Looking for the latest European tech stats and trends? We’ve got you covered. We’ve collected the latest European technology statistics, trends, and data to help in your quest.
2020 is going to be a turning-point year. When (not if, but when) the Covid19 epidemic is over, things are going to change.
I, like many, have been thinking about what those changes are going to look like non-stop since this whole thing started. I wrote some of those thoughts down here. I’ve also been working on a spreadsheet (now open for collaboration) to try and make a sense of the mess this virus is going to leave behind––and the opportunities it will undoubtedly create.
But before I keep losing myself in the chaotic mess that predicting the future invariably is, I thought we might all need a refresher on what our past looked like. That’s why I’m writing this article.
The thought behind it is: Looking at the different facts, statistics and trends related to European Tech in the last few years might help clarify what I think about the future. So I read Atomico's 'State of European Tech' report again, and studied it more closely. I did some additional research, and tried to compile all the important facts regarding our ecosystem over the last few years.
Here’s the result:
(Disclaimer: I’m still trying to work through all this information, trying to make sense of what trends are going to change for the better, which for the worse, and which are going to stay more or less the same. I have no magic eight ball and, as I said, I’m done trying to predict things. For now, all you’re going to get are facts and figures.)
First things first. A summary. Lots of people are not the kind to go deep, __deep__ into the numbers (and make no mistake, this is what's gonna happen in this post). That is perfectly okay. This compendium is for you. Now, if you do like detail, just stick around.
Now that our little summary is out of the way, let's go ahead and dive into the different areas and their numbers.
Although founders are the engine of any Tech market, Investors play a crucial role. We all know that. But what do the numbers say on the matter? Who are these people?
Although there aren't a lot of numbers regarding fundraising activity in 2019, we can say that European VCs raised more than $13B during 2018 and that, during the first six months of 2019, that number was $7.5B.
Let's look at the median and mean fund sizes at final closing in the previous three years:
Funds allocated by government agencies to European VCs since 2014 amount to $9 billion. In turn, Corporate investors account for 6.2 billion and private individuals for 4.4 billion.
Looking at different regions:
On a population-adjusted basis:
As you can see, VCs based in Luxembourg and Switzerland have quite a bit of funds, but the Netherlands and the UK don't lag much behind on a per capita basis.
In other news –– 1,500+ unique institutions have made at least one investment into rounds of less than $10M and more than 100 institutions have invested in a round of $100M or more.
In turn over 2,600 unique institutions participated in one or more deals in 2019. This number could go up even higher when adjusted for reporting lag.
Throughout the last few years, there were a few firms leading mega rounds on their own. The most active investors (at least when it comes to late-stage European tech) are Softbank (and its Vision Fund), Insight Venture Partners, Kinnevik and DST Global.
According to Tech.eu’s Blooming Late Report:
Although not clear from the graph, Tech.eu’s report also tells us that:
Now that we've covered what the make-up of European investors (and their funds) is like, let's move ahead and take a look at what their investments are.
According to Atomico, founders have raised a record amount of money in 2019, and there has been a record number of mega rounds ($100M+). 40% of all funding raised in the first 9 months of 2019, actually.
This record number reached $39.8 billion. Around one quarter of all the money invested during 2019 went to British startups.
Of that money, London alone took $9.7 billion –– more than twice the amount raised by Berlin's startups ($4.5 billion). Nearly three times of the money raised by Parisian companies ($3.3 billion)
At the time of their report's release Europe was, in fact, on track to reach $34.3B invested in European tech in 2019 only.
Q2 2019 was the best EVER when it comes to capital raised. In those few months, founders raised $11.6 billion. What is driving this growth? Maybe the fact that 36% of all funding raised in 2019 by European tech companies was comprised of deals of over $100 million. If we look at the big outliers, we see that:
In that 36% made up of mega-rounds, six of those rounds were of more than $500 million each:
To set the stage a little bit –– according to the Blooming Late Report mentioned before:
On the other hand, according to Tech.eu’s “The European tech investment landscape” report:
For a bit more detail––let’s look at this graph:
(Source: Blooming Late Report)
When it comes to Angel investment, the numbers are interesting too. In 2018, for example, these types of investors were responsible for $8.6B of the raise capital.
As mentioned before, US and Asian investors have played a big part in 2019 in European founder's capital raising. What is interesting to note, is that they've been instrumental when it comes to rounds of over $100M. In fact, 90% of all $100M+ rounds raised in 2019 involves at least one investor from the US or Asia.
To set the stage –– According to data from Pitchbook & CB Insights:
Internationally shared-funding aside, let's compare the numbers for Europe to those of the other two big players in the world.
On other news, a recent Crunchbase article explains that though EU and US start-ups share an, on average, similar size, US scale-ups tend to have much more growth over-time. Take a look at this graph:
Regarding the number of total startups –– the US has 3 times more than the EU. China, too, surpassed Europe. The Asian nation has 40% more startups which, in turn, are fuelled by over 2.5x the capital.
Finally, and regarding the GDP percentage invested into the startup market, Europe lags behind China and the US. The numbers are:
Let's take a look at some of the more important industries when it comes to European Tech.
When it comes to Legaltech, the numbers are interesting. A recent Thomson Reuters report found out that:
The total number of companies that have raised money since 2015 amounts to +13,000. In fact, here's a graph showing the top 10 hubs by numbers of unique funded companies:
In terms of cumulative investment since 2015, we see that +$10 billion comes from Europe's top 3 countries.
If we zoom in on the UK, we know that:
In terms of capital invested and number of deals, the top 10 hubs for 2019 are:
Take a look at this graph from the TechNation 2020 Report:
Diversity is a touchy subject. Interesting, but ripe for controversy. So we're going to refrain from commenting here. (If interested in Seedtable's take on the matter, you can look at our take on it)
When breaking down data by socioeconomic background:
When breaking down the data by race:
When breaking down the data by gender:
We just mentioned Atomico's founder survey, but it is worth taking a closer look. For the Diversity and Inclusion sub-section of their 2019 State of European Tech report, Atomico polled over 1,200 European Tech Founders and asked them a bunch of questions. Here are some interesting numbers:
But, interestingly enough, let's look at some examples of the population percentages for women scientists and engineers in some European countries.
And, finally, when it comes to gender composition at the executive level, 11 out of 12 executives are men.
To finish, let's move away from the diversity & inclusion subject and take a closer look at what we know about the Talent (founders and employees) partaking in the European tech ecosystem:
In the UK, for example, there has been a 40% increase in employed tech talent (in the last 2 years).
That number amounts to 9% of the UK’s national workforce.
But the UK isn’t the only place where Tech talent is taking over the workforce. According to Eurostat (with records measuring up to 2018):
When talking about developers, Atomico's survey found out that 11% of professionals identify as freelancers (compared to the US' 6%.) In fact, the numbers of developers in Europe vs the US tells an interesting story.
And, if we break down what that number looks like for the top European regions, the numbers show that there has been a steady increase of developers across the board.