The Wall Street Journal provides a nice infographic on the “billion dollar club“, that is, startups of valuation $1B or above. In Europe, the WSJ counts six >$1B startups, of which one is in Amsterdam (Adyen), one is in Stockholm (Spotify) and two are in London (Powa, Shazam) and Berlin (Delivery Hero, Home24). In addition, the WSJ lists two more Berlin-based companies (Rocket Internet, Zalando), which exited (to the public markets). So 50% of companies worth counting are based out of Berlin.
Now comes the print version of the WSJ with a Feb 19, 2015, article on “Europe’s Tech Startup Landscape for 2015”. The writer of the article discusses the general situation and then proceeds to present Wall Street Journal’s non-obvious picks of companies to watch out for, or in their words, “a useful map of the EMEA tech startup landscape for 2015”. The twelve company list is all over the map and includes Stockholm (KnCMiner), Berlin (Wooga), Serbia (Nordeus), Stockholm (Klarna, Truecaller), France (SigFox, Withings), Great Britian (Kano, Oxbotica), and Israel (SiSense, Fiverr, Lumus).
Somehow this list of companies to watch out does not vibe with the $1B club… If anything, Berlin has been taking up much more speed from the time those in the $1B club were founded. Go figure.
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