Saul Klein of Index on European startups

Saul Klein, Index Venture Partner, Seedcamp founder and Skype lucky-dog exiter, did a presentation on European startups and VC in Berlin last week. Fred Wilson posted it on his blog.

Some interesting insights around

- Three of top $1B+ markets for VC now in Europe
- Some pretty famous (and wealthy) firms were started in downturns (Apple, Microsoft, Skype, MySQL)
- Bootstrap as much as you can
- Use free resources (Gears, App Engine, Seedcamp)

Thoughts on European Start Ups

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: startups vc)

European VC (and European startups) still face several challenges around the cost to expand (localization, infrastructure, feet on the ground) across the region, the return from VCs (and therefore the funds flowing into it), and the public markets. That being said... Seedcamp and Saul's efforts are some of the best efforts going on to build up the next Skype.

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VC investments down [Shocker!]

The PWC MoneyTree Q2 report has come out and shows a slowing down in VC investments. With a 16% QoQ drop.Techcrunch's post on the subject highlights that the $7.1 BILLION might be the first quarter of decline in investments since the dot-com implosion.

And so... Wall Street hit Main Street and has now hit Sand Hill Street. My assumption is a few quarters of slowed down investments with a lot of the $$ going to "inside rounds" leading to an upswing in 2-3 quarters as new valuations drop and " scarcity builds clarity."

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• PwC: VC's Invested $7.1 Billion In Q3 Overall; Internet Investments Down 36 Percent