European Founder
Report 2026

There has never been a better time to be a founder in Europe. There has never been a harder time to be a founder in Europe.

Both are true. Both present reasons for optimism and alarm. Both are trends that categorically prove the emergence of a two-tier funding ecosystem in Europe.

This is a time of unprecedented success for European tech:

More founders starting new businesses. More technical, experienced founders building. Bigger funding rounds. More international Tier 1 VCs backing European founders. Startups becoming unicorns faster than ever. And a tier of decacorns re-writing what European tech companies can achieve.

But it is also a time of unprecedented competition and failure:

The number of new founders grows every year, but our early-stage funding isn't keeping pace. Beyond the mega-rounds, fewer and fewer startups are reaching Series A. The funnel is drastically narrowing and fewer companies are earning the right to scale.

At the exact time that Europe is starting to produce record-breaking rocketship unicorns, a massive early-stage funding bottleneck is emerging.

Whilst everyone has been focused on fixing Europe's growth stage funding gap, we've ignored this growing early-stage problem and it is becoming a real crisis.

In one of the most comprehensive studies of the European funding landscape, we mapped what is happening in this brave new world for European tech, what might be causing these trends and what we can do about them.

Because one thing is clear - we can't afford to strangle new founders at the exact time European rocketships are taking off.