It is Seedcamp Week 2010 in London this week, an event which usually precipitates conversation on how the European (and indeed global) startup ecosystem is progressing so when I read Vivek Wadhwa’s post on Techcrunch
this morning with advice to Russia on what they should do to develop
their ecosystem I was moved to share a few thoughts of my own.
First the big picture – in my opinion the European startup ecosystem is maturing nicely. I agree with Saul Klein’s point in his post on ecosystems from nearly a year ago that these things take time, or in his words “great things take time”. So even though I would like to see more startups coming out of Europe and more venture capital here, I think we need to have patience, and that we shouldn’t be unhappy with the rate of progress. As I’ve said many times the European venture capital industry has only been around for 15 years at any scale, and the last ten years have contained two of the biggest economic busts in the last one hundred years, and whilst there is much to do, and we certainly mustn’t be complacent, we shouldn’t expect that we can create a Silicon Valley over night.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Building an ecosystem to rival Silicon Valley | The Equity Kicker
