Who Needs Goliaths? Don't Write Off Europe's Army of Davids

This is the final conversation from DLD. And the most optimistic - at least from a European perspective. John Thornhill, the FT’s Innovation Editor and founder of Sifted, has a quite different take on Europe’s tech scene from our other guests. Yes, he acknowledges, the regulatory environment is complex. And, yes, late-stage capital is thin. But Thornhill sees something the doomsayers miss: resilience. A new generation of founders isn’t building “European champions” — they’re building global ones. Innovation hot spots are popping up across the continent: London, Berlin, Stockholm, Tallinn, Lisbon. Paris (of all places) is enjoying a renaissance. And deep tech — biological computing, synthetic biology, materials science — may finally give Europe’s research strength a viable path to commercialization. So who needs Silicon Valley Goliaths when you have an army of European Davids?

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