From Wired, October 14:
A cluster of European cities within a five-hour train ride of London could become a unicorn factory to rival Silicon Valley, argues tech investor Saul Klein.
For over a decade, the tech industry has been chasing unicorns—those elusive startups valued at over $1 billion. The obsession began in 2013, when Aileen Lee—a VC based in Palo Alto—coined the term that captured the imaginations first of founders and investors, and then prime ministers and presidents. But these mythical beasts are also rare: only 1 percent of VC-backed startups ever reach this status.
s society enters the age of AI, and financial markets put renewed value on business fundamentals, our understanding of what makes a successful tech company is evolving. Promise alone doesn't make a national, regional, or global champion. Champions are those companies that combine both the promise of untapped growth and the fundamental metrics that demonstrate strong and sustainable customer demand.
Until recently, Silicon Valley has been seen as the world's undisputed unicorn factory. But Europe's innovation ecosystem has matured to a point where it is consistently producing companies with both the vision to change the world and the fundamentals to sustain that change. Leading the pack is a cohort of more than 507 “thoroughbreds”—startups with annual revenues of at least $100 million.
More than a third of these high-potential companies are headquartered in what we call New Palo Alto: not a singular location, but a network of interconnected ecosystems within a five-hour train ride of London. After the Bay Area, this is the world's second most productive innovation cluster and includes cities with industrial heritage like Glasgow, Eindhoven, and Manchester, as well as world-renowned capitals of culture, policy, and academia like Amsterdam, Cambridge, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, and Paris.
They’re home to companies such as low-cost computer maker Raspberry Pi, whose technology was invented and developed in Cambridge, manufactured in Pencoed, South Wales, and sold worldwide. Raspberry Pi recently crowned over a decade of growth with a listing on the London Stock Exchange. At the time of listing, it had revenue of $265 million and $66 million in gross operating profits....
....MUCH MORE
—Europe's 100 Hottest Startups
