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The largest of Southern Europe’s tech ecosystems, Spain’s tech scene has grown significantly over the past decade. The country now needs to figure out which levers it can pull in order to encourage more investment into its companies, including supportive government policies that reduce burdens on growing tech firms and their employees.
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At the moment, the Spanish ecosystem primarily offers access to earlier stage funds, and scaling a Spanish startup into a unicorn often requires turning to international investors. Ideally, we’d see more local growth funds in the ecosystem to enable those €50-100 million companies to reach that €1 billion threshold without needing to go abroad. Supportive policies can go a long way, like tax reliefs for investments into Spanish growth companies, as it is clear that our country has a lot to contribute in the tech space and we've already seen the ripple effect of big Spanish companies in the ecosystem."
Juan Urdiales
Co-founder and co-CEO, Job&Talent
Where will Europe’s next breakout companies emerge? In this chapter, we take a thematic lens to the tech ecosystem, exploring the sectors producing global success stories, and drilling down into the themes capturing investor attention.
Italy is home to the world’s tenth-largest economy, yet its tech ecosystem doesn’t yet receive the attention to match. Still, the country has produced seven $B+ companies, while a number of Italian founders are scaling impressive tech companies abroad, providing an international network for the country’s future founders to tap into.
Germany has a strong support network for tech entrepreneurialism, with world-leading universities and research centres like TUM and the Max Planck Institutes, a rich network of local and global corporates, and a growing number of $B+ companies nurturing the next generation of founders. Funding levels in Berlin and Munich have increased more than 10-fold over the past decade, but the country still struggles to encourage institutional investors to back tech companies on their scaling journey.
