🇪🇺 eu/acc is a decentralized community movement to accelerate progress in Europe
through innovation, technology, and a Europe-positive mindset.
🇪🇺 eu/acc is a decentralized community movement to accelerate progress in Europe
through innovation, technology, and a Europe-positive mindset.
Europe is known for some of the best research in the world and the best talent. But Europe is not known for the best opportunities.
In all honesty, it’s so bad that, by now, Europe is considered a meme in the international startup ecosystem. Not a place that innovates, but that – at best – "only regulates". A place ambitious people "have to leave".
Don't believe me? Watch Eric Schmidt or Marc Andreessen talk about Europe. It's so common as an opinion that even many future founders in Europe start to believe it too.
To change this we need to create an environment where founders can succeed. If we want the innovation created in our universities to be brought to market by Europeans instead of Americans we need to fix the root causes.
What's the root cause?
People mention ambition, bureaucracy, taxes and hundreds of other reasons. None of them are the true root cause, they are just the symptoms of the root cause.
For startups, Europe’s main problem is fragmentation.
From consumer markets, languages, laws, education systems, taxes, to funding – Europe acts like a network of small countries instead of one unified market.
To be a place where innovation can thrive, we don't need to become more American, we need to become more European. And the Euro is the proof that we can.
The goal of this project is to…
Highlight excellence – to shift the discussion from negative memes to our impressive realities
Showcase the actual problems – to unify the narrative of our requests to policymakers
Suggest few and simple solutions – to allow policy makers picking efforts with high leverage
eu/acc – by European founders, for European founders.
Wake up Europe, the digital age is bypassing you. You have no Google , Amazon, Meta, Apple. You arrogantly called SpaceX a fanciful dream and it wiped out the European Space Agency. You have no Nvidia and your response to AI has been to regulate before you have anything domestic…
Germany and Spain are complete nightmares. Will never invest in startups with those entities anymore. Germany: total bureaucracy, awful legal & notary process. Spain for strange & potentially prohibitive tax laws.
Germany is the worst. Never investing there again. The notaries have totally ruined that system and the rest is terrible.
Simplify investing in European startups and
see a generation of ambition flourish
The most concerning part about this is that most Europeans don't realize how stagnant Europe has now become Europeans are literally blue-pilled and are mostly concerned with climate change, immigration and the Ukraine war Nobody in Europe is thinking why increasingly everything…
Ceterum censeo: There are no "European startups". There are plenty national ones, trying to grow within Europe but face 27+ different markets, rules, regulations, social security, taxation, procurement, and not to mention least: fundings. #EUStartupsSummit #EUSS2024 #EUSSMalta
Not directly about entity, but my current WTF experience: I as a founder need to manage investor KYC for money-laundering compliance. 🇩🇪 notary already required it according to 🇩🇪 law. 🇵🇹 investors need it from shareholders according to 🇵🇹 law. etc. ARGH!!
A standardized legal entity for Europe
In the US, as an investor you receive an email from an ambitious founder that leads you to a website with a contract. You press a button. You just invested. You are done.
Standardization of legal entities (Delaware Inc), documents (YC SAFE) and software (AngelList, Carta, etc) made this possible.
In Europe a typical fundraising round might start with a ritualistic killing of a goat in front of a notary and – depending on the country – end in kneeling in front of local governments to summon paper documentation in time. You think we are joking… we wish it would be that reliable and simple.
So, countries with the population of a Chinese office building, or the GDP of an averagely successful computer game, have completely different processes, terms, expectations, constraints and legal dances an investor has to learn.
To expect that any European investor will learn this for 27 countries is absurd. To expect this from American investors is delusional.
To then complain that European startups do not have enough funding is hypocritical.
California is bigger than 23 of the EU countries, and still all of Silicon Valley uses the "Delaware Inc." because standards in investment processes matter. This is where ripple effects start.
You want to help founders in Europe to accelerate?
You want to support European startups?
We need an European entity standard. Now.
Learn more about our working group (Coming soon)
Want to help? Join our discord!
Europe, if startups would have an European-wide entity for investments.
There is no eu/acc without UK, Switzerland, Norway and co.
And success for Europe as a continent only works together as a whole. We are calling the movement eu/acc as a lot of the problems need to be solved at the EU level as it's the biggest block.
A standard entity for European startups acts like a platform for further standardization. Investment documents will be one of them. Stock options hopefully come soon after.
This has ripple effects down to every aspect of the startup ecosystem.
Our goal is not a centralized European government as this would be overreaching for this project.
They are lying. That's it.
They are not for European Startups.
They are most likely optimizing for local gains and local political wins.
This is not even good for their own <random region> startups.
European startups cannot succeed if there are several dozen different legal entities. There is no velocity without standardization. Everything else is just political powerplay.
Yea…
FWIW - we agree. It sounds impossible. Imagine politicians agreeing on anything that's not their localized interest. 🤯
There are four reasons why it's worth a try:
- We managed it before and got a centralized currency across Europe.
- There were initiatives like this 10-15 years ago already and they only narrowly failed.
- If we don't, we are at risk of failing a whole generation of European startup founders.
- This is what the European Union was created for: removing friction for its citizens.
We are a group of either very ambitious or very naive people.
If you want to help please join our discord. For anything else feel free to reach out via email.
– proudly made in Europe ❤️
