While 2023 has undoubtedly been a testing year for tech start-ups and scale-ups across the board, Europe’s tech scene has been cushioned somewhat from the devastating blows its U.S. counterparts are experiencing.
In fact, the European tech scene is growing and has established itself as a worthy contender to Silicon Valley thanks to the likes of Skype, Spotify and TransferWise leading the unicorn charge.
This is supported by recent data compiled by Deloitte, which found that the tech industry is an essential economic factor, representing sales of €1.5 trillion, and accounting for more than 8 per cent of European economic output.
On a more granular level, the UK in particular is to thank for much of this growth as it attracted more investment than any other country in Europe, particularly in relation to fintechs.
However, both Switzerland and France saw increases in deal value too—Swiss companies saw €3.8 billion in VC funding in 2022, while French counterparts saw an 18.4 per cent increase.
Now home to more than 150 unicorns, in 2022, 47 companies achieved unicorn status in Europe––aka a company that has reached a valuation of $1 billion without being listed on the stock market.
Approximately a third of these (14) were fintechs including 5ire, Accelerant, Dune Analytics, Paddle, PayFit, Satispay, Scalapay, Payhawk, Spendesk, TransferMate, Qonto, Taxfix and Wayflyer.
Enterprise software bagged the second spot with six unicorns including Staffbase, Relex Solutions, Insider, EcoVadis, Stability.ai and SonarSource.
Security and energy companies produced four unicorns a piece–energy unicorns included Climeworks, NW Storm, Polarium and Newcleo, while Copper, Verrif, Nord Security and Phenna made up the security cohort.
And while scale-up activity across the bloc has slowed down this year so far, it has by no means stalled and several companies look set to achieve unicorn status in 2023.
Unsurprisingly, predicted “soonicorns” include a smattering of fintechs including Croatia’s Oradian, and Finland’s October.
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Neobank Monzo is hiring a Compliance Assurance Analyst to join its second line of defence (2LoD) to provide oversight and check and challenge to the first line of defence (1LoD), providing assurance over how Monzo manages conduct risk. As such, you’ll support compliance team activities, including the compliance risk assessment, maintenance of the compliance assurance methodology and annual planning, track actions stemming from compliance reviews and help instil a proactive, positive culture towards regulation and legislation across the company. Applicants should have working knowledge of the FCA Handbook (particularly BCOBS, CONC, SYSC, ICOB and DISP) and a working knowledge of the role of the risk and compliance function. View more details here.
Improbable is a British metaverse and Web3 technology company. As Group Management Accountant on the finance team you will be critical in the team’s success, by implementing and leading accounting policy and procedure across the wider Improbable group. You will contribute by providing valuable insight into the numbers driving and leverage an aptitude for systems and processes to streamline processes across the group. The ideal candidate will have a minimum of two years’ experience in management accounting, be ACCA/CIMA qualified and have demonstrable experience of process implementation. See the full job description here.
Zilch, the world’s first commerce card, is a UK-headquartered payments technology company. It is seeking a Data Analyst to be part of a collaborative team, passionate about the data domain and looking for opportunities to improve processes and support stakeholders. Day-to-day you will work alongside data scientists, data analysts, data engineers and analytics engineers, support business requirements for model and report building and enhance and optimise existing models and visualisations. To apply you’ll need to have a strong SQL background, experience in data visualisations (Looker, Tableau, Quick Sight, PowerBI, etc) and three-plus years’ of experience working as a data analyst in a fast-paced environment. A financial technology background and experience with Python is a bonus. Get more information here.
