So I am not the only one feeling Europe’s potential anymore ;-) The IHT is running a post-DLD article claiming than Europe is closing the gap. While I am quite happy about this kind of discussion, I can’t stop thinking that we are always talking about the same examples (Skype, Netvibes, FON, etc…). That in itself shows that the market is not as dynamic as we would like.

But there are some great newcomers (Polar Rose, Rebtel, Vpod, Sevenload), big names to open the right doors (Varsavsky, Zennström and Friis, Chappaz, Lemeur, etc…) some money flowing in (Wikio raised 4 millions two days ago), and more and more events to put people together. We’re moving slowly, but at least in the right direction.

Further proof is found in the last past of the article:

[…] number of participants at the conference contended that with the quick spread of ideas in an Internet age, Silicon Valley companies no longer have a first-mover advantage.

Gerald Haag, a former Amazon executive who is a founder of Dropshop, a Munich-based start-up for auction sellers, cited a case in which an idea from Silicon Valley was introduced in Europe. Two weeks later, he said, “there was a German version.”

Fast movement. It’s about time it happens around here!

Link

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 12:39 pm and is filed under business, english. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.