The Cultural Catch: Why Europe Still Struggles to Scale Its Tech Stars

Despite growing investment and a swelling ecosystem, Europe’s most promising tech companies are still struggling to scale globally. US-born executive Susan Steele believes the root cause isn’t capital or talent: it’s culture. From tax traps to transatlantic blind spots, she unpacks what’s stalling Europe’s next generation of champions, and what needs to change.

Why Europe’s Tech Champions Are Still Getting Stuck in the Middle

In the race to build world-leading tech businesses, Europe continues to fall short. According to Susan Steele, a US-born executive with decades of experience across London and New York, the real barriers aren’t just regulatory or financial. They’re cultural. 

“Europe is operating on a lag,” she says. “And unless we change the fundamentals, we’re going to keep watching the rest of the world pull ahead.”

Steele has seen both ecosystems up close, having spent most of her career scaling tech companies across continents. In her view, the challenge is not a lack of talent or capital, but a mindset that still favours caution over ambition. 

“It’s not genetic, it’s environmental,” she explains. “The European approach to work-life balance, the concept of a gap year, the length of time it takes to qualify in certain professions - these all shape how willing people are to take risks.”

By the time a business reaches $3 to $30 million in annual revenue, the stage where international expansion becomes essential, many European founders are still reluctant to commit fully to markets like the US. And when they do, they often underestimate the complexity.

“There’s no harm in having your revenue come from the US,” Steele says. “But if businesses were better prepared to crack the US market, you wouldn’t need your CEO to move there. Expansion should be just another part of the growth journey.”

One company she worked with only found real traction after the French CEO relocated to the US and built an American team. Today, 90% of its revenue comes from the States.

While ambition is one issue, policy is another. Steele points to the UK’s approach to R&D tax credits, where companies can face years-long investigations into past claims. In her own business, over 50% of revenue has been at risk for more than two years due to this retroactive scrutiny.

“It’s a doom loop,” she says. “We need tax regimes that encourage growth, not punish it.”

And for those preparing to go public, the demands don’t ease. Boards of listed European tech businesses spend a disproportionate amount of time on compliance and risk, often at the expense of growth and innovation.

“In Europe, boards of listed companies appear to spend a majority of all their time on compliance and risk activities rather than on actions to accelerate profitable growth."

Steele believes a stronger ecosystem doesn’t just require more unicorns — it requires more of everything in between. Europe needs a much denser layer of high-quality scale-ups, with viable business models and the confidence to expand.

“We could declare victory if we had a much greater concentration of smaller tech businesses as well.”

That kind of density depends on improving how talent moves. Too often, large European enterprises are reluctant to let employees leave (even temporarily) to gain start-up experience. Steele suggests it’s time to change the model.

“Imagine if Siemens said to a rising star, ‘Go and work in a scale-up for two years, then come back to us.’ That shift could make all the difference.” 

She also points to a need for more commercially prepared graduates. In markets like Germany, becoming a lawyer can take until a person’s late twenties, comprising years of academic training with little exposure to real business environments.

Investment, she notes, is improving. There’s growing interest from US investors, family offices, and institutional players. But the capital landscape still doesn’t match the scale or speed seen in the US, particularly at the early stages.

Governments also have a role to play. Steele recalls how a French EdTech company received support from the French diplomatic service to host events around the world, instantly boosting visibility and credibility in new markets.

Community, too, is critical. “One of the big changes in the UK over the last decade has been the rise of tech meetups and founder networks,” she says. “Ten years ago, these just didn’t exist in the same way.”

They do now - and they’re growing fast. But for Europe to close the gap, the ecosystem must move beyond surface-level fixes and confront the deeper structural challenges.

It’s not just about catching up. It’s about building an entirely different kind of foundation for scale.