Newman, money doesn’t grow on Softbank-shaped trees. It needs to come from somewhere.

Startup raise money from angels and venture capital funds. In the same fashion, VC funds raise money from Limited Partners (or LPs for short). LPs are people with many doubloons (pension funds, Private Equity funds, family offices, government funds,