How would this organization address that fundamental psychological block?
It'll make it easier for investors in one country to invest in businesses in another (assuming both are in EU of course). Larger pool of available investors == larger pool of investors who are fine with higher risks.
Currently, when you raise money, you usually end up with just local investors, because others can't be bothered to having to understand your local laws and regulations, and with everything that comes with that.
Personally, that's what's stopping me too. In one case I still went through and invested in a company in another country, but in most cases I don't even bother reading deeper about the company unless it's in the same country, would have to be an exceptional idea and team for it to be worth it.
The EU Inc. makes pan-EU operations simpler for businesses. This decreases internal barriers for trade, so it will lead to growth!
I feel like the mentality problem will follow the market realities. If startup founders become rich, they turn into investors and the startup snowball keeps growing.
Or, in reality: there's literally no expectation for companies to succeed or to turn in profit in the US, and hasn't been for over a decade.
US startups now exist to do one thing hoping for exactly one of two outcomes. Do: spend unlimited investor money. Hope: to be acquired by larger entities, or to engage in VC-subsidized predatory-pricing long enough to try and kill others doing the exact same thing, and become "too big to fail".
It's been a lot longer than a decade. The initial dot-com boom was nearly 30 years ago.
It's very much institutionalized at this point. And the US continues to produce the most valuable companies in the world.
Menawhile almost every single of those "valuable" companies are either actively harmful, or keep offloading the effects of their operations onto society.
Prime example: Uber lost 20 billion dollars, will never get them back, and offloaded all the issues of gig workers on workers themselves, or the society. It's "value" (market cap) is "175 billion dollars" (it's not)
For my third venture, I cold emailed a US VC (from their about us page) that specializes in cyber. Within a month I had a term sheet. I didn’t take it because it was contingent on relocating to the US or adding a US based cofounder/senior person ... but they were super proactive, introduced me to senior cyber operators, getting design partners and were clearly willing to underwrite founder risk early.
In contrast, simply changing my LinkedIn status to “stealth” triggered 15+ inbound messages from EU focused investors .. mostly low effort outreach, deal scouts .. It got to the point where I had a template reply along the lines of: “I’m not looking for VC coaching or therapy sessions — I just need fire and forget capital. If that works, happy to talk.” Every single one either went silent or declined.
In my experience, many European investors index heavily on hierarchy, control, validation, and internal consensus and tend to operate from a very rigid playbook of what a “proper” startup is supposed to look like .. whatever "proper" means.
I haven't seen that personally, most of the VCs I've worked with here in Europe who live here in Europe, invest in European companies. Most of them invest in companies in the same country they live in, because it's a bit of a hassle to invest in companies from other countries currently (hoping that EU-INC makes that easier), but none of them regularly invest in US companies.
However, most HNW Europeans who invest in early stage do not invest in the EU and therefore you will not have worked with them.
But the claim was that early stage VCs in Europe invest in US instead, contrary to my experience. If they were instead investing in US companies, I'd see that instead, I don't know if I used the wrong word here, where exactly is the tautology?
I don't understand the assumption that I wouldn't know what my peers are up to, unless you're assuming I only know these people because they specifically invest in European companies, is that what you're trying to imply?
Not to disrespect your experience, but I don't it is particularly relevant, because the capital deployment from EU HNW is overwhelming deployed outside the bloc, largely in the US.
> I don't understand the assumption that I wouldn't know what my peers are up to, unless you're assuming I only know these people because they specifically invest in European companies, is that what you're trying to imply?
I do suspect your peers aren't the Europeans deploying the majority of early stage capital or that you don't know what they're investing in.
Again, that directly goes against my own experience with the very same people you say are investing largely in the US. Not sure if I'm not being clear, or if I'm using the wrong words, but clearly something is missing/misunderstood here.
I'm actually quite curious who it is you think are people in the EU deploying capital in early stage investments, as you appear to be very confident?
I suspect maybe you're thinking of people investing in EU startups to avail of the myriad tax incentives like Germany's INVEST, Ireland's EIIS, etc. If so, then that represents a tiny fraction of capital invested by EU HNWs in early stage companies.
If the EU really wants to light the fire, they should invest all those suddenly available defense euros in European companies only. Keep that going for a decade and there'll be a whole new generation of angel investors and small funds run by recently exited entrepreneurs with a soft spot for proper innovation. The SV VC culture didn't pop into being magically. It happened because a sufficiently large % of VCs had been entrepreneurs in a previous life (and not bankers), and their attitudes rubbed off on the rest.
"Today, if a company wants to scale up, it is confronted with different requirements in each Member State - that leads to an overwhelming 27 different rulebooks."
One of the biggest investors in Europe are pension funds. And this is one of the reasons why they did not invest in EU startups. And they did not expect this move until 2028. So it's moving faster than expected for whatever that is worth.
https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/pension-funds-set-to-drive-europe...
https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/pension-funds-are-open-to-investi...