Trump a ‘Force for Good’ in Europe’s Venture Market, Says Speedinvest Founder

He urged the European VC industry to take advantage of the opportunities created by Trump’s “polarized” politics.

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Speaking to a group of European VCs, Holle encouraged them to think bigger, grow their VC businesses, and tap into new capital sources coming from Asia and other regions that don’t share Trump’s views.

Although Holle mentioned that Trump’s tariffs weren’t great for Europe, he said he had never been prouder to be European. He emphasized that European values like modesty, consensus, and democracy were strongly resonating with both founders and investors.

Holle said: “If I talk to founders, I see an opening, I see founders that are actually interested to align with capital that is also aligned with the values that they see work.”

Holle said that founders, scientists, and investors were moving to Europe, and that investors from Japan and other places were also bringing their capital to Europe because of Trump’s politics.

Holle urged the European VC industry to take action and “get their act together”.

He said that the European VC ecosystem needed to change its mindset, focusing on building larger VC firms and acting more like entrepreneurs by writing bigger checks.

He added: "There is no need to have thousands of small seed funds in Europe. We need to consolidate.”

But William McQuillan, partner, Frontline Ventures, the B2B investor, also speaking at the EUVC Summit, urged European investors not to be “isolationist”.

He said: “We need to be careful as long-term investors not to become too isolationist in our thinking and to continue to think globally.”

He shared data showing that, on average, over 40% of the revenue of European firms comes from the US when they go public.

He said: “The US is a huge market and when you want to build global companies in Europe you still need to be thinking internationally as well.”