"The billion-dollar tech startup was supposed to be the stuff of myth. Now they seem to be … everywhere."
I read this sentence in an article about startups and their valuation in an article in Fortune . The article is about start ups worth one billion or more and they state, that today the technology industry is crowded with billion-dollar startups. Reason is the availability of venture capital. Many of these startups will vanish in a short period of time. But some of them will be the next Google, Amazons and Facebooks driving the technology further and doing a lot of fancy things.
The same day I have read an article in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. The article claimed, that Austria, although a rich country, is only on the 20th place in Europe when it comes to financing using risk capital. I ask myself how we can close the gap for high level technologies if neither the public nor the private sector is willing to take some risks in financing innovation. It is typical for Austrians to abhor risk, but this fact, combined with a year long deadlock in Austrian politics is driving us downwards the innovation spiral.
