Revolut, Mistral, Wayve and ElevenLabs are backing a six-figure “Built in Europe” advertising campaign, challenging the idea that globally important technology companies must move to Silicon Valley to scale.
The campaign, the brainchild of VC Balderton, the European investor, is backed by more than 100 European founders and CEOs and calls for more people to build or join a tech startup in Europe.
It comes amid long-standing concern that Europe is losing its top startup talent as they look to deep-pocketed US investors to scale up, as well as concern from European governments and investors that European founders feel they need to be in Silicon Valley to make it big.
Suranga Chandratillake, partner at Balderton, which backs European founders and has invested in Revolut and Wayve, explained the genesis of the campaign.
He said that Balderton had an "incredible" 2005, with notable exits and significant investments and that Balderton was broadly optimistic about the European tech ecosystem, a feeling that, he said, was not reflected on social media and in the media.
He said: “Every time the team opened up our LinkedIn or opened up the newspaper, we would read all this negative stuff about ‘Europe is not doing this right, it needs more money, we’re losing people to this, we’re losing people to that’.
"We thought, while there is obviously some truth in all that, actually why don't we sometimes sit back and say ‘well we have done a lot’.
“There are people who read those headlines and think there is no funding for companies in Europe, so 'I am going to have to move to the US'. And it’s just not true.”
He said the campaign was “trying to shift the conversation from Europe could be great to pointing out that it already is great”.
The campaign, which launches today, runs on billboards and digital formats in London, Paris, Stockholm, Berlin and Munich. It is timed to coincide with London Tech Week, Founders Forum, SXSW (South By South West) Festival, Sommarminglet in Stockholm and will run throughout VivaTech in Paris.
The campaign, which costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, also points to BuiltInEurope.com - home to a new jobs platform aggregating tech startup roles in Europe.
The site lists positions from the top 1,000 European tech startups, to connect founders with talent and help build on the sector’s momentum.
Alex Kendall, CEO of Wayve, said: “If you think about what’s going to matter in the next 100 years, it’s the really hard, deep technology, and startups are where that’s built. It’s the most adventurous, exciting thing you could do - build or join a startup in Europe.”
Anton Osika, CEO Lovable, said: "There has never been a better time to build from Europe than now. The talent is here, the capital is here, the ecosystem is here. And we have the ambition to match."
The EU and UK governments are making moves to try to keep European talent in Europe. The EU’s €5bn Scaleup Europe Fund is investing in promising European startups while the UK government-backed Sovereign AI fund is aimed at keeping the UK’s best AI startups in the world as they scale up.
Would you like to write the first comment?
Login to post comments