Amsterdam is now the third most favourite city in Europe to found a startup. Plus, of all startup ecosystems in countries across Europe, the Dutch startup community has grown the most in the past year. Due to massive startup inflow, the startup population of the lowlands has increased by 31%. These are two of the main takeaways of the Startup Heatmap, which has been revealed by ESI, the European Startup Initiative.
Amsterdam third most favourite behind London and Paris
The ESI is a volunteer based non-profit organization, which was founded in 2012. Their research is based on an online survey that was open to founders from November 2015 to April 2016. The main question the online survey asked to its respondents was: “Where would you like to startup if you could begin all over again?”. Obviously, “Usual suspects” London and Berlin topped the charts with 15% and 14% of respondents respectively. Amsterdam was only just behind them in third spot with 10%. The Dutch capital beat other attractive up-and-coming hubs like Dublin, Barcelona, Munich, Stockholm, Copenhagen or Vienna. It is no stretch to interpret this data as basically saying that Amsterdam is now the third-most favourite startup city in Europe.
Founders rate talent over capital
The Heatmap, presented in the month when Amsterdam is having its hottest September temperatures ever, reveals several other interesting discoveries. For instance the map shows that a lot of founders must be expats who love to travel. It turns out that 23% of startup founders have started their company in a country, which is not their country of origin.