President Trump is the “biggest force of good for European venture”, according to the co-founder of one of Europe’s most active venture capital firms, who yesterday urged the European VC industry to seize the moment presented by Trump’s “polarised” politics.
Speaking to an audience of European VCs, Oliver Holle, co-founder, CEO & managing partner, Speedinvest, gave a rallying cry to the audience.
He called on European VCs to shift their mindset, build bigger VC businesses and take advantage of new capital opportunities arising from Asia and other markets which were not aligned with Trump’s politics.
While saying that Trump tariffs had not been good for Europe, he said he had never felt so proud to be European and said that European values of “modesty”, “seeking consensus” and being democratic were resonating with founders and investors.
Holle said: “If I talk to founders, I see an opening, I see founders that are actually interested to align with capital that is also aligned with the values that they see work.”
Holle said that founders, scientists and investors were relocating to Europe and that investors from Japan and other markets were relocating capital to Europe, in light of Trump’s politics.
He said: “They want to grow up in an environment that is a bit less polarised.”
Holle called on the European VC industry to take action and “get their act together”.
He said the European VC ecosystem needed a mindset change, with a focus on building bigger VC firms, acting like entrepreneurs, who write bigger cheques.
He added: “There is no need to have thousands of small seed funds in Europe. We need to consolidate.”
But William McQuillan, partner, Frontline Ventures, the B2B investor, also speaking at the EUVC Summit, urged European investors not to be “isolationist”.
He said: “We need to be careful as long-term investors not to become too isolationist in our thinking and to continue to think globally.”
He pointed to data showing that when European firms go public, on average, over 40 per cent of their revenues are from the US.
He said: “The US is a huge market and when you want to build global companies in Europe you still need to be thinking internationally as well.”
