In recent years, Europe’s start-up ecosystem has seen a surge in the number of unicorns and the pace at which they are created. Of the 99 venture-capital-backed European unicorns, 14 were added in 2019 alone.1 These include Germany’s neobank N26, France’s healthcare scheduling service Doctolib, and Lithuania’s online used-clothing marketplace Vinted. Despite this accelerated activity, European start-ups still lag in achieving successful late-stage outcomes when compared with other start-up ecosystems.
