Re:IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink
by vidarh on Sunday February 19, 2023 @06:22AM
(#34856613)
> In practice, there will be a flow of taxpayer money into something highly subsidized that no one will ever use.
Given that despite the comparison to Starlink, the article focuses on defence and crisis response considerations after Ukraine, I don't think the people behind this proposal are really that concerned about widespread peace time use.
> Entire huge countries such as France and Italy produce basically nothing of value when it comes to tech
A small subset of well-funded companies started in Paris and immediate surroundings alone in the last 20 years (most of them much more recent). Most of these have raised between $100m-$500m, and several are unicorns:
Paris has similar levels of (some estimate more) tech startups than London, and overall France is at a similar level to the UK and Germany in terms of tech startups.
Europe ( haven't looked at numbers for just EU) is lagging in terms of VC funding relative to the US, sure - according to McKinsey, in 2019 Europe accounted for 36% of VC backed companies that raised funding in the preceding decade globally (vs. 45% for the US), and just 14% of unicorns (vs. 50% for the US), but from working in the VC field for the last 5 years, what we saw was also that capital inflows in Europe were growing rapidly as attitudes to risk have been changing, and more founders achieving exits are turning around and feeding capital back into VC funds.
Given that despite the comparison to Starlink, the article focuses on defence and crisis response considerations after Ukraine, I don't think the people behind this proposal are really that concerned about widespread peace time use.
> Entire huge countries such as France and Italy produce basically nothing of value when it comes to tech
A small subset of well-funded companies started in Paris and immediate surroundings alone in the last 20 years (most of them much more recent). Most of these have raised between $100m-$500m, and several are unicorns:
Ledger, Deezer, Shift Solutions, Malt, Agicap, Back Market, Ankorstore, Vesitaire Collective, Virtuo, Sendinblue, HiFiBio, Aircall, Mirakl, EcoVadis, Criteo, DoctoLib, Voodoo, Qonto, BlaBlaCar, LumApps, Lydia, OpenClassrooms, Shift Technology, PayFit, Meero, Ynsect, Scality, Ornicar, Wynd, HR Path
Paris has similar levels of (some estimate more) tech startups than London, and overall France is at a similar level to the UK and Germany in terms of tech startups.
Europe ( haven't looked at numbers for just EU) is lagging in terms of VC funding relative to the US, sure - according to McKinsey, in 2019 Europe accounted for 36% of VC backed companies that raised funding in the preceding decade globally (vs. 45% for the US), and just 14% of unicorns (vs. 50% for the US), but from working in the VC field for the last 5 years, what we saw was also that capital inflows in Europe were growing rapidly as attitudes to risk have been changing, and more founders achieving exits are turning around and feeding capital back into VC funds.