Europe doesn’t have a money problem. Europe has a unicorn leadership problem.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves.

Europe pours billions into innovation, produces weighty reports on competitiveness and opens one start-up hub after another. And yet our best talent leaves for the United States. Our most promising scale-ups get snapped up by American buyers. We keep playing catch-up in AI, defence tech and biotech.

The question is not whether we have a problem. The question is whether we are prepared to be honest about what that problem actually is.The diagnosis is in.Mario Draghi spelled it out last year in the future of European competitiveness: Europe trails the us by thirty per cent in gdp. The productivity gap is widening. An additional €800 billion per year is needed just to keep pace. Peter Wennink translated that urgency to the Netherlands in the route to future prosperity: invest an extra €151 to €187 billion before 2035, or face structural decline. Both reports point to regulatory burden, sluggish permitting, expensive energy and underdeveloped capital markets. All true. All important.But it is not the whole story.What the Financial Times reveals.

In early march, the financial times published an extensive special report on europe’s start-up hubs. The ranking of 180 hubs across 25 countries shows that something is genuinely stirring. Munich dominates: UnternehmerTUM tops the list for the third consecutive year. The hub has spawned over a thousand companies, from rocket builder Isar Aerospace to defence start-up Helsing. Bavarian start-ups raised €3.3 billion in 2025, more than Berlin.

Stockholm is buzzing with AI ventures. Sana was acquired by America’s Workday for $1.1 billion. Lovable raised $530 million, Legora $150 million. The Swedish ‘mafia’ of former unicorn employees from Klarna and Spotify has since spawned 208 new start-ups.

Deep tech is flourishing, from fusion energy to quantum technology. Climate tech is finding a new raison d’être as a strategic imperative: energy independence, defence, data centres. Europe, the FT reports, has all the ingredients.

And yet.The real problem is not money.

Woven through all those encouraging figures is a recurring distress signal. Victor Englesson of EQT put it bluntly to the ft: “we are graduating all the engineers. We are starting all the companies. But then we’re exporting talent to the us.” Nearly thirty per cent of European unicorns relocated to America between 2008 and 2021. Not because of the Californian weather. Because that is where they find the people to keep growing.

Sana founder Joel Hellermark, himself Swedish, now American-owned, put his finger on the sore spot: “if you want to scale sales, you can find fifty leaders in San Francisco. In Sweden, you’ll find one at best.” The founder of Unternehmertum cites European growth financing as his greatest challenge. But even with money in the bank: who is going to run that company? Who builds the management team? Who steers the international expansion?

That is the issue Draghi and Wennink fail to address sufficiently. Wennink speaks of talent in broad terms, engineers, researchers, technicians. All crucial. But there is a layer above that he barely touches: the leadership that turns a good idea into a global business. The CEO who steers a scale-up through the growing pains from 50 to 500 people. The CCO who builds a brand internationally. The CFO who prepares an IPO. The supervisory board that provides strategic direction without slowing things down.

Europe has enough brilliant founders. What Europe lacks are the seasoned builders. The people who make the difference between a promising start-up and a global force.What now?

Invest in the fundamentals, says Wennink. Build a capital markets union, says Draghi. Cut the red tape, they both urge. Yes. Do that. But also start acknowledging an uncomfortable truth: you can build the finest factory, but without the right person to run it, nothing moves.

The European start-up scene proves we can innovate. Munich, Stockholm, Paris, Delft, there is no shortage of ideas or entrepreneurial nerve. Where it goes wrong is in the next phase. The scaling up. The professionalisation. The moment a company no longer needs just a visionary, but someone who can execute that vision.

The battle for Europe’s economic future will not be won with subsidies or alarm bells. It will be won by putting the right people in the right place. In time. And on that point, I am not objective. That is precisely what I do.

You are most welcome to exchange thoughts on finding and selecting the right people around you. Or for coaching conversations about the development of yourself or others around you.

Warm regards,Aegeus