The Event Took Place in Brussels Under the Title How to Improve the Investments Horizons

The event took place in Brussels under the title “How to improve the investments horizons of European Businesses”. The discussion evolved around the need to improve the capacity of European start-ups to scale up, taking into consideration the lack of a single European market and the very exigent demands of those ready to provide equity in some way or form to start the venture. Very concrete advice was delivered by Professor Mason, University of Glasgow, and by two successful entrepreneurs, Vincent Jocquet, Sentiace, and Nadira Azermai, ScriptBoook. The main messages, comments and responses to our questions, related to the limitations of the single market and the embedded risk aversion of European, were:

·  Europe suffers a lack of funding for SMEs due, among others, to regulatory disincentives in the financial framework and a lack of institutional investors. But scaling up not only depends on the capital framework, we also need a real single market to allow companies reaching a competitive demand within Europe.

·  the European Investment Fund and the European Investment Bank should be te main engine of financing of start-ups in Europe

·  business angels reject more than 90 % of the deals they see at the initial stage. The most frequent reason for rejection is lack of trust in the entrepreneur. "this is a person to person business".

·  most of the times, for the business to grow, the founder has to go!! That is why it is needed to rely on mentors, other entrepreneurs and incubators. The concept of Ecosystem, putting together Universities, mentors, entrepreneurs, accountants, lawyers and talent should be developed in Europe.

·  We perceive also a distrust of the European society to venture capital. Venture capital in English comes from Adventure, while we call it in French capital-risque, which has a negative connotation.