Europe’s Representation Among World’s Top Startup Ecosystems Is Growing Steadily
Every year, Startup Genome publishes a ranking of the top startup ecosystems around the world. In 2019, North America continues to dominate, being home to 14 of the top 30 top startup ecosystems, with 12 of those in the United States. Yet, what the authors call “the Next 30”, vibrant ecosystems enjoying rapid growth, has an even distribution across Asia-Pacific and Europe. The ranking is based on the density of startups and venture capital in these ecosystems.
Not surprisingly, the #1 ecosystem remains Silicon Valley. In the top five, we find also New York City, London, Beijing, and Boston.
The US, of course, remains the strongest startup hub, but Europe is steadily catching up thanks to ever-rising ecosystems like Berlin and Amsterdam. Indeed, Amsterdam-StartupDelta experienced the largest increase in rankings, rising from #19 in 2017 to #15 in 2019. In the top 30, we find more European ecosystems – London, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, and Amsterdam, Lausanne-Bern-Geneva, Barcelona, Dublin, Munich.
On a country level, the US (of course) is the one being home to the largest number of hubs – 12, followed by China with its three, and Germany and China with two each.
The authors, however, suggest something rather surprising. With the development of life-sciences and deep tech, there will be more and more new fast-growing hubs that go beyond the traditional software ecosystems. Places that would not be anywhere close to the top ecosystems in software have the potential to build a thriving startup economy leveraging their universities, research capacity, and traditional economic strengths reads the report. For instance, while Lausanne-Bern-Geneva, San Diego, and Munich are not among the best software startup producers, they all made it into the top 30 global startup ecosystems thanks to their performance in Deep Tech and Life Sciences factors.
