Europe’s Software Moment

What the New Boardwave - McKinsey & Company Report Means for Scaling Software

The data is in: Europe’s software sector is coming of age. More than 200 companies across the continent have surpassed €100 million in annual recurring revenue. Technical talent is world-class. Venture capital is flowing again. And founders are building with global ambition from day one.

Yet despite this momentum, many still face a stubborn challenge: scaling from success to significance takes too long.

That’s why Boardwave, in collaboration with McKinsey & Company, is proud to launch Europe’s Moonshot Moment: Scaling the European Tech Sector. Revealed last night in front of leading software founders and industry experts, this landmark report examines what’s holding European software companies back from scaling faster, what’s already working, and what the ecosystem must do next.

Built from deep analysis and over 100 conversations with founders, CEOs, and investors, the report offers a practical blueprint to help more European companies grow from €10m to €100m (and beyond) with greater speed, consistency and confidence. 

Contributors from the Boardwave community include leaders such as Vin Murria (Chair, CEO, Founder, NED and Investor. Softcat, Bunzl, ADVT, Molten Ventures), Stephane Kurgan (Venture Partner, Index Ventures), Abakar Saidov (CEO, Beamery), Sian Jones (Founder & CEO, Correla), Léo Apotheker (Chairman; Syncron, Eudonet, Harvest, Former CEO SAP & HP), Maggie Buggie (Co-Founder & Managing Partner, In This Together), Achim Weick (Founder & CEO, EQS Group), alongside many others shaping the future of European technology.

Why We Created This Report

As the Boardwave community has grown to over 2,000 software leaders across Europe, one theme has come up again and again: early-stage support is improving, but scale-up support is still missing.

Start-up founders are no longer short of capital or community in the early days. But when it comes to that middle phase: post-product-market fit, but pre-global dominance; the gaps widen. Scaling takes too long. Boards aren’t equipped to guide growth. Talent pools dry up. And many companies either stall or exit before they reach their full potential. 

The data backs this up. According to our research:

● It takes European software companies five years longer than their U.S. peers to reach €100 million in ARR.

● Just 3% of scaled European software firms go on to hit €1 billion+, compared to 5- 10% in the U.S.

● Even among strong performers, the average European software company takes 17 years to reach €100m revenue - compared to 12 years in the U.S.

But with a unique set of technological and political conditions combining, the stage is set for a moment of opportunity. Europe has the ingredients. What it needs now is the execution playbook.

“We have the talent and the ambition,” explains Phill Robinson, CEO and Co-Founder, Boardwave. “What we need now is the network, the capital, and the mindset to go the distance.”

As Ruben Schaubroeck, Senior Partner & European Leader of McKinsey’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications practice, puts it: “We were excited to join forces with Boardwave on this report because Europe’s technology landscape is shifting faster than at any point in the last two decades. The analysis in this report shows Europe already holds the essentials to create the world’s next generation of software champions: deep talent pools, vibrant founder networks, and a rapidly maturing capital base. Simultaneously tectonic shifts - such as the rise of generative AI or the re-shoring of strategic supply chains - are opening new corridors of opportunity in Europe. The time to act is now. Our report offers founders, investors, and boards a common map and advice to harness today’s tailwinds with urgency and turn Europe’s strength into a wave of €1-billion-plus success stories, that will in turn lead to a self-sustaining and compounding ecosystem.”

Four Levers for Smarter Scaling

At the heart of the report is a framework we call LIFT: four areas where targeted action could unlock dramatically better outcomes.

1. Leadership

The companies that scale fastest are the ones that invest in growth-focused leadership early. That means commercial GTM operators, international board members, and advisors who’ve seen the scaling journey before. Too often, European boards are weighted toward investors or governance, not growth. That has to change.

2. Incentives

Europe’s early-stage capital market has matured. But growth-stage capital and equity incentives still lag behind. Founders and teams need funding structures and ownership models that support long-term value creation, not early exits. We also need more late-stage capital that’s patient, ambitious, and locally grounded.

3. Focus

The most successful European scale-ups don’t try to do everything. They stay laser-focused on a core use case, build repeatable sales models, and expand internationally with discipline. In a fragmented market, clarity is a competitive advantage.

4. Teaming

Unlike Silicon Valley, Europe still lacks the density of scale-up experience. That means fewer second time founders to learn from, and fewer board members who’ve navigated the $10m–$100m journey. In fact, just 1 in 5 scale-ups in Europe currently have a board member with global scaling experience.

As the report notes: “Many scale-up CEOs are making key decisions for the first time, without access to others who’ve been there before.”

We need to double down on founder networks, mentoring, and board design that brings real scaling expertise into the room.

This is Europe's Time to Scale

We’ve seen companies like Typeform, Celonis, Mistral and Mirakl prove that European software firms can move fast, go global, and raise serious capital on their own terms. We’ve seen a maturing of Europe’s investor base. And we’ve seen founders across the continent choosing to build and stay here, rather than relocating to the U.S.

What they need now is a system that supports them all the way through scale.

That’s what Europe’s Moonshot Moment aims to offer. It brings together data, lived experience, and clear recommendations to help software leaders - and those who support them - navigate the scale-up journey with more confidence.

What Matters Is What Happens Next

At Boardwave, we’ll be using insights from the report to guide how we support our members at every stage of growth, including making it easier to connect with fellow leaders across Europe, to designing more effective boards, facilitating expert mentoring, and helping companies access the right expansion support.

We’ll also be using this to inform our partnerships with investors and supporters, working together to create a more cohesive, connected and ambitious software ecosystem across Europe.

And we’re inviting our members to share their thoughts, challenges, and reactions inside the platform. What’s missing? What’s resonating? What can we collectively do better?

Final Word

Europe doesn’t need to copy Silicon Valley. It already has the ingredients to build world- class software companies at scale.

What it needs is alignment: across capital, capability, leadership and ambition.

Europe’s Moonshot Moment is a call to action:

For founders, to think bigger.

For investors, to back bolder.

For the ecosystem to raise its game.The next chapter of Europe’s software story starts here.

→ Read the full report now on the Boardwave.

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