With regards to lack of investors I don't think it's as simple as that. If it was only a matter of investments then surely US investors or Asian investors could just come in with the money. There is something that makes European VCs risk averse and keep american investors out of Europe IMO.
> I hate the word unicorn too, but it's shorter than private market companies with a valuation of more than $1 billion :)
Ah, is 1 billion the limit for the 'unicorn' definition? In what amount of time? :-) We have 7-year old companies, with 50+ employees posing around as startups everywhere these days. It's not related, but you know... Everyone is playing with words here :-P
> With regards to lack of investors I don't think it's as simple as that.
Of course you don't, otherwise you wouldn't have written a blog post... You could tweet! But, unfortunately, as most social phenomena is not that complex :-)
The reason we can't have a "unicorn" in Europe is that no one is going to support a company that it's expenses outsize it's turn-over even if this is because of extremely high growth rate.
If you're lucky enough, you might land some millions from some startup event. But even they, ask to see growth (in terms of users) and (hehe) immediate ROI.
In startup Istanbul 2014 the no1 startup which received investment was the only company who didn't actually need it... It was already generating way more than it could burn. So it was a very easy bet.
Apparently US investors don't even like going out of Silicon Valley, why would they go all the way to Europe?
Small-cap companies is shorter than that too and it actually means something. Don't give excuses for using stupid terminology.
It's an annoying term, but it works (unfortunately)
One of the differences is European investors tend to think on the basis that if it walks like a horse, neighs like a horse and only actually does the same job as a horse ....
You're both right.