[port11]

Have you raised venture capital? I have. It’s fine.

You don’t get US-level (or even Israel/China/Singapore) seeds, but often you get a matching public investment. Germany has better matching funds, but we did alright in Belgium, and previously Portugal.

Let’s stop pretending the EU can ‘fix’ this. It’s cultural, we’re simply not risk takers (on average) because a “normal” job comes with great benefits. Most of us don’t struggle to survive and have to “pull ourselves by the bootstraps”. The social security safety net protects you.

That’s all fine. We’re fine. No, we won’t lead on AI productisation, but we have AMAZING fundamental research going on at unis. I hired 2 such people in PhD+job setups, that part is also working fine.

Chill.

[rjzzleep]

Funny you should bring up Germany, since it's an a place where a monopoly class of Notary's gets to suck you dry every time you add a new investor to your business in a reading session where the only value he brings to the table is to read the whole thing for you.

[port11]

Same as elsewhere. The notary fees in Belgium are why we deferred changing the cap table every time it needed doing, ultimately making some of the partners… not have any actual shares because it was too late. Notaries are like this everywhere, AFAIK.