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There’s heaps of free coffee, a hotly-anticipated side event at an iconic London nightclub and I’m wearing a full-Sifted-pink jumpsuit: in other words, Sifted Summit has officially kicked off.
For two days, thousands of founders, startup operators and investors are gathering in the UK capital, in the words of one attendee, “to keep [their] finger on the pulse of the ecosystem”.
As is often the case with European tech conferences, the mood is optimistic. Kicking things off yesterday morning, General Catalyst investor Alexandre Momeni said: “I still think it is the best time ever to be a founder in Europe.”
Despite a rough couple of years, in which funding for European startups dropped nearly 50% to $63bn in 2023, according to Dealroom data, the pieces remain in place for success, said Momeni.
“The fundamentals in Europe haven’t changed,” he said. “It’s a very attractive place for talent, there is more capital than ever and now we have companies with a certain scale, so we can believe that we’ll have a few public outcomes.”
It doesn’t mean these are easy times for founders. Mike Turner, a partner at law firm Latham & Watkins who specialises in early-stage and growth tech companies, said during a panel: “Going into 2024, we thought Q1 and Q2 would be a bit choppy, and then normal again. That has simply not happened […] the return to normality is being pushed to some point in 2025.”
The rocky geopolitical context and regular reminders that Europe is falling behind the US and China on innovation and productivity — as outlined in a recent report from former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi — certainly aren’t helping morale.
But hope for European tech is still strong. From the abundance of high-quality talent to the action of some governments in favour of startups, there are indicators that the region is starting to tick the right boxes.
“The running dialogue for a while has been that the US thinks Europe lacks a level of drive,” said UK healthtech Berry Health founder Fredua Akosa on a panel. “But we’re seeing entrepreneurs, investors and governments are really going for it.”
It’s not all about the big picture. What’s actually on founders’ minds is more likely to concern their next fundraise, talent acquisition strategy or debating Paul Graham’s ‘founder mode’ vs ‘manager mode’ — at least judging by how busy Sifted Summit’s ‘Startup Life’ stage has been (‘the fun one,’ according to one attendee).
“The market is so tough so you want to focus on making the company great,” said parcel delivery startup Hived founder Murvah Iqbal during a panel. And as Starling Bank founder Anne Boden reminded the audience: “Entrepreneurship is really, really hard… Nothing comes without pain.”
There was a lot of handshaking in the queues for the food trucks; one startup operator told me they managed a five-minute chat with a couple of VCs between two panels, while a founder said they sat through all the AI-themed talks to get up to speed on how the technology could take their company a step further. See you there for Day Two?
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/sifted-summit-day-one/
