What is wrong with the European entrepreneurs’ mindset?

This is a copy of my feedback on an interesting and good post by Paul Jozefak.

There is nothing wrong with the mindset of many European entrepreneurs. It is fine. The problem is largely in the ecosystem in which we build our startups, and the dependency between startups and their ecosystem. Also many of us are first time entrepreneurs. To think big, we entrepreneurs need to either push 27 boundaries on the EU continent or simply move to the US and Asia. But in case of  the latter we are no longer building the so much needed European success story, or a European ecosystem similar as it exists in the US or am I wrong here?

For us to seed stronger startups and become more independent and have entrepreneurs taking care of other entrepreneurs we need more and bigger European exits. We need more EU successes, and EU companies with guts buying US companies (i.e. citydeal buying groupon). We need more European angels investing in Europe (who are the European Super Angels), more serial entrepreneurs backing start-ups, more VC teams managed by entrepreneurs, governments valuing true entrepreneurship the same as innovation, entrepreneurs that can execute upon their vision rather than being pushed to focus on monetization from day one, …

Typically entrepreneurs from small EU countries (Belgium, Latvia, Luxembourg,..) are quicker in building international companies: Playfish (founded by Sebastian Halleux who moved to the US – Belgian), Tapulous (founded by Bart Decrem who also moved to the US – Belgian), Netlog (BE), Nimbuzz (NL), …

Nonetheless, there are plenty of kick-ass entrepreneurs building kick-ass products and businesses in Europe: Skype, VentePrivee, Spotify,…

So, to conclude, there is talent working on the next big thing here in Europe. We just need to make sure that some of the spillovers as a result of exits (money, networks, expertise) stay in Europe for the benefit of the next generation of Entrepreneurs.