MWC Barcelona

Geographic advantage of Europe : Europe is actually a great place to live. I think that a lot of people just genuinely want to live here, and they can't really see themselves living forever in the Bay area. So that diversity, that it’s a bit more spread out, is also an advantage. And if you look at the data, Europe is, in terms of distance, you can fly everywhere in two hours. So, that's like that's like California, basically. Maybe we should think of it the other way around – that we are the densest ecosystem on earth, and we should think outside of those borders.
Growth as a North Star for Europe: I think the most important thing is that we prioritise growth. Like every startup needs a North star, Europe needs a North star. And it should be growth, and all the good things that come after that.

Europe for innovation and investment: The agenda we want to roll out is focus on innovation and investment instead of only regulation. That doesn't mean that I think that regulation is necessarily against innovation. I actually think they can be two sides of the same coin. But I think we have a huge set of regulatory frameworks in Europe that need to be looked at in the context of, are they still fit for purpose?
The EU advantage: We have a huge asset with the internal (European) market to have common rules. That's a huge advantage. You know, also for investors, for companies to know they are the same rules.
Supporting frontier technologies in Europe: Quantum is an important frontier technology of the future, and we have great research in the EU on that. What would be great, is that we move this now into an application phase and we do the things that we sometimes missed in the past with Frontier Technologies.

Europe needs growth capital: I would love for Europe to have more Spotify’s, more companies that go all the way and win the global market that they are in. One of the key ingredients there is growth capital. And right now, companies like Factorial, we're forced to go and look outside of Europe for growth capital.
Beating the European brain drain: We have been losing brilliant minds to the US, and other parts of the world, for a few decades now. If we convince them to come back, after training with the hyper growth-ambition, Wild West that the US can be sometimes, and we bring them into our local startups and scale ups and corporations, we can then accelerate what we do here. I think that will be the trick of the century – and we can totally transform Europe.
Incentivising top talent: Hopefully Europe gets aligned in creating incentives for hyper specialized, high value talent that we want to re-import into our economy. It's a struggle. I need to tell people that they're going to be taxed 50% of their cash income and then 50% on their equity income, because many European countries don't have a great stock option programme.

Geopolitical shocks create opportunity: These geopolitical shocks or tectonic shifts, are always the once in a lifetime moment for entrepreneurs, because there couldn't be better opportunities in these times to build a new company.
Harnessing global talent: The world has changed, we're not talking about shipping physical hardware or traditional software distribution channels, these companies are global from day one. The talent is more available and more global as well. If we look at talent and hiring in our early-stage companies now, they’d rather look for the single best person on this planet to lead marketing or tech or engineering, rather than saying, okay, we're stuck in the city of Barcelona, Berlin or Paris, and we hire people there.
AI in the application layer: I see a massive opportunity turning our industrial economy into the biggest enablement for the application layer in AI and I can only encourage founders to think about all those detailed models. That's what we're banking every day, whether it's putting AI into sourcing, procurement, logistics, manufacturing. I mean, there couldn't be a bigger opportunity.

STEM education for future talent: It's absolutely key that STEM education is both the fertilizer and the soil that is going to foster the next generation of talent. That talent will be a multi-generational workforce, AI natives that are able to teach other generations within our workforce.
Collaborate with the right talent: You can't really have collaboration until you have the right talent and the right collection of superstars across technology, government, business, economy, society.

Opening access to women: The feedback we have from these women is that there are two kinds of barriers: individual barriers and systemic barriers. There's a problem with access. It can be access to networking, access to new scaling practices and training, but also access to a professional network as well.
Women in Tech: I created Women in Tech eight years ago to challenge the barriers women and to empower women and girls all the way from the classroom to the boardroom. We do this in many different ways, through education, digital inclusion, advocacy as well as business. We have mentoring programs for girls, not only at entry level, but also to C-suite levels.

Keynote 12 highlights