It won’t be a surprise to anyone working in the tech industry that when it comes to the share of the venture capital (VC) funding pie, the U.S. takes most of the slices––and the cherry on top.
Most people are well aware also that funding has slowed down recently; a culmination of several factors including the fact that markets for initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions have ground to a halt.
As a result, VC funding in the U.S. only reached $235 billion in 2022, a 35% drop from 2021 which has been considered as a bit of an outlier in terms of funding.
The slowdown isn’t just affecting the States. According to KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech report, it is a global issue, with total funding and the number of deals dropping from $63.2 billion across 2,885 deals in the second half of 2022, to $52.4 billion across 2,153 deals in the first half of this year.
This doesn’t mean the news for startups and scaleups is all doom and gloom. America is still a thriving ecosystem for startups and entrepreneurs, with particular cities and areas such as the Bay Area, New York City and Boston, performing the best.
London and Berlin lead
So what about Europe? According to Pitchbook’s Global VC Ecosystem Rankings, London and Berlin are the only two European cities which made it into its top developed ecosystems.
London was the only European city to break into the top 10, in seventh place, and Berlin came in 16th place.
London’s dominance is well-established. According to John Hallsworth, client lead partner for banking and fintech at KPMG UK, “Despite a slowdown in UK fintech investment compared to last year, the UK remains at the centre of European fintech innovation with British fintechs attracting over half the funding of Europe.”
Berlin, too, performs well. The EY Startup-Barometer for Germany says that of the €9.9 billion Euro in venture capital that flowed into German startups this year, almost €4.9 billion went to startups in the city.
Many other EU locations
Well-established both cities may be, but there are plenty of other European locations nipping at their heels in terms of the startup ecosystems.
Take Barcelona for example. Apartool, a leading B2B provider of corporate housing solutions which is based in the Spanish city, recently announced the closing of a Series A round, valued at €5.5 million.
In Lisbon, the most recent home of the Web Summit, tech companies landed $571m in funding in 2022, according to Dealroom. Interestingly, that made it one of only a few countries to out-perform its 2021 number, when it raised $356m.
In Amsterdam, the capital boasts 45% of all Dutch-funded ventures, and according to the 2023 Global Startup Ecosystem Report, it is home to about 4,000 startups which employ 196,000 people.
European tech workers looking for a location change can also consider Stockholm, Tallinn, Paris, Madrid and Munich, all of which have thriving startup ecosystems––and jobs.
If you’re interested in checking out career opportunities in established companies and startups across Europe, then check out the Silicon Canals Job Board. It features thousands of job openings across the bloc, including the three below.
AI Backend Software Engineer, Intel, Amsterdam
Intel is seeking an AI Backend Software Engineer to be a key player in developing artificial intelligence products, mainly the server, which is implemented in a microservice architecture. As a part of Intel’s scaling up-process, it needs help in developing and maintaining the server platform which enables many deep learning capabilities.
You’ll be designing and developing new features in the system, maintaining and ensuring the quality of the SDK and analysing code efficiency and performing code optimization.
To be eligible, you’ll need to be proficient in Go, Python, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Git and Linux, with sufficient professional experience in software development on Python. See what else you’ll need here.
Software Developer, Visier Solutions Inc, Berlin
Visier, the leader in people analytics, is seeking a smart, passionate, and talented Software Developer to join its Berlin team to advance this technology, which is fundamentally changing the way enterprises manage their workforce.
You’ll build products that help businesses develop total rewards strategies and implement them, develop the technology core of truly innovative high-performing, cloud-based applications in the domain of total rewards and data analytics, and provide innovative ideas to improve features, product, technology, and/or process.
You’ll need excellent coding skills in at least one object oriented server programming language (Unix environment), as well as excellent knowledge of data structures and algorithms. See more about this role here.
Senior Backend Engineer (Kotlin) – POS, SumUp, Paris
Global fintech player SumUp is looking for a Senior Backend Engineer (Kotlin) – POS to work on its SumUp POS. You will design and implement high-scale back-end services based on customer needs, use innovative techniques like Event Storming to design back-end services, maintain and evolve the POS ecosystem and participate in API design and implementation, among other tasks.
If you have delivered JVM-based services for at least five years and you are ready to work with Kotlin on a daily basis, have experience with distributed systems and event-driven architecture and experience with SQL and NoSQL databases, this could be a great fit. Find out more now.
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