Introducing the Euro Seed 50

Europe is home to 35,000 early stage startups, more than any other region. If you’re a founder at the start of your journey at the seed stage, or even earlier, it’s tough to stand out. So much of the airtime is consumed by the big, established players.

Does the world really need another top 50 list? There are certainly a lot of curated ‘top’ or fastest growing’ lists out there in the tech ecosystem. But when we look at them, the vast majority focus on companies that are already well known - the likes of Mistral, Revolut, DeepL, Helsing etc.

What about the companies most people have never heard of but are one or two steps away from takeoff? Picking these early stage companies out of so many thousands is hard to do. In some cases, they are pre-revenue or even pre-product and all you have in front of you is an incredible founder with a great idea and a lot of hustle.

As an early stage investor, this is what we do every day. We see thousands of startups and make investment decisions based on a set of signals - the founding team’s track record, early signs of product-market-fit, the market opportunity they are targeting, their grit and determination. When we first met the Spotify team back in 2007, no one could foresee what they would go on to become.

We created the Euro Seed 50 to shine a light on the founders and startups at the very beginning of their journey - the next generation of European entrepreneurship.

Together with peers across the early stage ecosystem, we have selected the companies we’re most excited about and who we think have the greatest potential to become Europe’s next category-defining companies. We will for sure have got it wrong in places and missed companies that should be on here; that’s the nature of the early stage ecosystem. However, within this list of 50 could be the next Daniel Ek or Sebastian Siemiatkowski or Nik Storonsky. We’re excited to see how these companies develop over the coming years.

How we selected the 50

We gathered input from 20 seed funds, angels and solo GPs across Europe. The main criteria for companies to be eligible is that they have their HQ in Europe and have raised up to and including a seed round at the time of judging.

Together with an all star judging panel of top angel investors, we narrowed the list down to 50.

In picking the Euro Seed 50, we looked for exceptional founding teams with big vision and ambition, clear product innovation and early indicators of product-market fit.

Euro Seed 50 Judges

What’s next?

We know how valuable founders at this early stage find spending time with each other so every company featured in the Euro Seed 50 is invited to a special founder-only event in London in September.

Not only will they have the chance to network with each other and workshop common challenges faced, but they will also get the chance to hear from founders that are further along in their journey. Speakers include: