 innovation editor at the Financial Times in London. It's a great pleasure to moderate this panel today and to be back in Helsinki. I think the first time I was in Helsinki was in the 1990s. I was writing about the pulp and paper industry. It's obviously a very important industry but not quite as interesting as what's going on today. Something crazily good has happened in this part of the world since I was last year. So welcome to our pan list today. We're going to be talking about Tom's report. We have Roxanne Vazer who is the director of station F, the startup campus in Paris, and then Sebastien Szymyukowski who is the co-founder of Klana. So welcome. I wondered if we could start. Being a journalist I take a bit of a more skeptical take than Tom and I wanted to ask about how fast Europe really is moving. I mean it clearly is going very quickly but is it going as fast as it needs to compared to the rest of the world and what is going on in US and China. And if you look at some of the stats the EU still has no digital companies in the global top 15 by market capitalization digital companies and accounts for just 4% of the 200 leading online platforms. So when are we going to be able to go toe to toe with China and the US? Sebastien, do you want to start on this? I think actually European companies compared to US ones are very competitive and doing extremely well. I think China is a different league and we should all be very happy that that market is so big that they're currently focusing on winning their own market rather than coming and competing with us guys. The Chinese are faster, more hard-working, smarter, more creative, but we're happy to be here in Europe. There's less competition here as well as in the US. Okay and Roxanne you were born in Palo Alto I believe so you have a very American perspective on what's going on. How do you think Europe stacks up globally? So before we get into all the Europe bashing that I love to do I actually think we should stop and take a minute to actually consider all the positive things that have happened. I think 17 billion dollar companies in one year alone that's incredible. The number of developers being ahead of the US having increasing numbers that's not something that we should overlook. I think Tom mentioned in his presentation as well the number of IPOs some of the biggest IPOs if you want to consider it in Silicon Valley this year were European companies so I think that's stuff that we really cannot ignore and actually it's just a matter of time so your question was about time and I will let Tom tell you when that time is. I think it's we can spend a lot of time looking at indicators that tell us what's happened in the past or we can spend time which is what we're trying to do with the report to look at the data to give us an indication of what's happening in the future and I think for a long time we've been talking about the promise of European tech and I think this year as I said it's been this incredible wrecking breaking year and you know Roxanne just gave the numbers but I think we can feel confident in our ability to go toe to toe when we've produced four companies with an IPO of you know five billion or more and there were fewer actually in the US this year. I think Sebastian is absolutely right that China is a is a special case and I think you can't overlook the fact of the you know the special conditions of that market. You know I think Roxanne also kind of just said we're just getting started and you know we made the point around diversity inclusion we've kind of had all of this progress and we've done it with our hands tied behind our back and on our knees so just imagine you know how much more we're going to achieve not only when we're able to build an ecosystem that's inclusive and that speaks to all its people but also once we start tapping all those markets outside the UK and Germany and the Nordics there's almost you know yeah we've barely got started in in tapping the potential from from from from sort of Eastern and Central European and Southern Europe some super excited. All right I want to come back to that in just a minute I mean one of the things that has massively changed in Europe over the past few years as is evidence by this event is the cultural change that has happened and we were just chatting backstage about what people wanted to do when they left University. So Roxanne you're at station F this startup campus clearly being an entrepreneur is very fashionable in France now can you just tell us a bit about that. Yeah so I've seen a huge change we were talking kind of over the last 10 years you know when I first when I first came out to Europe it kind of was very far from being trendy to be an entrepreneur and I think there's some numbers today that show that in certain countries it's roughly 70% of young graduates actually want to be an entrepreneur now there's some debate around whether that's healthy or not should everybody be launching a company so there's probably gonna be some kind of fashionable trends that are gonna have people come and go and some less valuable companies be created but I think that's just the name of the game. So there's an image outside France that most people want to go and become a bureaucrat and go to Enna. Not at all the case no. And Sebastian when you're at Stockholm School of Economics did people want to be an entrepreneur and how much has it changed? I mean when we started Clona there was 7% that wanted to become entrepreneurs and today 70 so that's a massive shift back then I mean you gotta remember this was before the financial crisis people wanted to go and work at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and McKinsey which is not the case anymore right but also think that like in Sweden at least I think to some degree in other parts of Europe as well it's not only about like it's kind of interesting to see this blend of it's both about being an entrepreneur but it's also about making an impact in the world and trying to create some kind of company that can benefit the world right and that's those two trends have been combined in a very exciting way I think because I mean one is that people who have this desire to make an improvement actually use a company as a vehicle to do that and I think that's can be very disruptive and have a good very good impact on the world because operating as a company is a smart way to operate I think so I think that's a cool trend and I want to just highlight on the US and Europe comparison obviously that's close to my heart is just that I mean I think there's different industries but when it comes to FinTech I mean Europe is so far ahead of compared to the US like in the US you may mention one or two companies in Europe I don't know like 1520 which are probably all of them by now over a billion dollar valuation and we're doing extremely well so and I think that's I think there's a number of reasons for that but I also would highlight that we never give the EU credit for anything that's why we all hate it and some people want to leave it or are even planning to leave it but actually like PSD2 for example it's just such an amazing change for the benefit of the consumer to protect the consumers interest and allow the consumers to switch and so forth so I mean here actually the regulators they're doing worse in other areas like stock options and stuff but in this area they're actually doing a lot to help the FinTech industry and in general make Europe to be ahead of the game so it's pretty cool it's always a great thing for a Britain to hear what a wonderful thing the EU is but we'll leave that aside for the moment and now we were talking about the culture change one area that clearly does have to change a lot more that was identified in the Atomico report is on the issue of gender and inclusion and diversity and they're really quite shocking numbers about gender diversity if not unsurprising I guess so I'd like to ask all of you what do you think can be done about this how can tech be made more inclusive Roxanne? So I'm really glad that we're talking about this because it's a huge issue and I I'm glad that we also called it out a little bit by what it is because I do think a lot of people consider it to be someone else's problem and nobody actually comes out and says you know yes we are an all male team or we are you know we have issues with inclusion diversity as our team so I'm really glad that we actually put our finger on that again I also want to be realistic it's not a European problem and I do think that means actually there's a huge potential for Europe to even take the lead as a worldwide leader in actually changing that making a difference now what actually needs to be done there's a lot of different things a lot of organizations that are out there making suggestions kind of as a on a grassroots level but I actually I think we actually need a different type of movement today like we've we've had a lot over the past year year and a half around me too it was a lot of calling out bad behavior and I'm sad that we had to go that route but apparently people didn't know what was bad behavior and now I think we need a movement kind of in the opposite sense what is good behavior what are initiatives we should be doing and recognizing and things that we should be following so I think we kind of have to take a different approach now to the way things are handled okay Sebastian what do you think on this issue look I think it's an old complex problems so unfortunately there are no silver bullet solutions right and I think it's it's a lot of mixes but I think that some important aspects are obviously into role modeling and you know as people get more successful highlight the cases of that I think diversity obviously stretched beyond gender as well I mean in our case at Kana for example we have 80 nationalities so people from 80 different countries working there so I think that like so again like our ability to kind of recruit from all of the world bring people and so forth these are also things that drives and what are you specifically doing to make that happen are you going out and finding yeah I mean in our case is actually the problem is Stockholm is just not big enough I mean we have Spotify we have ourselves we have I settle there's a lot of successful companies and there's simply we can't find enough people so bringing people from all the world now it's because of the current political wins is becoming a little bit more challenging but but you know Sweden has been a great country in that sense to be able to bring talent from all over the world and now we also bring even more to Berlin actually which we're growing much faster in because of and that's an amazing you know multicultural city that you can bring people from all the world so. Right Tom what do you think what can practically be done to help change this. Yeah I mean I think Roxanne called it out and one of the things we highlight in the report is the number of amazing initiatives that have already proliferated that are having positive impact even in the UK alone we came up with 28 different initiatives that are tackling it from one way or another I think the reality is you know step one is to be conscious of the fact that there's a problem and then I think step two is recognition of the fact that we all have a responsibility including us as investors and then I think it's about taking those first few steps and we we actually introduced into our term sheet earlier this year a clause that they're asks of the companies that we invest into to put into place a diversity and inclusion policy if they don't have one in place already within six months and that was something that got an amazing reaction from from all of the founders but one of the bits of feedback that came back was okay well how do we do it which is why we've launched this guidebook which will help entrepreneurs and leaders to know how to think about how to plan how to build how to implement how to measure and how to iterate the policies and put it at the core of their companies and I think as I said it requires making it a first and foremost priority does that mean that you won't invest in companies that don't have sufficient diversity I think if we found that that there was a resistance then that would be something that we would think about yeah absolutely okay I just wanted to jump on to the back of that actually I also think it's really important that we talk about diversity we don't just narrow it down to men and women I actually think there's diversity means a lot more than just that it's I think one thing that we tried to do for example at station F is also address underprivileged entrepreneurs people that are not just coming out of business schools and engineering schools but also people that may have very very different backgrounds and struggled quite a bit and they don't have a degree and their refugee and maybe they've you know had a very difficult situation I think that's also something we really need to address and consider with the different diversity initiatives yeah now one of the other things that came out of the report was that as Tom has been saying tech is going right across Europe now it's not just confined to London Paris Berlin Stockholm Sebastian I wondered if you could give us a sense of where you think the next kind of hot spots are around Europe as you said glarner is now operating in lots of different markets where do you think that the next hot spots are going to be in Europe I'm not sure if it's the next I mean Berlin has been on the map for a long period of time but I just feel that like it has a lot of prequisites that other places are lacking right it has cheap housing a cheap accommodation it's and it's also a very attractive young city for young people to come from all of Europe more so to be honest in Stockholm even though I love Stockholm it's in amazing many ways but so just in general I think the prominence of Berlin is going to continue to rise to be honest it's its center and it's it's a popular place to be and then hopefully you know we'll see more parts in Eastern Europe as well happening I mean I think what's cool today is also I meet so many founders today which would say like yeah we are like four people here and you know we have a couple of developers in Ukraine and we have this and that right so I think nowadays like this whole video conference we talked about that 15 20 years ago people gonna work on a distance but actually the technology is starting to get to a maturity level where actually you can work on a distance from each other in a way so start seeing companies that are more geographically spread out as well which is pretty cool right now it used to be said that 10 15 years ago entrepreneurs in Europe went to Silicon Valley five years ago they went to London Paris Berlin Stockholm what's happening in France Roxanne I mean are if you set up a business in Leon would you stay there or would you come and work in station F in Paris yeah I think France has changed dramatically I mean you said it a few years ago I think people would look at France if you were a foreigner and you wanted to build your company there you would laugh and you would not even consider it and today that is not the case at all we see tons of international entrepreneurs from around the world wanting to come and base their companies there I think obviously some of it has been impacted by Brexit by Donald Trump in the US by High Silicon Valley prices so we see actually people instead of going to those locations now they're coming to France and I think you can be based anywhere you want I mean I think Sebastian said it great you have teams that are you know scattered throughout Europe you can be based one place have your team somewhere else you can even hop around I see entrepreneurs now that they'll be six months here six months somewhere else and I think that's that's beautiful and that allows you really to become an international company right Sebastian you were talking about what the EU has done to create more of a kind of digital single market but there are still lots of areas where it's deficient and one of the charts in the report which I thought was quite interesting was that so many companies decide to open their first international office in the US or even Australia than they do necessarily in their neighbouring country now Tom points out that that's because they don't necessarily need to open an office in a neighbouring country but still there's very much a focus that you have to make it in the US and planner itself you're operating in the US when do you think it will be when you really does have a kind of single digital market that it will be just as easy to operate in Stockholm as it is in Paris as it is in Berlin as it is in Belgrade I mean language barriers will always exist of course but I do think that one of the fallacies of EU is that they've harmonized the business rules but they haven't harmonized consumer rules right and so consequently as you move throughout Europe the consumer rules like specifically for us in banking it's even worse but just in general it's a problem that there are specific setups and every country will interpret these consumer rules in different ways even though they're officially recommended just look at GDPR even then so so the point is that like I think that's that's the kind of next challenge obviously currently it's a little bit challenging to to drive that political change through the EU but I think we I mean the problem with you really is that currently we all sit and vote for people to go there to grab as much money of that coming back to ourselves and any organization that is built up on everyone trying to grab as much as possible benefit from it is not going to be a very successful one we there has to be a revival of the idea that as us sharing something and making some sacrifices jointly to achieve some a greater common good that that is the reason behind doing it and that what's going to make it better and unfortunately that's not where the political climate is today right yeah and in France Roxanne I mean President Macron has clearly been very interested in the whole kind of tech sector and he's been a very kind of pro-European president is he going to be a kind of driving force for some of these change we need to see I hope so I think just jumping on the back of what Sebastian said I actually have seen quite a bit of change with regards to the number of companies that actually consider the US as their second market after their local country just in the past few years I think we're seeing companies that now they'll actually consider the US much much later in the game and they consider launching a number of European markets at the same time or from very very early on so even if maybe the numbers don't show it yet I think we're probably at the beginning of a new trend Tom I just want to make one extra point which I think is we should embrace this because you know we've been talking a long time about how do we grow the ambition levels of the companies that emerge from Europe and ultimately we want to build global winners and you know I think being a global winner requires winning in the US too and so to the extent that that's on the roadmap where whether it comes first or whether it comes after an expansion in Europe it's absolutely the type of ambition that we want to see and there's you know as we as a as I said earlier we're seeing more and more European companies cross the pond and have success and that's a great thing now one of the other points that you made in your presentation was that how little institutional investors tend to put into VCs and startups and I met Reid Hoffman in London the other day who was talking about his whole philosophy of blitz scaling it's quite hard to blitz scale if you don't have this massive pool of capital which is prepared to be thrown at companies like Uber to sustain them for a decade of loss making before they go public and do you sense that there is a change in the pension fund industry are they becoming more interested in the sector Tom? I mean absolutely is this is the simple answer but I think it's not necessarily as simple as they start to recognize what's happening and the money flows you know I think there are some structural challenges that need to be overcome not least in terms of the ability to deploy certain check sizes but I think we have conversations all the time with pension funds and I think the thing that has really made a difference is the transformation of performance of European venture capital which is driven by the amazing companies that have emerged from Europe and I think of course you know what are these institutional investors trying to chase it's yield and so when you see that European VC can be competitive with US VC and it's competitive to European buyout then you'll see that rebalancing happening and it's happening it's happening here in the Nordics fastest and you know I think the more that we can educate and the more that we can close this knowledge gap the faster it will happen elsewhere too. Right we're drawing to a close but I just want to ask all of you for what advice you would give to all of the entrepreneurs in the room Sebastian what is the one thing that you've learned in your career that you think would benefit the people in this audience? Oh my god I don't know no I would say in the end actually it's gonna sound a little bit cheesy but just follow your heart to be honest and like don't like it's great to take advice from other people but I mean life is really about doing what you believe in and you don't want to regret that you listen too much so just like follow your inner voice and do what you think is right. So as the singer said at the beginning or sang at the beginning life is not addressed rehearsal it's the show I believe. Roxanne do you have a bit of advice? Yeah I guess I will draw also on personal experience and kind of in a similar theme to what Sebastian just said but like when I moved to Europe about ten years ago people looked at me and they were like you're crazy you love startups you're born in Silicon Valley and you're moving to France and I think now people would totally not question that choice and I just want to like kind of hit that statement that a lot of ecosystems are growing changing developing very quickly so if you want to be based somewhere if you believe in the place that you're at stay there because it will change. Well thank you very much for a fascinating discussion but just before we leave the stage I actually want to make an announcement as a journalist I tend to report the news rather than make it but I do have some news today that I would like to share with you exclusively. In the first quarter of next year with a team of very smart journalists and entrepreneurs and investors I am launching a financial times backed but separately run media site called Sifted to cover Europe's blossoming tech sector. I've been so convinced by what I've heard today that I'm actually going to set up a startup and try to write about all of this. We intend to deliver the best journalism to tell this largely untold story of what is going right across Europe in some of the regional cities as well as the centres. We will focus on many of the issues that we've been talking about today and we want to sift the best of the content that's already out there to help you as entrepreneurs. We've already hired five great reporters including Maya Parma from the Financial Times not only is she a great tech journalist but she is also Finnish so she can really speak your language in all senses of the word and she will actually be moderating the next session. We are going to double our team over the next few weeks and we'll launch in quarter one of next year. For the moment we are a very scrappy startup like many of you and we have a very scrappy website called sifted.eu. Please sign up for our emails, look out for these leaflets which we are going to be handing around today and have a look at our site. We want to create a media platform for you to share your big ambitions and achievements and to give you and Europe a stronger voice in the global tech debate. So thank you very much to all of our panellists for a wonderful discussion and on to the next session. Thank you.