European Start-Up Growth

Check out this New York Times piece entitled: Move Over Silicon Valley, Here Come European Start-Ups. It caught my eye because I'm starting to feel the same vibe.

Given my role in helping start-ups either launch their company, a new product, service or direction, I get hit with a number of opportunities across multiple industries. Lately, the Europeans have indeed been knocking. In the last few months, I've taken calls, emails or met with companies based in France, Germany, England and Italy. Israel continues to be a place of innovation as well.

Writes Markoff, "Internet start-ups in Europe received a significant boost last month with the initial public offering of Open BC/Xing, a German Web site that is a competitor of the American site LinkedIn for social networking among businesses." He also talks about NetVibes, which has a sweet VC investment and European video sites, like Vpod and Sevenload, which are technically more advanced than YouTube.