The Real Reason Europe Missed the Tech Boom

Europe didn’t lose the tech race because of talent, it lost it because it failed to scale.

In this talk, Andreas Klinger, Founder and Investor at Prototype, breaks down why Europe missed the last major tech boom in cloud, AI, and internet-scale companies, and why fragmentation is the real bottleneck.

While the US and China operate at continental scale, Europe remains split into isolated markets with fragmented capital, regulation, and stock exchanges. The result? Founders struggle to raise pan-European rounds, scale globally, and build truly massive companies.

Andreas explains:

Why scale beats talent in power-law tech markets

How Europe’s fragmented startup system limits outcomes

Why exporting capital to US markets weakens Europe long-term

Where Europe still has a real edge: hardware, robotics, and precision engineering

What needs to change to build the next generation of European tech giants

This isn’t a pessimistic take, it’s a structural one. Europe has the ingredients. The question is whether it can fix the system fast enough to compete in a world dominated by scale.

Event: Alpha Summit '25

Speaker: Andreas Klinger, Founder and Investor at Prototype

Connect with the speaker:

Andreas Klinger- https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasklinger/

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