Here's a recent anecdote: A company in London had developed a seriously impressive, breakthrough technology. When they went to meet European VCs, they wanted a business plan, revenue graphs, etc., nothing about how the technology worked. They were mostly ex-McKinsey and ex-banking and probably would not have understood the mechanics anyway. They lowballed/ passed on this company, because they were raising > £10 million, which by EU standards is a massive amount, and the financials of this < 5 y/o company were too shaky. Then the founders went out to SF for a month, and pretty soon were practically drowning in termsheets.

It's a classic "market for lemons". The best EU VCs move or get moved to Silicon Valley. The ones that are left are nearly always bad.

Best description of them is a bunch of used car salesmen who would rather make their money by extracting value through tricking and hurting entrepreneurs, than by working hard to add value and make great bets. Sad, but that's been my experience over the years.

You could make a long list of specific differences, but that's the general situation.

Not the parent, but what I've heard is that they're cash-strapped, risk-averse and don't really care about growth.

Basically European VC's in hightech are living in SF. Very few are staying here.