At this year’s edition of his huge trade fair, he sees promising developments in Europe above all.
(Photo: imago images / NurPhoto)
Hardly anyone noticed it at the latest Web Summit, and that alone is remarkable: the new stars at the Lisbon technology fair came from Europe. This may also be due to the pandemic. But nothing was missing from the event!
Leading international media have already called the Web Summit “the best tech conference on the planet”. But so far it has had one flaw: it was more like “the tech world making friends” than a European innovation spectacle. 2022 could be the beginning of a turning point.
Because although the supremacy of the US tech companies remains undisputed, the self-image of the local start-up and venture capital scene has become completely different than it was two years ago. Some of the 40,000 visitors openly admitted to being there for fear of missing out on something: on the one hand, because the Web Summit was the largest technology fair since the beginning of the pandemic; on the other hand, because so much is happening in Europe’s start-up scene.
Even the opening was marked by this sign: The big techs from the USA are increasingly struggling with problems. The future comes from Europe. The focus was on whistleblower Frances Haugen and French founder Nicolas Julia. The computer scientist’s revelations are the latest evidence that US tech giant Facebook would rather use a new name to forget its problems than tackle them. The organizers could actually play the criticism of Facebook and its new and old problems from tape instead of ordering expensive speakers.
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Julia and his company Sorare, on the other hand, are exemplary for innovations from Europe, which were practically invented only yesterday, will be a box-office hit today and will be the standard tomorrow. Not only did he take his soccer blockchain platform from its inception to a four billion dollar valuation within three years. He also wants to be one of the pioneers of blockchain – the technology “for everything that is valuable on the Internet,” as he says.
The stage was also about new German success stories such as this one: Bastian Nominacher from the process analyst Celonis told us how to shape a new software category and sell it all over the world. Maximilian Tayenthal spoke about the secret of his nine billion dollar Neobank N26. Sofia Nunes from the financial technology company Mambu is one of the few women who co-founded a start-up valued in the billions and discussed how that can be changed. And that means one thing above all: Europe now has its own start-up role models. And they can do a lot more than copy US business models.
In addition to the founders, international venture capitalists were on site, some with large teams. For them it was mainly about founders who no one knows yet. And for them, too, many things will look different in 2021 than two years ago.
Because big US investors like Accel and Sequoia or Softbank from Japan are not coming to Lisbon for development aid. You imagine a lucrative future business here. The battle for stakes in European start-ups has never been so heated. The founders of the youngest generation of startups are likely to return with the greatest self-confidence that has ever ruled the German scene. It will further strengthen the ecosystem.
More: Start-ups from Europe bring investors higher returns than the competition from Silicon Valley