Tyler Sosin: Pushing the Next Flywheel

Yesterday evening I arrived in Vienna for the European Startup Festival. It’s a conference I have been looking forward to for a while, anticipating loads of interesting start-ups, a beautiful city, and chance to support one of our CEOs, Christopher Kahler from Qriouslyon two panels!

For me, Startup Week is a reminder of why I decided to pursue venture in Europe, leaving Silicon Valley, where I had been working as an associate at another venture firm. I realized there was an opportunity to contribute meaningfully during a critical growth period of technology driven businesses in Europe - being in the right place at the right time. Silicon Valley is an incredible place full of amazing entrepreneurs, but it’s also a mature market where entrepreneurs have access to capital and high quality investors… it’s like a flywheel at full speed. The impact from younger practitioners like me is likely to be more marginal. I was attracted to Europe because the flywheel here is accelerating but hasn’t reached that point of critical momentum. There may be more room to make an impact.

We are beginning to see a wide variety of start-ups sprout up across Europe. Some are succeeding beyond wildest expectations, some are still figuring out what they want to be when they grow up, and some won’t make it, but all are contributing to an emerging European tech ecosystem that shows no signs of slowing down. I’m excited to work alongside these start-ups, helping to fund those that have the ambition and vision to become large global businesses.

Since backing Qriously in its series A last year, Accel has made eight seed and early stage investments in companies across Europe, some you may have heard of and some we hope to tell you about in the coming months. And I’m excited to be going to Vienna because we have no intentions of slowing down. Reach out to me at @tysosin if you are interested in learning more about how we approach early stage investing at Accel.