Many people voting 'interesting' so it seems like a good idea to have such European partnership for web entrepreneurs. No the question is, what that should consit of? (taking inspiration indeed from exiting experiences such as start up US)

Entrepreneurship is a team activity and anything that can be done to have people network is a great initiative. These networks have to bring technology and business together and the more international they are the better.
These networks should be created for startups at different stages in their development from their creation to their growth stage.
Some countries have initiatives around these ideas with a high degree of success. The building blocks are always bringing technology and business model, giving training and advice with minimal financial support. Help them grow through their initial stages and then give them access to the private network of growth accelerators--business angels, venture capital and their ecosystem.

Cultural and Cash issues are different between US and EU and that is something that should be acknowledged in this push to copycat what is happening over there.

One often quoted reason for web entrepreneurs to chose Silicon Valley(50% are foreign) is the availability of high end engineers, programmers and coders - however, a recent comment also made the point was that Poland has a strong and growing group of these industry linchpins, that soon they will be oursourceing to the US for CEO's....

My point, let's get specific about the business we are talking about - programmes that actually target day to day industry requirements and not just aspirations.

I find this really interesting - our portal is based in IT hardware support and connects companies directly to our supplier network in europe - we have worked hard to try and provide a unified platform and its working - but it does sometimes feel like we are pushing against the tide. Bringing together a lot of independent globally based companies and unifying them is powerful but it changes the way the industry works in layered margins - we just have to keep working hard and investing to get to the vision which isn't far away.

I sincerely beleive that it is difficult to simplify the problem; again, the conditions in Silicon Valley (and other USA ecosystems like Boston or Boulder) are not replicable here in an exact form. I recommend you to take a glimpse at this article: http://t.co/SLPNL9qi
In my opinion, governments should empower indirect measures for enhancing our entrepreneurial ecosystem. FOr example, simplification of bureaucracy, modifying obsolete laws for engouraging private investment (Angels and VCs), etc. Education-wise, there are structural changes to be made, but not sure about to what extent the EU could hava an impact in this field.

Creating a framework/space for empowering relations among European entrepreneurial players is a brilliant idea, but I feel the reasons behind our disadvantaged positions go a bit deeper. What do you think? :)

Europe has not a start up but a growth problem. Why? One reason is our massive lack of growth and venture capital (compared to the US). We need to strenthen that to become competitive again in the digital industry. My reccomendation: Look at israels succes story with its yozma programm since 1993, could be a role model for europe! http://www.yozma.com/overview/

Yozma today is private but it was started in 92 as a government programm (the government left the yozma fund step by step), as such I would recommend strongly a similar programm for europe, because today we have a lack of available venture capital for european growth companies (not only start up's - very important!). I am totally convinced that there must be a government boost to get things rolling...private investors are not locked out yet but they do not invest as much as it is needed...same problem was in israel in 92... to get the best ROI, I doubt that it woud be usefull to connect such a programm with any other planned initiative...those pork barrel politics never pay off in the end as the try to suare the circle.

we do have also a nice draft how this could work for europe (we drafted a similar programm for the german government which easily could be adapted for the european level...

Let me 1st refer to Yozma. It was on even before 1992 that the Government of Israel established it as an Private - Government Venture Capital. I was some kind of a show case for interesting investments in technology oriented initiative. The success of Yozma (originally driving new initiatives) was the 1st step in the creation of many Venture Capital Investment entities. The basic formula was based on seed money to create a Start-up growing to solid company which can get a value of 10-30 time of the original investment. Such numbers makes a success rate of 20% (only 2 out of 10 start-ups survived) a good investment for the venture money.
The other issue is about what are those successful start-up. They are all driven by unique technology ideas and a foreseen market. The ability to be the owner / partner in a start-up is the main drive beyond the researchers who are creating them as well as the knowledge that failure of one is not the end of the day as there is the ability to create another start-up. For the Venture Capital one of the most important criteria in making the investment is the "people" their motivation and experience.
Working with many researchers on FP funded program I appreciate very much their technological capabilities and motivation. It is my opinion that it is required to set up a program that will encourage those researchers to see what their innovation can do on the worldwide market (marketing) and would support them in taking the 1st step toward being the owners of their own achievements. Sharing with them the risk by providing them the investment of creating their own working team a a start-up company.
i will be happy to get participants comments a to elaborate on those ideas.

We should discuss that in person at the assembly in brussel, also with eu officials such as Detlef Eckert who was already open for that idea a couple month ago. @Laia: Do you think we can arrange something?

NDRC in Ireland is modelled on examples including the Magnet programme, which is the other (pre-commercial development) arm of Yozma, and Yozma itself. Imperial Innovations in the UK is another globally recognised example. NDRC in Ireland has been up and running since 2008, has worked with Universities on over 80 commercialisation projects, and is starting to see successes in the form of venture investment in new ventures.

NDRC is a form of Public Private Partnership which allows public funding to make research more commercial and product-oriented, and to allow private investment to drive commercialisation and venture forming and growth.

There is a strong base of research in Europe and we need to make this a bedrock for European business. At NDRC we’ve begun to see the real benefits of the PPP model, combined with a neutral space singularly focused on commercial validation of research, and a dedicated team with expertise in this process.

There are positive signs of Horizon2020 including better structures for encouraging commercialisation of research. It is important that these appreciate that there is a need for facilitators to manage this process in a neutral (cultural, physical) manner.

There is a critical role for innovative forms of Public Private investment to allow this to happen.

Beyond minimizing risks for venture capital (via PPP or other enticements), what are the other gating factors limiting the scaling of successful small enterprise in Europe?

I live in Silicon Valley for 14 years and breath it every day. By far the biggest difference is the difference in culture. Europe is trying to imitate Silicon Valley since the 90's knowing that technology controls much of any future in medical care, biology, energy...

Yet the culture is simply preventing it.

1) Investment Culture
30% of the funding globally comes from Sand Hill Road. But isn't funding per see - it's the valuation. I started 3 companies in Europe and 3 in the US - US valuation is simply twice as high as in Europe. Why should I take $2 Million for 20% of the company when I get $4Million for 20% in the US?

2) Investors invested Hundreds of Millions in social media start-ups with no business model. A European investor is only laughing and considers it the most stupid thing without even analyzing why it may make sense ;)

3) European have a very high degree of protectionism. Protect anything, videos, music, papers even thoughts. The fear that somebody can copy something is by order of magnitude greater than the understanding that sharing will augment something more than endanger it.

4) With all that said the next idea is to make it different to be different. And that is when it becomes nothing but embarrassing.

I trust that those are the biggest obstacle of all in becoming an innovation leader. And unfortunately when it comes to innovation there is only a leader. The No.2 is already a follower.

In 2000 I conducted an international benchmarking study of business incubators for the Brussels Region. At the time, private equity-based incubators like Gorilla Park, Brainspark and Speed Ventures were all the rage across Europe. With millions in venture capital funding, they took equity stakes in early-stage startups in the hope of leading them to an IPO in a matter of months. Sadly but not surprisingly most of them collapsed after the burst of the dot-com bubble. What remained were the traditional incubators funded by public authorities in order to stimulate local economic development. They supply subsidized workspace and administrative support to start-up companies, but not the "smart money" and aggressive growth strategy that private investors would provide. Their mission is to ensure that most of the tenant companies survive, whereas the business model of the equity-based incubator was to gamble that just one in five or one in ten would succeed.

With the benefit of hindsight, a few years later I contributed to another benchmarking study for the European Commission, where I made the case for a hybrid model of business incubator based on a public-private partnership, wherein public funds would cover the operating costs of the incubator, and private funds would invest in its tenant companies.

I believe such a model is especially well suited to Europe, which as pointed out in the comments above lacks the entrepreneurial culture and ecosystem of Silicon Valley.

While we talk about interface I think we should care about 2 implementations - front end (content) and back-end (admin interface). the most trouble we get in menu system when 'Add content' and others are works in both areas. Now textgroup support is dropped and I see no ability to separate this.
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