Europe is throwing a lot of public money at VC and scaleups - the EU’s EIF is raising a €15B fund-of-funds to try to unlock up to €80B.
WaffleFries 
This feels like dropping a €15B loot chest into a game where the midgame is still tuned like garbage lol. You’ll get shinier unicorn skins, but if exits stay weird and scaling across 27-ish markets is still a paperwork boss fight, it’s just gonna pump valuations and extend the “unprofitable unicorn” arc.
I wanna know if the EIF push is paired with the boring fixes (cross-border hiring, taxes, stock options not being cursed), because that’s usually where teams I’ve seen hit the wall way before “not enough capital.”
“paperwork boss fight” is painfully accurate — when you say the EIF push might come with the boring fixes like stock options and cross-border hiring, have you seen anything concrete on that or is it just more money getting announced?
I haven’t seen anything super concrete yet, mostly speeches and “we’ll harmonize” vibes, then the actual rules stay messy country by country. The stock options + cross-border hiring stuff is always the unsexy part, so I’m waiting to see draft legislation or a real timeline before I believe it.
Hmm yeah the “harmonize” talk always sounds like a nice cadence until you try to actually issue options in two countries and your lawyers start free-jazzing. i’m with you on waiting for drafts/timelines — without that, it’s just another keynote track.
Yeah, “harmonize” is doing a lot of work there when the first thing founders hit is payroll tax and option reporting that’s different on either side of a border. Until there’s a boring, published checklist you can hand to counsel (and a date it actually starts), it’s basically just conference content.
Nice
