Europan VC: a controversial asset class?
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Venture Capital: Practicing Blind Faith - Babbling VC
There is a huge difference between optimism and blind faith. If you're an entrepreneur or in the VC space, you should know the difference. I read a post from Bryce about how a company can be completely dysfunctional yet successful. This is a daily reality in my line of work and started my thinking about this. You can't imagine how often I shake my head in disbelief about stories I hear.
The good and bad news about the future of European VC
This is a guest post by Paul Jozefak of Neuhaus Partners, commenting on the release of a working paper put out by the European Investment Fund about the performance and prospects for European venture capital. You can follow Paul at his blog or on Twitter. The European Investment Fund (EIF) put out a working paper recently that initially sounds like bad news. Fortunately, for those of us in the market long enough, it's actually good news.
Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More
European Venture Capital Activity Down 28% In The First Half Of 2011 | TechCrunch
This guest post is by David Cowan . Since 1992, Cowan has been a venture investor at Bessemer Venture Partners , where he funded Blue Nile, LinkedIn, Postini, VeriSign and over a dozen other startups that have since gone public. He blogs at Who Has Time For This?
Earlybird Hatches The Term “European Comeback” | TechCrunch
I'm on vacation and wasn't going to blog while away but one thing has been puzzling me and I thought a post was worth it. Once again, and this is a trend as you'll by now have seen on my blog over the years, we're discussing Euro VC verses the Valley. This time, triggered by an entrepreneur " throwing the Euro VC landscape under a bus ."
Euro VC Scene: Be Careful What You Wish For - Babbling VC
European VCs are too risk averse, not entrepreneur friendly and under value companies, says the CEO of a U.K.-based start up that announced its first funding. Astute readers will have noticed that yesterday’s announcement by DataSift of their $6 million funding round was all from U.S. venture capital firms. This was no coincidence. “What disappoints me the most is that I am a huge advocate of Europe, but as a businessman you are always going to go with the best valuation and the best partners,” says DataSift CEO Nick Halstead. And it wasn’t for lack of trying.
European Venture Capitalists ‘Not Entrepreneur Friendly’ Says Founder - Tech Europe - WSJ
This week, UK-based tech firm DataSift received its first round of funding – all of which came from US venture capital firms GRP and IA Ventures. DataSift founder Halstead says that despite being a "huge advocate for Europe" (and spending two months pitching to European VCs), he was forced across the pond to find investment because American VCs are friendlier, have larger funds and take bigger risks. So, was he right? To say that there are more and bigger funds in the US is true.
Real Business - In defence of European VCs
Nic Halstead threw a rabid cat amongst the pigeons this week when he spoke to TechCrunch Europe about his disappointment in those European VCs who, he says, remain risk averse compared to thir US colleagues (Datasift just raised $6m from two US VCs). Towards the end of our video interview Nick said: “We’re still doing something quite high risk at Datasift.
The Great European VC Debate – Timid, risk averse, bad? Or just misunderstood?
This is a guest post by Fred Destin , a Partner at Atlas Venture based out of Boston. Previously Destin was, for years, an active VC in Europe, working on DailyMotion, Seatwave, Zoopla and a number of other high profile European startup investments. Nick Halstead at Datasift seems to have ticked people off the wrong way with a candid assessment of his experience fundraising in Europe. He might might not return emails but he’s also raised money from one of the smartest dudes around ( Roger Ehrenberg and his Big Data Band) so if you allow me I’ll pay some attention to his opinion, and in fact expand on it.
Destin: European VC Needs Revolution, Not Evolution
European venture capital and a theory of evolution
This is a guest post by Jos White, a partner at Notion Capital . This is in part a response to recent criticism of European VC by Datasift which raised money from US VCs. All you ever hear about these days with European venture capital is either that it is miles behind the US or that it can contribute greatly to economic growth and should be subsidised by governments. While I mostly agree with both these statements I think they are missing the central point.
DataSift – The little startup (from Europe) that could [TCTV]
But that experience let to him building a team to deeply analyse Twitter’s underlying data, and not in Silicon Valley, but from Reading, in the UK county of Berkshire. Thus was Datasift created, one of only two companies globally licensed by Twitter to re-syndicate its content. That raw commitment to keep going, to pivoting, to building a profile in Silicon Valley and to raising money in a smart way has now lead Halstead into a $6m Series A round from US-based investors IA Ventures, and GRP Partners. The cash is to build a global sales and support teams in the US and build out the platform further.Entrepreneurs need to pick the venture capitalist that will help them grow their business and scale globally, not just the one that writes the biggest check, said one of Europe’s leading VCs. Barry Maloney, founder of Balderton Capital, was stepping up to the plate to defend, well, the entire European Venture Capital market after a leading U.K. entrepreneur essentially threw the industry under a bus . Mr. Maloney, who founded Balderton 10 years ago, not surprisingly refuted most of the charges laid by DataSift CEO Nick Halstead—essentially that European VCs were risk averse and not entrepreneur-friendly.
European VCs’ Risk Fight Back
As a war of words kicks off over the state of the European venture capital industry, the return of a French VC from the Valley to London seems strangely apposite. Philippe Botteri, a Frenchman, but nurtured in the ways of American VCs, brings an interesting perspective on the differences between the two worlds: some of it to do with the fractured European market, some of it do with the nature of European politics and a lot of it to do with a lack of entrepreneurial culture. Not all that surprisingly he didn’t see a lack of risk by European VCs. The biggest difference, he said, was that old problem.
Now it's euro-entrepreneurs' fault!
You’ve probably all heard the cliches about European startups and investors: venture money in Europe is more conservative, entrepreneurs are afraid of risk, the businesses are less ambitious and there are fewer blockbuster successes. These are trotted out all the time to explain why it’s better to start up or invest in America. Is it true?