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".
How can we change this?
We need to create an environment where founders, innovators, and forward thinkers can succeed.
We are creating a movement focused on problem-solving and excitement for European innovation and technology, instilling a sense of pride, and promoting awareness of European excellence.
At the same time we do not shy away from constructive data-driven discussions on our weaknesses, we use them to drive our efforts and highlight where changes are needed most.
Europe has the talent, has the research, and has the founders. But we stifle them through fragmentation, local rivalries, local political agendas, and other problems of our own making.
eu/acc – by European founders, for European founders.
Our Goal
Individual European countries can't compete with the US or China. But, by removing friction and collaborating as a superhub, Europe can be a powerhouse of tech innovation.
Rather than only emulating America, Europe should embrace its unique identity, combining local distinctiveness with a commitment to pan-European progress.
If you agree with our Goal and Principles you are part of eu/acc
Europe, if we'd stop focusing on local politics and promote a general sense of European ambition.
Multiple people started initiatives inspired by eu/acc. They act autonomously but frequently with support from the eu/acc community.
Here we want to highlight a few.
A standardized legal entity for Europe
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.
To expect that any European investor will learn gotchas 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.
Apply to join this initiative on
www.european-inc.com (Coming soon)
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.
… and many more
Changing the narrative about Europe and European Tech, one data-point at a time
The reality of Europe is that we are so used to thinking in fragmented individual countries that we don't even realize how strong Europe is as an innovation hub. We tend to hear about French Tech, UK startups, or Swedish research. Individually each of those countries won't be able to compete.
But together we can be proud of where we already are.
Europe is a hub for deeptech research even if we are frequently not aware of it ourselves.
This initiative is a community effort to collect data on the European Startup Ecosystem. Highlight successes, showcase excellence, change the narrative, but also pin-point problems.
The outcome is data, reports, memes and sometimes news 😬
More to come! Anyone is welcome to join and help!
Community members are organizing meetups. The goal of those meetups is to bring people interested in deeptech, innovation or entrepreneurship together. Some are more innovation focused, some are more policy focused, all are meant to have a great time!
Upcoming meetups: (coming soon)
Join one of the initiatives above or start your own!
If you align with our principles and goals you can start an initiative.
For now please avoid policy related initiatives as we are trying to keep narrative towards policy makers simple.
Unsure how to start? Join our discord
FAQ
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.
This is a decentralized movement. The initiatives have their own communication, so do the community members. We are not like a typical NGO, we are closer to a group of people with a shared goal – improving Europe. Sometimes, like Europe, even we disagree what the ideal paths are.
There are European groups for the e/acc movement.
eu/acc is not one of them.
The goal of eu/acc is to use the ideas of accelerationism to improve Europe as a whole. A lot of our works involves regulatory improvements in places where e/acc would focus on a pure technological approach. We also try to actively work with people who disagree with us, which is also not core of e/acc's approaches.
We use the /acc postfix as a meme to share an understanding about a need of fast progress, but we are not a fork or niche of e/acc, we do not share political POVs, teams, or any other aspects apart of a focus on technological optimism.
Another famous accelerationism movements for example is oss/acc.
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.
While eu/acc involves political engagement, it is not about partisan politics. We all have our own political opinions, however we explicitly reject culture wars and fight against polarisation. Our focus is on pragmatic solutions and policies that drive progress, transcending political divides. We welcome individuals from any political orientation who subscribe to our values.
The name of this movement is inspired by the momentum of `e/acc`. By now `/acc` has become a sort of meme in many different communities. From oss/acc, to AI/acc, to bio/acc, to to many others. We wanted to use this part to quickly explain the origin of the term so it’s more than just a meme.
Accelerationism is a term with a long history in political theory, encompassing many, often contradicting movements. Surprisingly to many, it originally associated with the idea that capitalist processes in liberal democracies should be accelerated to trigger systemic change towards socialism, but it has since evolved to include a huge variety of perspectives and approaches.
We use a simple, unifying view: speeding up technological advancements for societal improvement.
Importantly, our focus is distinct from AI accelerationism, which in essence means the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence technologies under the assumption that this reduces existential risk or that there is no existential risk in doing so. While we recognise the importance of AI and technology, and make common cause against de-growth/decelerationism, our approach is rooted in a broader evidence-based agenda aimed at comprehensive societal progress in Europe.
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 ❤️
