Alan Poensgen is a partner at the globally active early-stage VC Antler, one of the largest early-stage investors in the world with more than 1,000 startup investments. Before that, he was co-founder and managing director of WestwingNow. He came there with the tools of Rocket Internet. There, in Global Venture Development, he was involved in the technical development of over 100 incubations and investments and later, as co-founder and CEO, he built up OfficeFab in Southeast Asia for the Samwers.
Here he describes why Europe, unlike the USA, has not (yet) produced any tech giants. In his opinion, this has a lot to do with wer on this side of the Atlantic.
Germany may have produced numerous “unicorn” companies, but real tech giants of a generation like Microsoft or Google mostly come from abroad. Financing bottlenecks, especially in Series B rounds, or fragmented European markets are often cited as reasons and definitely play a role. But in my opinion the problem lies deeper.
The Unicorn Gap: More than just money
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/karriere-startup/investors-wunsch-techies-gruendet-endlich-eigene-firmen/