Euro Trip
Enterprise Software in Europe is Popping Off!
I just came back from an amazing tour of Europe spanning various cities where I was fortunate to meet with enterprise software founders, employees, and advisors. It was a blast to say the least and left me with a ton of optimism for the continuation of great software companies to be built in Europe.
One thing that makes me so excited about European startups is the product first approach that many companies naturally take. The US continues to be the largest density in terms of enterprise spend. For example if you look at the Global 2000, 5 of the top 10 companies are in the US.
Given this, many companies focus on entering the US to sell into this customer base and expand revenue quickly to capture market share.
In company building, there’s a great saying that “constraints lead to success”.
In Europe, most of the companies focus naturally on going product first. By designing excellent products that solve end user pain points acutely, the product can travel quickly across geographical & cultural boundaries and reach customers wherever they are whether in the US, Europe or anywhere else. A French bank’s product discovery process may be very different than an Italian bank’s process and because of this you have to rely on the product to do more heavy lifting. The so-called PLG (product led growth) motion almost comes more naturally in Europe because of these factors and constraints.
Given this, many European companies can stretch a dollar of funding for longer which especially in this market environment is a competitive advantage compared to others. Premature scaling still of course happens but usually early gtm scaling is a bit more modest. Founders also are not as accustomed to so-called “easy funding” so the funds in the bank are valued even more highly.
Balance that with an ecosystem that is striving to elevate each other daily and you get a powerful cocktail that will lead to many more massive companies to be built in Europe in the future.
Every country has it’s own superpower and that is amazing to see. For example, the design talent in France is phenomenal. Ireland/Germany has some of the best backend engineering talent I’ve seen anywhere!
At boldstart we now have 12 companies spread across Europe (not counting Israel). 92% of the companies that we partner with in the region are Product-Led first…including a little company called Snyk :)
The future is bright for European enterprise software startups and I could not be more fired up after seeing so many great people in person.