This week McKinsey & Company published new research that highlights what lessons could be learned from Europe’s most successful tech start-ups. The report also highlights why it is that some companies have managed to grow in a fragmented European market, with oftentimes less capital and a smaller appetite for risk.

Written by TechBBQ

Sep 3, 2021 / 5 min. read

New Report: How Europe's top tech startups get it right

This week McKinsey & Company published new research that highlights what lessons could be learned from Europe’s most successful tech start-ups. The report also highlights why it is that some companies have managed to grow in a fragmented European market, with oftentimes less capital and a smaller appetite for risk.

According to the report, European start-ups are growing at an unprecedented pace these days, and despite the range of challenges start-ups still face, growing numbers of dynamic new ventures are thriving.

To better understand how these standouts succeed, the research included a study of the top 1,000 European tech start-ups founded after 2000 in 33 countries, which include 21st-century companies such as Spotify, Adyen, and BioNTech.

The research on the top 1,000 European tech start-ups showed that these companies follow one of four distinct paths to successful scaling, built around a core strategic approach. By assessing themselves in regard to these strategic plays, European start-ups (and their investors) can make better, faster decisions and focus resources for the greatest effect. The success factors needed for those strategic plays are:

Can European start-ups become tech champions, then?

According to the report, we certainly have some well-documented challenges in Europe, but we also have some significant success stories. In fact, Europe’s top 1,000 start-ups (founded after 2000) are worth an average of €890 million, and collectively these top 1000 companies have received €140+ billion in funding and employ almost half a million people.

If you are curious to learn more about this topic, you should listen to the McKinsey keynote speech at TechBBQ on September 16 at 13.00, given by Kim Baroudy, one of the authors of the report and senior partner in the McKinsey Copenhagen office.

Read the full report here:

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