Hello Europe

One of the things that really hit home to me when I went to the Berlin Web 2 Expo last week (as soon as I have sorted out the ton of business cards I got there, I’ll do an overview!) was the increasingly pan-European nature of the tech startup scene. And it’s something I would like UK-based startups to start thinking more deeply about. The signs are that this is beginning. TIOTI.com was developed in the UK and the Ukraine, for instance. Plenty of guys I spoke to in Berlin said things like they were VC funded in London, but based in, say, Berlin, developed in Warsaw but had a sales office in Silicon Valley. Any combination is possible now. Try Sclipo, who are based in Barcelona (nice lifestyle, cheap rent) but aimed at UK/US, Spain and Germany. Trains and air connections with Europe now are pretty easy to access (but please, please, carbon-offset your travel). Which is in part why I thought I’d welcome EuropeanStartups.com to the blogosphere, written Ivan Trajkovic in Vienna, Austria. I look forward to reading his coverage of the scene, and I’ll also be “amping-up” my own coverage and knowledge about tech startups in the wider European context.