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EU Inc and Capital Markets: Europe’s Scale-Up Test | E785 · Blockchain Germany – Web3 Startups, Crypto Innovation & Venture Capital by Startuprad.io™

• 0:00
  Europe has a scale-up fund with a €5 billion
• 0:04
  target. The European Commission has put in €1
• 0:07
  billion, and that is the only commitment we could find
• 0:11
  disclosed by name. Europe has a new company for
• 0:14
  startups. It is still a proposal, and the European Parliament
• 0:18
  has not yet voted on it. Europe has a new
• 0:22
  rulebook for public buyers. The target for finishing the
• 0:25
  negotiations is end
• 0:31
  Europe is adding growth capital faster than it is removing
• 0:35
  the barriers to scaling. The question for
• 0:38
  2031 is whether its best companies
• 0:42
  can grow globally without having to move their strategic
• 0:46
  center out of Europe.
• 0:58
  This is Startuprad.io, your startup podcast and YouTube
• 1:01
  channel on startups and venture capital in Europe with focus on
• 1:05
  Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Hello and welcome everybody, my name
• 1:09
  is Joe. I am coming to you from Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and
• 1:13
  this is part number 8 of our series, The European
• 1:16
  Scale-Up Question or The European Scale-Up Gap. For
• 1:20
  7 episodes, we diagnosed the problem Today we
• 1:24
  ask what would actually have to change between, say,
• 1:28
  2027— we're very close to it— and 2031 for
• 1:31
  Europe to produce more globally scaled technology companies.
• 1:35
  And we write down how we will check.
• 1:39
  It's 2 years after the Draghi report. The Joint European
• 1:43
  Disruptive Initiative tracked the follow-through. According to
• 1:46
  its Draghi Tracker, about a quarter the recommendations
• 1:51
  have been implemented. Europe does measure its startup
• 1:54
  conditions. The European Commission publishes a Startup and
• 1:57
  Scale-Up Scoreboard with 36
• 2:01
  indicators comparing member states. What nobody
• 2:04
  tracks in public is the outcome for the same companies
• 2:08
  over time— which ones scaled, which ones moved,
• 2:12
  and which ones failed. This is the gap.
• 2:16
  This episode tries to fill. So today I
• 2:19
  separate 3 things: policy announcement— what
• 2:23
  governments and institutions say they will do—
• 2:26
  infrastructure changes— what actually alters the
• 2:30
  conditions under which companies scale—
• 2:33
  and observable outcomes— what founders, investors, and
• 2:37
  customers then do differently. Most of the
• 2:41
  debate is about the first This episode is more about the
• 2:45
  third. So here's my thesis in one breath:
• 2:50
  Europe is adding growth capital faster than it's removing
• 2:54
  some of the barriers to scale. This
• 2:57
  creates a risk— companies may still need to
• 3:01
  relocate to grow. Our scorecard will
• 3:04
  test whether they can scale globally
• 3:08
  while keeping their strategic center in Europe, and it will
• 3:12
  reward the cases that prove us wrong. I
• 3:15
  call the timing mismatch the sequencing gap. A new
• 3:19
  program is an input. A company scaling differently
• 3:23
  is an outcome. This episode rates Europe on outcomes.
• 3:28
  Where we are in the argument: Part 1 defines the scale-up gap
• 3:32
  in our overall series. I mean, Part 2 called
• 3:35
  fragmentation a hidden growth tax. Part 3 of our
• 3:40
  scale-up series showed a capital architecture
• 3:43
  breaks between the rounds. Part 4
• 3:47
  was demand that does not turn into deployment.
• 3:51
  Part 5 was talent that does not
• 3:55
  recycle. Part 6 introduced capital
• 3:58
  gravity, and Part 7 showed that Europe's
• 4:01
  strongest hubs do not add up to one market.
• 4:06
  In Parts 6 and 7, we We put a forecast on record.
• 4:10
  The EU Inc. will not apply before January 1st,
• 4:15
  2028, at 75% confidence. That
• 4:18
  forecast stays still on record and we'll score it on
• 4:22
  that date. Well, maybe a few days later because,
• 4:26
  you know, New Year's. Anyway, today I add a second
• 4:30
  stricter one. Defining scale
• 4:33
  infrastructure. First, a definition, because we will use
• 4:37
  this from now on. Scale infrastructure
• 4:42
  is the set of financial, commercial, institutional,
• 4:46
  and human systems that lets a company grow from
• 4:49
  product-market fit into global leader without rebuilding
• 4:53
  its operating environment every time it grows.
• 4:57
  Startup Radio's way to measure it is the the
• 5:00
  Scale Infrastructure Scorecard. It has
• 5:05
  5 tests, and each test asks about companies'
• 5:08
  behavior, not government announcements.
• 5:13
  Number 1, capital. Can a company raise its
• 5:16
  next growth round without having to
• 5:20
  move its parent company? The market. Can they
• 5:23
  expand into another European country
• 5:27
  as a domestic decision. Demand—
• 5:31
  can it win repeat European customers,
• 5:36
  not just pilots? People—
• 5:40
  do its operators come back as founders and
• 5:43
  angels? Retention— as it grows,
• 5:48
  do its parent company, its leadership, and its listing
• 5:52
  stay in Europe? And here is how we keep
• 5:56
  it honest. We do not pick like the best 50
• 5:59
  companies in 2031. That would,
• 6:04
  uh, kind of select the answer. We fix the group now.
• 6:08
  Our cohort is every company headquartered in Europe that
• 6:11
  announced funding of €100 million or more
• 6:15
  in calendar year 2026. We freeze that list
• 6:19
  at the end of January 2027. And publish it. Every
• 6:23
  company stays in the cohort, including the ones that
• 6:27
  fail, get acquired, or relocate. Each year
• 6:31
  we score every company on the 5 tests and we
• 6:35
  publish results, including the cases that contradict
• 6:38
  us. Before I make my case,
• 6:42
  the strongest opposing argument, it goes something like this:
• 6:46
  capital buys time. Europe's reforms are slow, so the
• 6:50
  best thing a growth fund can do is keep good companies
• 6:54
  funded until the rules catch up.
• 6:57
  And international investors are not a threat. A strategic
• 7:01
  investor can bring customers and supply chain. An American
• 7:05
  fund can bring expertise and access to the largest market in the world.
• 7:09
  A company can take that money, list in New York, hire
• 7:13
  commercial team in California, and still be a European
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  company in every way that matters— research,
• 7:20
  engineering, leadership, tax. I think that argument
• 7:24
  is largely right, and I want to say so clearly.
• 7:28
  Foreign capital can help European companies
• 7:32
  become global leaders. So the risk I'm
• 7:36
  casting is narrower. The failure is not
• 7:39
  foreign money, as I said before. The failure is a
• 7:43
  company having to relocate its strategic center in
• 7:47
  order to get the money, the customers, or the listing it needs.
• 7:51
  The European Central Bank names that risk. It says
• 7:55
  foreign investors often provide the additional funding European
• 7:59
  scale-ups need and that they may increase the
• 8:02
  likelihood of headquarters relocating. May
• 8:06
  is the important word. Whether it happens is exactly
• 8:10
  what our scorecard measures. Test number 1,
• 8:14
  capital. Can Europe finance its winners?
• 8:18
  What happened? The Scale-Up Europe Fund targets about €5
• 8:22
  billion. The European Commission committed €1 billion.
• 8:26
  EQT manages it. It invests in rounds of
• 8:30
  €100 million and above. In August, it
• 8:33
  co-led ICEYE's €1 billion financing round,
• 8:38
  which includes €450 million of
• 8:41
  primary Series F capital and a valuation
• 8:45
  above €10 billion. In September, Samsung
• 8:49
  Electronics and the Scale-Up Fund Europe co-led Mistral
• 8:52
  AI's €3 billion Series D.
• 8:57
  On the 10th of July, the EIB Group announced the
• 9:00
  European Tech Champion Initiative 2.0. With a
• 9:04
  fundraising target of up to €15
• 9:08
  billion. And on the 22nd of September, the
• 9:12
  Commission and the EIB launched an Institutional Investor
• 9:15
  Pact with 13 institutions saying they intend
• 9:19
  to invest in Germany. KfW reported that
• 9:23
  €2.64 billion had been invested under the
• 9:27
  WIN initiative at the end of 2025 against a goal
• 9:31
  of €12 billion by 2030. KfW counts
• 9:34
  investment through funds, funds of funds, direct investments,
• 9:38
  and debt such as venture debt. There is
• 9:42
  no published year-by-year schedule, so that figure tells us
• 9:46
  progress, not whether the WIN initiative is on
• 9:50
  pace. Why it matters structurally.
• 9:53
  There are 3 different numbers in every headline about the European Growth
• 9:57
  Capital: a target, is what a program aims
• 10:01
  for. A commitment is money promised, and
• 10:04
  deployment is money in a company. On the
• 10:08
  Scale-Up Europe fund, we searched on November 3rd the
• 10:12
  EIC fund page, EQT's announcement, the EIB,
• 10:16
  the track price. We found no published total of
• 10:19
  commitments beyond the Commission's €1 billion.
• 10:24
  That is a disclosure gap. It is not proof that the money is
• 10:28
  missing, but a public fund should publish its closing
• 10:31
  figure, and we will report if it ever does so.
• 10:36
  The capital test is one question: can a European company raise
• 10:39
  its next growth round at €100 million plus
• 10:43
  without investors requiring it to move its parent
• 10:47
  company out of Europe? Not one big round— round
• 10:50
  after round until the answer My answer is routinely yes.
• 10:55
  Europe has growth funds, but it does not yet have
• 10:59
  capital continuity. What would change my mind?
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  If, say, by 2028, most cohort companies
• 11:07
  that raise again do so with a European lead or
• 11:10
  co-lead and without changing their parent company,
• 11:14
  the capital test is passing. Whether the headline
• 11:19
  Fund sizes say. If instead
• 11:22
  redomiciliation clauses— so moving headquarters
• 11:27
  clauses— start appearing in term sheets as a condition of the next
• 11:30
  round, the risk is real. What I will
• 11:34
  measure for every company in 2026 cohort,
• 11:38
  each later round, who led it and whether
• 11:42
  the parent company stays where it is. Test
• 11:46
  number 2, market. Can Europe behave like a home
• 11:49
  market? What happened? On the
• 11:53
  18th of March 2026, the Commission
• 11:56
  proposed EU Inc., the so-called
• 12:00
  28th regime, as a regulation.
• 12:04
  Online registration within 48 hours
• 12:07
  at a maximum cost of €100, with no minimum capital
• 12:12
  and a European employee stock option rule that defers
• 12:15
  taxes until shares are sold. It does
• 12:19
  not include a pan-European corporate tax regime.
• 12:23
  On the 23rd of October, the member states agreed to the
• 12:26
  Council's negotiation position. Registration in 2 days
• 12:30
  for 100 euros survives. Board-level employee participation
• 12:34
  follows the rule of the country where the company has its registered office. The Council
• 12:38
  limits the stock option tax treatment to companies
• 12:43
  up to 750 employees and €150 million in
• 12:46
  turnover, and it sets a 21-month
• 12:50
  implementation period after the regulation enters into force.
• 12:55
  The European Parliament had not adopted its position
• 12:58
  by late October. Reports say the Legal Affairs
• 13:02
  Committee vote was postponed twice in October
• 13:06
  over employee participation. Negotiations with the Council
• 13:10
  cannot start until Parliament has voted.
• 13:14
  Why it matters structurally: EU Inc. fixes the
• 13:18
  first day of company's life. Much of the cost of
• 13:22
  fragmentation comes later: employment law,
• 13:25
  payroll, local tax, sector licenses. Those
• 13:29
  stay national. On the stock options, the Council's limit
• 13:33
  could exclude larger scale-ups. What happens to options
• 13:37
  granted before company crosses that line is not
• 13:41
  yet clear, and that needs to be clarified before
• 13:44
  founders can plan around it. Here's
• 13:48
  my own arithmetic on the timeline, and it is
• 13:51
  an estimate, of course, not a fact. If
• 13:55
  Parliament votes in the coming weeks, negotiations with the
• 13:59
  Council run into 2027. After the
• 14:02
  agreement comes formal adoption, publication, and entry into
• 14:06
  force. Add the Council's 21 months and the
• 14:10
  first registration lands somewhere in
• 14:13
  2029. That is where my forecasts
• 14:17
  later in this episode comes from. What people
• 14:20
  get wrong: they treat EU Inc. as the market
• 14:24
  test. It is the entry ticket. Market
• 14:27
  test is whether a company in Munich can hire in Lisbon,
• 14:31
  sell to Warsaw, and grant equity in Vienna
• 14:35
  without rebuilding its legal setup each single time.
• 14:39
  Before the demand test, which is whether evidence is more encouraging
• 14:43
  than people think, a quick word from our partners.
• 14:52
  Startuprad.io helps selected partners reach founders, investors, and operators across
• 14:56
  Europe, especially Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. If you want
• 14:59
  to build credibility with these decision-makers, explore a partnership
• 15:03
  at startuprad.io/become-a-partner.
• 15:08
  And stay with me because after the demand test, I will give you a
• 15:11
  forecast you can hold me to.
• 15:16
  Test number 3, demand. Will you buy what it builds?
• 15:20
  And here I want to start with a
• 15:23
  counterexample to my own series. Yes, I know.
• 15:27
  In part 4, we called it demand without deployment. Public
• 15:31
  money funds the supply of innovation, but the public buyer
• 15:35
  does not become the customer. Now look at ICEYE.
• 15:38
  According to EQT's announcement,
• 15:42
  ICEYE already delivers sovereign satellite systems
• 15:46
  for 7 European governments, and it's delivered an operational
• 15:49
  capability to Poland less than 12 months after the
• 15:53
  contract was signed. ICEYE shows that European
• 15:57
  reference demand can work. A
• 16:00
  European company won European governments as customers and
• 16:04
  delivered it under a year. The question for
• 16:08
  2031 is not whether this is possible, it
• 16:11
  is whether it becomes routine across sectors
• 16:15
  for companies that are not already leaders.
• 16:19
  Count the repeat contracts, not the pilots. A
• 16:23
  pilot tells you a buyer is curious. A repeat contract
• 16:26
  tells you a buyer depends on you.
• 16:31
  What happened to the rules? On
• 16:35
  the 9th of September 2026, the Commission proposed the
• 16:38
  Public Procurement Act, one directly
• 16:42
  applicable regulation instead of 3 directives:
• 16:47
  a European preference in awarding contracts,
• 16:51
  simplified procurements that the Commission says will
• 16:54
  save public buyers time, and a minimum 30%
• 16:58
  weight for quality criteria, innovation among them,
• 17:02
  subject to the comply or explain rule. The political
• 17:06
  target is to conclude negotiations by the end of
• 17:09
  2027. So why does this matter
• 17:13
  structurally? The proposal does contain machinery
• 17:17
  meant to make procurement faster and reward
• 17:20
  quality. What is unproven is whether it will.
• 17:25
  Comply or explain lets a buyer opt out with a
• 17:29
  reason. Simpler procedures save time on paper.
• 17:32
  The test is the time from tender to deployment in
• 17:36
  practice. What I will measure:
• 17:40
  for the cohort, announced European public or industrial
• 17:44
  contracts and how many are repeat or framework
• 17:47
  contracts. At the system level, time from tender
• 17:51
  to operational deployment where buyers publish it.
• 17:55
  Test number 4, people and experience compound.
• 18:00
  In part 5 of the series that We argued
• 18:04
  that Europe produces talent, but scaling experience
• 18:08
  does not recycle fast enough, meaning
• 18:12
  employees who once scaled go back into companies
• 18:16
  that are scaling. The operator who took a company from
• 18:20
  100 to 1,000 people should become the angel,
• 18:24
  the founder, or the board member of the next companies.
• 18:27
  2 signals matter. First, employee ownership.
• 18:31
  Equity that employees build is what can turn
• 18:35
  operators into angels, which is why the scope
• 18:38
  of the EU stock option rule matters. Second, where
• 18:42
  founders and operators base themselves. Atomicos'
• 18:46
  2025 Founder Survey found that 15% of
• 18:50
  surveyed founders had moved their headquarters abroad,
• 18:54
  and 57% of those had moved to the United States.
• 18:59
  What people are getting wrong here— they count startups founded
• 19:03
  and visas issued. Those are inputs. The
• 19:06
  outcome is experienced people building the next company
• 19:10
  in Europe. What it will measure for the cohort:
• 19:14
  new companies founded by alumni of cohort
• 19:17
  companies and where those new companies are based. The
• 19:21
  baseline goes into the first annual scorecard in November
• 19:24
  2027. Test number 5, retention. Do
• 19:28
  the winners stay? This is capital gravity
• 19:32
  turned into a scorecard line, and I want to be precise about it.
• 19:36
  Some good news first. EY reports that European IPO
• 19:40
  numbers rose 35% and proceeds
• 19:43
  28% in the first 3 quarters of 2026
• 19:47
  compared with the previous year. On the 8th of
• 19:51
  October, the council agreed a position agreed-to position
• 19:55
  that would move supervision of largest trading venues
• 19:59
  and post-trade infrastructure to the European Securities
• 20:03
  Regulator, ESMA. Now the position—
• 20:08
  we score retention as 4 separate indicators,
• 20:12
  not simply one. Where's the parent company incorporated?
• 20:16
  Where does the chief executive work? Where is senior
• 20:20
  commercial leadership based? And where is the company listed
• 20:24
  or expected to list? A US listing
• 20:28
  alone is not a failure. A US sales team
• 20:31
  alone is not a failure. What we look for is the
• 20:35
  pattern— several of those moving out of Europe
• 20:39
  while the engineering stays. And remember the definition: a parent
• 20:43
  company in Zurich or London counts as European in our
• 20:47
  scorecard. The sequencing gap.
• 20:51
  Now put the 5 tests on a timeline.
• 20:55
  Capital arriving now. The Scaleup Europe Fund has
• 20:58
  been investing since August 2026.
• 21:02
  ETCI 2.0 is fundraising.
• 21:06
  The market arrives later. EU Inc. is not
• 21:09
  law. Parliament has not voted and the Council's
• 21:13
  text gives member states 21 months
• 21:17
  after the entry into force. Procurement reforms arrive
• 21:21
  later still. Agreement is targeted for the end of
• 21:25
  2027, and then it has to be applied.
• 21:29
  So many companies financed by Europe's new growth money will scale
• 21:33
  for some years under today's rule. Some
• 21:37
  will do it very well, as ICEYE shows. The
• 21:41
  risk is that others will need to move their
• 21:44
  strategic center to get the next round— the customers or
• 21:48
  the listing. That is the sequencing gap. It is a
• 21:52
  risk to test, not a verdict.
• 21:56
  3 scenarios for 2031.
• 22:00
  Scenario number 1: Sequence Europe. EU Inc.
• 22:04
  is agreed in '27. and becomes usable
• 22:08
  in '29 with employee equity that still works for
• 22:12
  larger companies. The procurement act is agreed and buyers
• 22:15
  start running repeat contracts with young companies.
• 22:19
  The growth funds reach their targets and keep investing through a
• 22:23
  downturn. In that world, most cohort companies
• 22:27
  pass most tests. Another
• 22:30
  scenario, scenario number 2. Capital First Europe, the funds
• 22:34
  deploy, but market rules stays national in practice.
• 22:38
  Europe gets more large rounds, and a meaningful share of
• 22:42
  cohort companies move their parent company or leadership abroad to
• 22:46
  reach the next stage. The capital test improves, the
• 22:49
  retention test does not. And on today's legislative
• 22:53
  calendar, I think this scenario deserves some
• 22:57
  serious weight. Scenario number 3,
• 23:01
  stall. A downturn arrives before the instruments
• 23:05
  are completed. Institutional investors pull back,
• 23:08
  targets slip, and legislative piles lose
• 23:12
  priority. What separates scenario
• 23:16
  1 from number 2 is timing. The decision
• 23:19
  about where a parent company sits often comes around the later
• 23:23
  growth rounds or before an IPO. For companies
• 23:27
  raising large rounds in '27 or '26,
• 23:31
  that is roughly '28 to 2030. The
• 23:35
  window is real and is narrow.
• 23:40
  What would prove us wrong? Every thesis
• 23:43
  in this series should be falsifiable. So
• 23:47
  here's what would prove This one wrong.
• 23:52
  First, most cohort companies pass retention tests
• 23:56
  under today's rules. Before EU Inc. and
• 23:59
  procurement reforms apply, then the sequencing gap was
• 24:03
  not binding. Capital was enough, and I will say so
• 24:07
  on the show. Second, if the
• 24:10
  cohort shows relocations even after
• 24:14
  reforms are in place, then the problem was never the order of
• 24:18
  the instruments. It was something deeper,
• 24:21
  like market size or valuation, and the next part of this
• 24:25
  series will have to go there. Third, if
• 24:29
  European public and industrial buyers turn more cohort
• 24:32
  companies into repeat customers, as ICEYE
• 24:36
  shows is possible, the demand test passes and
• 24:39
  part 4 of this series Needs an update.
• 24:43
  That would be actually a good problem to have.
• 24:49
  Milestones we'll be watching, '27 to 2031.
• 24:54
  The milestones I will track, in order: next
• 24:58
  European Parliament's vote on EU Inc. Until that
• 25:02
  happens, nothing can be negotiated. January
• 25:05
  '27, we freeze and publish the 2026 cohort.
• 25:10
  In '27, Whatever the scale-up your
• 25:13
  fund publishes as a closing figure and whether
• 25:16
  ETCI 2.0 confirms the
• 25:20
  size of its first closing. By the end of
• 25:23
  '27? Whether the Public Procurement Act and the
• 25:27
  Savings and Investment Union supervision package are
• 25:30
  agreed, as the political targets say. The
• 25:34
  Commission is also due to report on its startup and scale-up
• 25:37
  strategy By the end of '27. November
• 25:41
  '27, 12 months out, the first annual
• 25:44
  scorecard for the cohort, then every November until
• 25:48
  2031. Forecast.
• 25:51
  Here's my forecast on record. No company will be able to
• 25:55
  register as an EU Inc. anywhere in
• 25:59
  the European Union before January 1st,
• 26:02
  2029. My confidence is 70%.
• 26:07
  The reason is simply the calendar. As of
• 26:10
  late October 26th, the European Parliament had
• 26:14
  not adopted its position, and negotiations with the
• 26:18
  member states cannot start until it does.
• 26:22
  This sits next to our earlier forecast,
• 26:26
  not instead of it. The Part 6 forecast, no EU
• 26:30
  Inc. before January 1st, 2028, at 75% stays on
• 26:34
  record. And it will be scored on that date.
• 26:38
  2 more predictions. First, the Scale-Up Europe Fund will
• 26:42
  not publicly confirm that commitments of €5
• 26:45
  billion or more before June 30th,
• 26:49
  2027. Confidence 65%.
• 26:52
  Second, the Public Procurement Act will not be
• 26:56
  formally adopted before end of '27.
• 27:00
  Confidence 65%. And our part 6
• 27:03
  forecast stays open as originally worded.
• 27:07
  By the end of '27, at least one scale-up fund Europe
• 27:11
  portfolio company will have a parent holding company
• 27:15
  outside of the EU. Note that this one is
• 27:19
  about the EU, so a Swiss or British parent
• 27:23
  would count. Still 60%.
• 27:27
  Our synthesis. So what connects all of this?
• 27:31
  Europe's instruments are no longer missing. Their timing is
• 27:35
  uneven and their effect is unproven. Each
• 27:39
  test depends on the others. Growth capital helps most
• 27:43
  when the company can also hire, sell, and grant equity
• 27:47
  across Europe, and when European buyers become repeat
• 27:50
  customers. The game changes when the
• 27:54
  5 tests turn green for the same companies at the same
• 27:58
  time. And if the cohort shows that companies
• 28:01
  scale globally and keep their strategic center in
• 28:05
  Europe under today's rules, we will say so.
• 28:08
  Operator and investor split. If I were
• 28:12
  fundraising in '27, I would do 3 things.
• 28:17
  I would plan my next growth rounds as a sequence and
• 28:20
  ask every lead investor in writing whether
• 28:24
  any future round assumes a change of parent company or
• 28:28
  listing venue. I would build an employee equity
• 28:32
  plan that works today across countries and can migrate
• 28:36
  later rather than waiting for EU Inc.
• 28:40
  And I would decide deliberately where my first
• 28:43
  large reference customer comes from. For some companies, early
• 28:47
  US expansion is right commercial decision. If you go to the
• 28:51
  US first, decide in advance which functions
• 28:55
  and which decision rights stay in Europe.
• 28:59
  If I were an investor, I would underwrite European growth rounds
• 29:03
  on the follow-on path, not the single check. I would
• 29:07
  track the full retention indicators for early growth stage
• 29:11
  companies separately, and I would treat the €100
• 29:14
  million line as the point where your
• 29:17
  co-investors are now present and worth bringing in early.
• 29:22
  If you want to go deeper, the
• 29:26
  Startuprad.io Founder Vault contains the working tools
• 29:29
  behind this episode: our Scale Infrastructure Scorecard,
• 29:33
  the indicators we are tracking through
• 29:38
  2031, and practical questions for growth
• 29:41
  financing and corporate location decisions. Members also
• 29:45
  get our analysis of targets,
• 29:48
  commitments, and actual capital deployment, plus the
• 29:52
  investor diligence checklist. Join through YouTube
• 29:56
  membership or Substack. Both links are
• 29:59
  in the show notes.
• 30:03
  Thank you for listening to part 8 of the European Scale-Up Question. The
• 30:07
  single idea to take you— to take with you A program
• 30:11
  is an input. A company scaling differently is an outcome.
• 30:15
  We have fixed the cohort rules today, so we cannot
• 30:19
  choose the answer later. We'll come back to this
• 30:23
  every November until 2031. If
• 30:27
  If this analysis helped, share it with a founder
• 30:31
  or investor facing a major growth decision. And if
• 30:34
  you know a European company that challenges our thesis,
• 30:39
  send us the evidence. Subscribe to Startuprad.io for future
• 30:43
  updates to the scorecard. All eight parts of the
• 30:47
  series are linked in the show notes. This was Startuprad.io.
• 30:51
  My name is Joe. Take care and see you next time. Bye.