Mattias Ljungman is bullish on Europe—or at least European entrepreneurs. Ljungman, who cofounded venture fund Atomico in 2006 with Skype founder Niklas Zennström, earlier this month unveiled a $60 million fund to invest in early-stage companies in Europe. Ljungman spoke with Fast Company about why he’s so excited about European founders, and how his new firm, Moonfire, will use data and machine learning to help drive investment decisions. Edited excerpts follow:
Fast Company: Why focus on Europe and the U.K.?
Mattias Ljungman: We’ve really hit an inflection point where things are really exploding. In Q1, $20 billion was invested in European startups compared to $40 billion last year. We had 21 billion [euros] of exits in Q1, which was more than all of last year. We minted 16 new unicorns in the first quarter. The amount of international interest, and specifically Silicon Valley interest, in Europe is just at another level.
Is this a case of too much money in the U.S. finding…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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