Microsoft probably needs no introduction. But in case you are not familiar with the Microsoft for Startups program, it is an initiative that provides free licences and Azure credits to selected software entrepreneurs over the course of three years. 

Needless to say, its general manager, Hans Yang, is somewhat of an expert when it comes to identifying the ideas that will make it to market and that particular drive he calls “founder energy.” 

“With some founders, it is immediate — you can see it right off the bat,” Yang tells TNW during an interview at the Red Bull Basement global final where he is acting as a judge. “A lot of times you can see the hustle, and you can see them describe their vision clearly and articulately.” 

However, Yang adds that he thinks there are just as many cases of brilliant technical minds where all of the insight and depth is more contained inside their head. “They can express that in a product, or in application or service, but they don't necessarily know how to express that to the outside world yet, and I think there is room for that kind of founder too.”  

And how does one go about unlocking a founder like that? “It's honestly just access,” Yang says. “Of course there's access to technology and tools, but I think it's also about access to expertise — to the right experts and mentors.” 

Which is why competitions like Red Bull Basement, where finalists are offered workshops on how to craft a compelling pitch and business model, and other initiatives (such as the TNW Soonicorn summit) matter. “As Microsoft for Startups, we can go and give them credits, which gives them access to cloud compute and AI workloads, and can offset some of the cost,” Yang says. 

“But we don't necessarily have the opportunity to tell them ‘hey, when you pitch to an investor, make sure you're leading with the size of the problem and the potential market opportunity that you're going after, and how you've looked at the competition and you believe that your solution is better because it is faster, more efficient, more capable, etc'.” 

Europe's startup ecosystem just needs time

Along with a mounting discourse around technological and digital “sovereignty,” the conversation in Europe has also revolved around how the continent's startups are lagging behind its counterparts across the Atlantic. 

Initiatives like EU Inc, which wants to create a pan-European legal entity to help startups expand and raise funds more easily throughout the bloc, lament the discrepancy in maturity between the US and EU ecosystems. 

Even the reaffirmed Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated in October this year that European companies “face way too many national barriers that make it hard to work Europe-wide, and way too much regulatory burden.” 

Yang, however, is optimistic. He believes that, given time and as alumni from successful startups return to build companies in their home countries (such as France's AI darling Mistral, founded by former DeepMind and Meta employees) the European tech startup ecosystem will mature to the level of that of the US — similarly to what has happened in Taiwan. 

“There was a large movement to bring Taiwanese talent to the US,” Yang, who is of Taiwanese descent, says. “My parents both went to graduate school in the US, and they had many classmates who came from Taiwan, but then went back. And when you look at the semiconductor industry, much of that was built on the back of essentially boomerangs — folks that went to the US, but then came back to their home country.”

When the Draghi report on the future of EU competitiveness was released in October this year, it named an “innovation gap” as one of the main culprits to the bloc's trailing other areas. On a mission to close said gap, the EU has named its very first Commissioner for Startups, tasked with driving “ambition to put research and innovation, science, and technology at the centre” of the EU economy. This includes creating a “trusted” network of deep tech investors across the continent. “I wouldn't necessarily say that the European ecosystem is behind from an innovation perspective,” Yang says. “I think when you talk about size and scale, yes, it's true, but only because there's been more cycles of venture investors investing in startups [in the US]. The ecosystem has just had more time to develop. So I think that Europe honestly just needs time to have the winners — which then spawn the next generation of winners after that.”