How do we step up the game for European VC?

Why we started Europe/Next

We got together 30 decision makers from Europe’s most influential venture firms.

Out of all partners present, every single one of them advises their portfolio companies to raise in the US. That’s not a controversial take. It’s probably not surprising.

But if the people backing European startups are routinely sending them across the Atlantic for their next round, what does that actually tell us about the state of European VC? Maybe we should be more surprised and start talking about why that is.

What’s happening right now in European VC?

Europe is at an inflection point, and for once it actually feels like one while it’s happening rather than only in hindsight. The geopolitical backdrop has shifted faster than most of us expected. The old assumptions about who our allies are and how trade works are being stress-tested.

When you zoom in on the tech ecosystem, the US and China are clearly not waiting around. They’re accelerating on AI, on talent, and on the technologies that will define the next few decades. The US invested 3 times more in AI alone last year than Europe has in its entire tech ecosystem (Vivatech).

While often going unnoticed, Europe is not standing still either. $44bn has been raised here in 2025 (State of European Tech 2025), which makes it the best year since 2022 and well above the 2024 trough. A decade ago, the continent had around 125 unicorns. Today, we have over 600. Returns do not lag behind either. European VC has outperformed US VC in the last decade (~20.8% net IRR vs ~18.2% for US VC, according to CIC). Clearly the momentum is real. So why does it still feel like European VC hasn’t decided whether it wants to be a player or a spectator?

The problem isn’t that we are weak or bad at what we do. We believe European VC is actually stronger than what we give ourselves credit for. We have the talent and the capital to do considerably more than we currently do. What we lack is the push to actually make the bolder bets, and to talk honestly about what’s holding us back.

The room that didn’t exist

As European VCs we know each other: we network, we co-invest, and we sit on the same boards. But those aren’t settings for the uncomfortable conversations we should be having. We’re not talking about fund economics that don’t work, or portfolio companies we should have let go of earlier. We don’t challenge the terms, behaviours, and norms that hold us back.

We believe that if we actually want to compete globally, we need to stop being politely competitive and start being productively honest. For a while we’ve been sitting with the feeling that we are missing the room for that. So we created Europe/Next.

We brought together 30 selected decision-makers from Europe’s most influential venture firms: one person per firm, invite-only, under Chatham House rules. The format was deliberately stripped back with no real stage, no audience, no one performing for the room. Instead we had two days of actual honest conversation grounded in real data, getting a chance to discuss what works, what doesn’t and where we should go next. We also created enough downtime to actually get to know each other over a forest run and garden games. At the end of the day one of the best ways to strengthen the European ecosystem is to connect it.

When VCs get honest

It was important to us to base these discussions on the reality of the ecosystem. Data from Carta, presented by Peter Walker, and from the European Investment Fund (EIF), which René Andres brought to us, allowed all of us to see the challenges and opportunities in black and white, starting conversations on where to go from here:

Should early-stage funds have as much in reserves as most of us do? The data says no, which kicked off a debate about whether we should rethink how much capital we keep for follow-on rounds. We also challenged each other on the fact that VC is a much longer game than we often admit. The average fund takes 15 years or longer to fully deploy, not the 10+2 that we often discuss with our LPs. So how can we work with that reality? This realisation puts even more pressure on having the right LP base, a big topic in the room. Right now Europe does not have enough professional LPs who set good terms and mandates for our VC funds.

Above all, we agreed that what we need in Europe is a mindset shift. A quarter of the decision-makers present thought that European founders should default to incorporating in Delaware from day one. Behind this, the reserved AI investments, the talent escaping to the US, and the common advice to get money from across the pond, there’s an underlying pattern: We have a tendency in Europe to side-eye ambition and optimise for not failing rather than for winning. We want ambitious startups but we don’t encourage the idea of being and building better than others. If we want talent to stay and build in Europe, this self-sabotage needs to end. To close the innovation gap, we need to become braver and we need to celebrate both the successes and the failures.

European VC’s biggest problem is partly structural: terms and behaviours, shaped by LP expectations and regulation, that limit our ability to build and return the best possible funds. But above all it might be cultural. And we have to start inside our own funds to change that mindset.

And the majority of us seem to be ready to do that. The ambition is there. And so is the optimism: Almost 90% of us believe Europe will produce a trillion-dollar tech company in the next 10 years.

What’s next?

The real work starts from here. Europe/Next is becoming an annual gathering, with smaller dinners throughout the year to keep the momentum going. But the event is just the start of the conversation.

What matters is what people take back and do differently after walking out: How they structure their next fund, what they say in their next IC, whether they stick together as a group to stand up where it matters instead of sitting with the frustration alone.