Europe has always been known as one of the frontiers in innovation, especially The Netherlands where we continuously belongs to the top 10 of best knowledge economies. The work of the Netherlands entrepreneurship community is making more and more people believe in building companies.
While Blendle allows us to read our newspapers on our smartphone, without ASML we would probably not even have smartphones as they are nowadays. Both Dutch companies, Blendle is disrupting the newspaper industry with the iTunes for news and ASML owns 80% of the chip industry worldwide thanks to Dutch government support.
They are great examples, but when we compare ourselves to the United States or Israël, we are not yet the culture that dares to take the risks that comes with entrepreneurship and it is our culture that is to blame. We have come to a point where our socialistic approach is becoming a real pain in the Western European society since our entrepreneurs have to pay the bills for the increased unemployment rate (9,8% EU to 5,5% in the US).
Even though we thrived as a nation since the Second World War and own some of the most successful businesses in the world, the modern Netherlands suffers from hesitation when it comes to entrepreneurship because of the environment:
No Services: Under a boss you have everything covered (healthcare, holidays etc). As an entrepreneur none.
High Taxes: As an employee you only pay 21% taxes, when you are an entrepreneur it goes up to 73% in direct and indirect taxes.
Fear of Failure: Failure is a death sentence in the Netherlands. Entrepreneurs who fail are seen as endangering their families, people see you as those who haven’t thought about the consequences. A second chance doesn’t exist here.
No Venture Funding: Our only source of income is crowdfunding, for which founders need a proof of concept Banks only invest in fixed assets and equity funds, and venture capital is almost impossible to find.
Closed Community: As an entrepreneur you have to be well educated and you won’t find lots of support from other entrepreneurs since sharing ideas and strategy are risky is such a small national market.
Bureaucracy: You cannot just start as an entrepreneur, you need to have a well-thought plan and diplomas to receive partly budgets on implementation. For government funds this means a fully detailed 500 page request and a long experience road.
Even successful innovation spending gets deeply criticized by Dutch citizens if test results are not revolutionary or fast enough. As an example: the first real Solar Roadway the Netherlands implemented was a marked improvement, but fails to stir the public sentiment around technology.
So how does one make this ecosystem into a failure proof environment?
Thanks to lots of interviews I came to realize that our nation has possibilities in becoming innovation leaders, although we have a long road to go.
Hackathons: When it comes to hackathons we are more than open, each regularly attracting 50-500 attendees. At the annual TNW hackathon, the Young Creators Hackathon, and the World Hackathon Day, generations young and old encourage each other and are more than open to share their thoughts, ideas and skills.
Meetups: When it comes to meetups and finding sponsors, we have a much richer sharing economy since the crisis in 2008. When it comes to events we are growing year over year, from festivals to gatherings and startup pitch events for example the annual TNE, EIT ICT Labs, Dell Startup Award, All Energy Day & Uprise Startup Festival.
Co-workspace: When it comes to co-working spaces, Seats2Meet has created one of the industry's most compelling models: paying based on social capital backed by renting (7 million m²) empty office space currently on 1722 spaces in the Netherlands alone. This means that everyone can work in a co-workspace for nothing, including lunch and drinks.
This gives lots of opportunities for older and younger generations to kick-start their own enterprise without having to lean back on returning costs yet which makes it even for you with or without strong financial background to build the next big thing. Rotterdam just announced to offer free housing for startups, who knows where we will be in another year.
Photo credits: Solaroad