I don’t know whether they’re Unicorns, but at least we have companies like Booking.com, Adyen, you could argue Gitlab has Dutch roots, and smaller ones such as MessageBird, WeTransfer, Usabilla, etc. These are more well known names, but there are plenty and plenty of smaller ones, where “small” can still be around a hundred employees.

Again, I’m not claiming that our startup climate is anything like what your see in SV, but it’s definitely a fairly healthy scene, and it would be an insult to characterize these as grant chasers.

Booking is a wholly owned subsidiary of Priceline, a US company and has been for the majority of its existence. It was bought for its considerable IT assets after going bankrupt, IIRC.

Yes, but I was using it as an example of a healthy Dutch startup ecosystem, and I still believe it is a good argument. I wouldn’t consider Booking.com a startup anymore anyway, just like TomTom etc, but that’s missing the point: they had their roots here, and are good examples of a counter argument that they are merely “grant chasers”.

Gitlab is a remote company because of the poor health of the ecosystem.

Mollie & Adyen have had success because of the walled garden iDeal payment system of the Dutch banks. Eindhoven was a very innovative region until Philips decided to move HQ.

Even Sweden produced more unicorns with a population size a 1/3 of the Netherlands.

Maybe you have had more luck with raising money but I experienced a lot of stupidity from private investors.