Building in Europe: What Has to Change

Welcome back to Inside 25/8 Fintech.

On Thursday I spent the day at the AustrianStartups Summit in Vienna. The motto was "No Risk, No Fun(ds)", and someone had even taped it onto the asphalt as a hopscotch: START at the bottom, the risk in the middle, the EXIT at the far end. I shared my first impressions in a post yesterday.

This edition goes one step further. Behind almost every session there was the same question: what does it take to build a company in Europe today? Here are the four answers that stayed with me.

1. AI Leadership: Your Team Is Changing 🤖

AI was everywhere at the summit. Not as a buzzword on a slide, but as something that already changes how companies are built and led. And not in ten years, but in the coming months.

My favourite topic of the last weeks is AI leadership. The question is no longer whether you use AI. The question is how you lead it. An AI colleague needs what every good team member needs: a clear role, clear goals, the right context, and honest feedback when something goes wrong. A vague briefing gives you vague results, with people and with machines.

That is why leadership does not become less important. It becomes more important. And one thing stays human: trust. Customers, partners and teams still decide based on the people behind a company. In financial services even more so.

2. The Framework: Local Is Fine Until You Grow 🇪🇺

Austria has a lot going for it. The FlexCo is a great structure if you start here and stay here. But as soon as you go international, even just across Europe, you need different structures, and it gets complicated fast.

That is why the idea of an EU Inc, one company form for all of Europe, matters so much. I had a short exchange about it with Laura Raggl this week, and I agree with her: for an ecosystem like ours to work, the framework has to be right. It would be a strange outcome if the country that already has the FlexCo experience ended up slowing down the European version.

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3. Bureaucracy Is a Location Factor 📦

A small example from this week. Andreas Herb shared a video about the new EU packaging regulation. Since August, having your name on the bag can be enough to count as a producer with documentation duties. There is an exception for micro businesses, but a bakery with a few more employees carries the full load.

Every single rule may make sense on its own. Together they add up. More and more of an entrepreneur's time goes into compliance, governance and documentation instead of the actual business. A location only grows if it stays doable for the people who build companies there. Otherwise businesses close, move away, or never start. And Europe slowly turns into the retirement home of the global economy: lovely to visit, with lots of beautiful old castles.

4. The Exit Is Part of the Plan 🚪

At the end of the hopscotch was the EXIT. A sale, a buyer, maybe one day the stock exchange. One of the founders at the summit was Michael Hurnaus, co-founder of Tractive. Founded in 2012, sold to Bending Spoons this year, and seen as one of the biggest exits Austria has had so far.

What I took from the exit discussions: an exit rarely falls from the sky. It is worth thinking early about who could one day be the right buyer or strategic partner, and building those relationships long before you need them. Which paths exist, when which round makes sense, how it looks when it goes well. These are questions for the beginning of the journey, not for the end.

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No risk, no fun(ds). Europe has the founders, the ideas and the brainpower. What it needs is a framework that rewards people for taking the risk, and leaders who are ready to build with both human and AI colleagues.

A lot of what I heard on Thursday confirmed what I had worked out for myself over the last months. That is a good feeling, and it makes the next jump easier.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Stay focused and trust the process.

Your Thomas