When we opened our London office in 2000 and set up our first fund dedicated to Europe and Israel’s early-stage entrepreneurs, Europe’s technology ecosystem was nascent and far from an obvious choice to build an on-the-ground team. Without a unicorn in sight, many questioned Europe’s ability to generate billion-dollar outcomes. However, the Accel team has long believed that ambitious founders can come from anywhere. Almost 25 years on, the decision to make the leap and become one of the first Silicon Valley venture firms to set up a European team has proved well-placed. 

Since then, Europe has seen its first unicorn in 2005 (Skype), decacorn in 2016 (Supercell), and cloud decacorn in 2020 (UiPath), and the ecosystem has continued to gather pace. The region is a powerhouse of talent, innovation, and ambition, and we’ve had a front-row seat to the evolution of the region’s technology landscape:

  • The European and Israeli VC market is now around half the size of that of the US (44%), with approximately $66B invested in 2023 vs the US’ $150B <sup>1<sup>
  • This is in stark contrast to the $1.1B invested in Europe and Israel in 2003 
  • There are now 360+ VC-backed European and Israeli-founded unicorns 
  • Former unicorn employees have fuelled more than 1,400 new tech-enabled startups across the region
  • Across Europe and Israel, Accel has now backed 200+ companies across more than 60 cities and 20 countries, including places such as Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, and Serbia that are outside of the region’s familiar tech hubs
  • Of any venture capital firm, Accel has partnered with the most European and Israeli-founded unicorns at the Series A stage (Dealroom)

Europe now has a wealth of success stories that provide the all-important role models for the next generation of entrepreneurs. These include our portfolio companies in Finland (Supercell), France (BlaBlaCar, Doctolib, Shift Technology, Sorare), Germany (Celonis, Check24, Trade Republic, Personio, sennder), Israel (Cyera, Melio, Snyk), Lithuania (Vinted), Norway (ForgeRock), Sweden (Avito, Spotify), Romania (UiPath), UK (GoCardless, Monzo, Synthesia, Zepz). It’s a privilege to have partnered with so many exceptional founders on their entrepreneurial journeys, supporting them not just with our deep capillary networks in Europe and Israel but also working with our teams in the US and India to help them scale and win worldwide.

Today, as we announce our eighth $650 million early-stage fund in the region, we believe Europe and Israel’s entrepreneurs are just getting started and building on the foundations laid over more than two decades. We’re grateful for the trust placed in us by the teams who have chosen to partner with us over this time and the Limited Partners who share our vision for the region.

With Europe and Israel producing world-class talent in areas such as AI (Celonis, Chainalysis, Rasa, Shift Technology, Synthesia, UiPath), cybersecurity (Cyera, Filigran, Oasis, Snyk), fintech (GoCardless, Lydia, Monzo, Super, Swan, Trade Republic) and the modern data stack (Conduktor, Lightdash), we can’t wait to support the next generation of founders and see how they shape the future!

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