Europe – Playing hard to get
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Fajardo, Jay
Agustini, Gabriela
Harinjaka, Ratozamanana Andriankoto
Kampfmann, Lukas
Akinyemi, Tayo
A non-western, global perspective on Europe and its role within the international digital economy : Where are the global hot spots when it come to digital innovation? What European digital hotspots are visible to the rest of the world? How are they perceived to differ from Silicon Valley? What is special about them?
 One of our most faithful participants, and I try to pronounce his name the right way, but I won't succeed, Harijanka Ratatatsu Manana from Madagascar. The most charming person and also supporter of the global innovation gathering from Ulabi, Gabriela Augustini from Brazil. All of us would not be here without you, Tayo from Chicago, director of AFRILEF, the umbrella organization of all the African tech hubs. The last panelist, Lukas from the factory in Berlin, we had the pleasure to visit your space already. I'm very happy to have you here to represent the Berlin startup scene. And as a charming moderator, we have Judith from the German African Business Association. As you can see, we have not done a lot of preparation. Some of us have met before, Tayo, we have worked together, Lukas, even though we have the same roots in Berlin, we have met before. Welcome to all of you. I'm really looking forward to this discussion. We had a few controversies already in the back during the last panel. I'm really looking forward to how we're going to find Europe and whether Europe is hard to get in this panel. So welcome to you all. We're going to have a very, very quick introduction round. After that already, I would welcome all of you to feel free to ask questions. We really want to have a discussion here at the almost end of the Republic and make sure that we make most of the time we have here with these five fabulous discussions. Tayo, one of the ladies is first. Can I ask you to start? Sure. My name is Tayo Akinyemi. I am the Executive Director of Afrolabs, which is a Pan-African network of tech innovation hubs. We currently have 40 hubs in 20 countries. And for those of you who may not be familiar, a hub is basically a physical nexus point. There are people in institutions that are interested in entrepreneurship and innovation. So these can be students, they can be financiers, obviously technologists, developers and entrepreneurs. Okay, let me guess. Out of those 20 countries, five on Europe. We're working on it. Okay. So is it a flat zero so far? Okay. So we're working on that one. Next lady, please. Hi, everyone. I'm Gabrielle Gustini. I'm from Brazil. I'm founder of Afrolab Maker Space, which is a space that provides tools and space like for collaboration between entrepreneurs and tech innovators who want to find solutions for the global challenge in our reality. Okay. Good. Thanks a lot. Then we're working from east to west, Jay. I'm Jay Farno. Can you guys hear me? No. How about now? No. Okay. I can try to. There you go. Try again. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Why did you do her in jacka? That's okay. Now. Now? Maybe move here. Okay. Then we can have how to in jacka start. Time. This is fixed. Yes. Thank you. My name is Arin Jacka. I'm from Madagascar. I'm from Madagascar. I'm from Madagascar. I'm from Madagascar. I'm from Madagascar. I'm from Madagascar. I'm from Madagascar. I'm from Madagascar. I'm from Madagascar. Founder of Habaka Hub Technology Innovation Space for the community in Madagascar. I'm really happy to be here. Okay. I do need Lucas to finish the round. So yes, please take that mic then, Jay. I'll give you a mine. Okay, one more time. I'm Jay Fajardo. I'm from the Philippines. I'm the program director of Launch Garage Innovation Hub in Manila. And you do work a lot with Europe? No. Okay. We'll get to that in a second. The good thing is we have you here and you're working from Berlin in Europe. Lucas. I am, yes. My name is Lucas Kampfmann and I'm the chief marketing officer at Factory Berlin. Factory is the first and the largest startup campus here in Berlin. We run 16,000 square meters of office space for startups from any given size. So we have residents like SoundCloud, Twitter, Uber. And we really imagine ourselves as a place, as a community for those tech startups, which means we want to bring together very early stage startups and people that are just getting started with prototypes, with these larger growth stage startups like SoundCloud, Twitter, et cetera. And we want to provide all the services that an entrepreneur could need. And we want to bring in all the economy from Europe and Germany into our tech hub. And that's what we do at Factory Berlin. Okay. So let me know what is, from your point of view, the advantage for you in Berlin and your colleagues in Europe to work with other countries and how do you choose collaboration partners? Right. So I think in Europe we actually do have a very Eurocentric view of things. And the reason for that might be that when you look at the European Union, you have 28 different countries, you have 500 million citizens. So just Europe in itself is a huge market, but it's also a fairly humongous market. So you have about the same level in terms of economy, technology, education. And since we are in the European Union, it's possible to easily hire people from other countries, it's possible to travel and so on. And I think that that's the reason that a lot of the companies within Europe, they look to other European tech hubs. So when you're in Berlin, you're going to be traveling to London because in London there is more capital or you might be traveling to Tel Aviv because Tel Aviv has very good connections to America. So the way I see it is that Europe is indeed very much centered on Europe in itself. Whether or not that's a good thing we should discuss. You would go to the US via Tel Aviv? It's a possibility because actually a lot of the startups from Tel Aviv, they have very good connections to the US. When you work out of Tel Aviv, you kind of tend to bypass the European market and rather you go straight to New York or to San Francisco. So that's an interesting phenomenon that has to do with the immigrant community from Israel that has a lot of partners and roots in the US, of course. Okay. I'll tell you, as I know that you are based in the US, but working with Africa, I have to ask the backwards question. Are you going to Europe via Tel Aviv? I doubt it. While I can understand why that might make sense in the former case and the reverse case, not so much. So, for example, the pathway to Europe will probably partially depend on historical relationships. I have, well, we have at least two hubs that are currently looking into relationships with European incubators, but it's a historical relationship. So there are Francophone incubators looking for partnerships in France. Okay. So when you choose, it's more on a personal basis when you choose new countries to join your network. Well, in terms of with whom they partner, if that's the question you're asking, it's depending on what they're looking for and what the easiest entry points are. So some of these incubators already have a predilection or ideas about where they need to get resources, and so they'll follow that path. Okay. Jay, for you, is it? At all? Please don't say no. Attractive to work with European hubs? Yeah, because of, I guess because of talent, for example. Let's say you're a startup and you're looking for development talent. There are some very good coders here and technologists. So in that aspect, yes. But it's really a stretch. The go-to really is to start locally, of course, because it's cheaper back home. We have been contacted by some European developers for jobs because I also run a developer company back home. We do Ruby on Rails development, but we've been receiving some companies from Eastern Europe, for example, that are looking for jobs, that we can send to them. So it's actually a very weird circuitous thing that's happening now. US startups outsource to our development jobs back home, and then you've got European developer jobs looking for jobs. We're considering sending jobs over there because we're running out of talent as well. So that's kind of a weird thing that's emerging. But with regards to who to go to, the natural tendency is to go to the United States, both historically because of the language, we're a colonial country, we're colonized by the United States. So there seems to be that kind of historical pattern, countries, for example, in Africa, colonized by France, the tendency is to funnel through there. As we go to the States, sometimes we go to Singapore. That's a fairly recent development, but that's for cash, it's for funding. And also there have been a lot of venture capital coming into Southeast Asia and Asia. But because of the different legal framework in Asia with regards to taxation, data domains, et cetera, a lot of the investors would ask you to fold up your company and incorporate it in the United States or some friendly jurisdiction. So that's the whole complex thing that's happening. But then is Euro-blacking inspiration for you? Is it any inspiration at all? Yes. Well, Berlin, for example, is actually becoming the, it's actually an attractive place to go to for setting up a startup just because of the atmosphere. And there's a big cultural compelling personality to it. However, vis-a-vis the UK, London, I think it's expensive in London, right? So it doesn't make any economic sense. And however, Berlin, I understand, is starting to become a little expensive as well. So then it becomes less and less attractive. Okay. I think so far we're still that cheap compared to London or Paris. But I get your point, yes. Harin Dhaka, I guess most of the people here know your story or part of your story of how not to travel to Europe. And while Lucas said that where we are traveling or where the Germans and the Europeans are all traveling to, is this still existing and not just for developers and innovation existing barrier on the vis-a-vis policy, for example, so that physical exchange is not possible? Is that still a barrier for you to say, I feel welcome in Europe? I think this is the place to go to? Yes. I think it's still a barrier and we have that in the door of Europe every day. Not for me no more, luckily, because I have the German parliament who's taking care of my case. But the thing is, it's really hard to come to Europe as an African. You are skilled, not skilled. The thing is, they are very hard on the vis-a-vis process and there is no point as a developer or as a techie to travel like working here because we can do all in digital way online, especially for the conference, for example, you have to travel a little bit for work. I think we can do it from our country more and more. Yes, I also thought that you are doing everything just on the virtual basis. I was very happy when Taiyou said that it's still personal networks, personal meetings on how you decide on developing and expanding your network. So it still is important to travel and to meet people like here in this meeting and it's great that everybody takes up the effort to come here at the end of the day. Besides the travelling problems, what is the attraction, if at all, for you to come to Europe on the working level? Yes, attraction is the network and the learning because I'm very much, you don't have it yet in Madagascar, for example, and we learn because we are going to build the equivalence or the same ecosystem in our country and then we think that Europe has advanced in terms of working space or kind of ecosystem for startups. So that is the interest of coming here. At the end, we are going to try to compete as a country as well in this ecosystem field. And when you're working in Madagascar, do you have like close exchange with any, well, I can't really say neighbouring countries, but more or less neighbouring countries? Are you working together with anybody there where you say, well, we might have similar issues, similar topics, or are you sort of focused on Madagascar and your group there? Yes, we are working mostly with the continent in Africa. We are part of Africa, for example, because we are sharing the same environment. So that same environment is where we are growing. So we are now thinking about the other environment because the market in Africa is today represent a huge market for our startups. So we focus on that for now, but for the infrastructure and for the knowledge we need and inspiration from the US and from Europe. So that's make us want to learn and to also contribute in this entire economy. Okay, great, thank you. Gabi, you're close to the US. Is that the first place for you to go to? Yeah, in Brazil, especially when we are talking about innovation and technology, it's really US-centric and Silicon Valley model. Everyone's like talking about that. But sometimes you can find, when the other reference arrives, people are really happy to see how can be different. And for example, in this Internet of Things scene and some scene close to tech and hardware, this approach that comes from Europe that is more looking to the cities, to urban process and putting the citizenship in the process is really welcome in Brazil, especially from the people who are working with digital innovation. So we have this connection and we also have some relations in the way that we are looking to public policy and all the concerns about data and about privacy and all these issues. So we are really happy when we can find that reference and we can think that we can be connected. And also there is another role in this situation about how Europe can look into the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem in the world that is not like looking in a way to build another Silicon Valley but working in a different way, much more close in the way that we are used to work nowadays, more collaborative. So Europe is leading a kind of conversation, for example, between the global south and trying to bring new ideas and people together. And then we can try to find an ecosystem, an innovation ecosystem that's much more collaborative and diverse. And then we can try to find solutions and space from everyone from different parts of the world and that is connected to Europe but also with space from people coming from Africa, Asia, Latin America and all these kinds of things. So your start is really true collaboration in all directions and the aim is not to be another Silicon Valley. Yeah, I think Silicon Valley is not a model to reproduce, I hope so. And it's like if we can start to tell our own histories and if we can start to have more space from the ideas and innovators that are coming from all around the world. And we probably can see some problems solving that is like, problems that is really important and that are really struggling that's so side and all days. And then we can have space to replicate and scale the solutions and maybe we can have a better ecosystem and more equal society. Okay, the people you work with back at home, you've taken a lot of people from abroad. I mean like, Dave was saying that they might give jobs without the people physically coming to the Philippines, I suppose. So just give out jobs to Eastern Europe. Is that something that you also do or do the people come to Brazil to work with you? Brazil is really big so we have problems even to talk with different areas in the country because it's like, it's one of the biggest countries in the world with 200 million people inside so it's quite difficult even to connect. And also as we have a big problem with inequality, it's even difficult to connect to the different peoples and ideas that we have inside the country. So our main focus of course is trying to work in Rio de Janeiro, it's the city that we are based in and try to connect and integrate the different areas because we have like a really rich people in one side and a really poor people in the other side and a lot of things that come with this inequality. So we are at this moment really focusing on our reality and try to bring something that is more integrated. This is why we are like, we are doing the moment. But we are also of course really open and want to talk and understand in the future what can you do to be more connected and especially try to bring these histories and this is invasion, it's coming from the different parts of the world, especially in the global south. Okay, but that means that Brazil is still quite busy with itself. Yes, like, yes, there are a lot of quite things happening and we have a lot of problems to solve. So, yeah. We all have that in common, that's not the problem. Yeah, and that's like, that's good to be part of a meeting like that because we can share ideas and think how can we collaborate and find solutions together to replicate to everyone and then we can maybe go faster, do you know? Okay, if each of you would have to choose the point, the working point, the working place of another one in this group for a year, where would you go, Tayu? Brazil. No, no decision allowed just because of weather conditions, right? No, but Gabby just made a very, I mean, she made some really eloquent points. I mean, in as much as I am African, we've actually started talking about South-South Exchange because one, you get better solutions, arguably, when you take into account better perspectives and sort of assume that there's something new to create without replicating the Silicon Valley example. So there's a lot of exciting work-related reasons to collaborate. Personally, I've actually been to Brazil for work and there's a lot of really exciting things happening in entrepreneurship now. There have been, I think, some regulatory challenges in terms of trying to wend your way as a starter from Brazil, but the scene itself is emerging in similar ways, I mean, it's a broad statement, similar ways to the way the African scene is emerging. I think there are legitimate non-son and beach-related reasons. But I do think it is actually a pretty good point with the weather because a phenomenon that we here in Germany experience, and Berlin, especially in Berlin, you have awful winters that just stretch endless. And so what we've seen happening is that people started these kind of surf offices, either in Gran Canaria and Morocco and other places, where they go to work for a couple of months during the winter, and it's not justifications, they call it a work-cation. And that's actually a point where there is some potential for collaboration, you know, because if people from Berlin start working in another hemisphere for a couple of months out of the year, then obviously, you know, that physical proximity to other people, that makes it a lot easier. Because when you're just sitting in Berlin at your laptop, you know, what reasons there really is to get in touch with a Brazilian entrepreneur or with the Philippines. But if you actually, you know, happen to live there for a couple of months, and you see what kind of problems are these people working on, and you know, you tend to meet these people and because you need internet and you need, you know, need to meet people, etc., etc., then that may or may not be in the future really a point where, you know, the world does become a little bit smaller. Yeah, but that's a very good point. Because I always thought it was the other way around. The worse the weather gets, the more you stay inside and work. I think that was the old fashioned way. And really, really thinking about it, I mean, this is a phenomenon that was not possible 10 years ago. Like, right now, it's possible to, you know, here in Berlin, hop on an airplane, it's a four-hour flight to Morocco, and you know, you'll have a degree difference of 20 degrees. And you know, and you'll still have fast internet, you know, and all these things. And with services like Airbnb, the world got smaller. And that kind of thing was not possible 10 years ago. And now, when we talk to new hires, we see that this is actually a factor where they say, okay, it's something like this possible, you know. So I think that with the future generations, like this kind of flexibility in terms of what location do I want to work at, it's going to become more and more important. Okay, make your decision. You have four beautiful countries to choose from. Thank you. What's your choice? It's difficult, but I would also, somewhere either Brazil or Philippines, because I do like surfing, so, and both countries are nice for that. Okay, do you have any business reasons on top why you would choose Brazil or the Philippines? I do know what I heard about the Philippines is that a lot of American companies outsource content production to the Philippines. And that's a very interesting concept to think about it that way. And I would be very much interested to learn more about that, because I would imagine that there must be some kind of cultural divide that makes it difficult. And yet somehow it does work. So yeah, there are a bunch of companies from San Francisco that actually have back offices in Manila. In fact, they just left their marketing office in New York, like for example, Indanero.com, Jessica Ma, her back office was all moved to the Philippines. She doesn't have any ethnic roots in the Philippines, except she just decided that it's a great place to be. And LinkedIn has a huge back office in the Philippines. And Tascos, there's a whole bunch of Silicon Valley companies that actually have big operations there. But yeah, but going back to the exchange, right? Like going back to Brazil. I'd have to choose Brazil. You're not allowed to stay in Manila, even if it's a great place to be. But yeah, it's tough to choose, because not counting the wonderful weather and the cultural richness, for example, there are advantages to coming to Berlin, for example. It's all knowledge sharing that you're after. And it's all... The huge part of a startup success is really the vibe it works within. I mean, if it's among peers, other startups, the success rate really rises from there. Plus, access to mentors. That's very important. So if we have to go to the States, then you have a wealth of mentors there, because that's pretty much the center of tech startups right now. However, you can go now to Berlin and learn from... It's been growing, the startup ecosystem here. A lot of people are here as well. And then you might want to take advantage of certain nuanced knowledge with regards to market, culture, how to deal with culture, different cultures, how to design your UI based on European context, maybe. Stuff like that. So you'd be brave to have... Not in the winter. No, no, you do the summer half in Berlin and the winter in Brazil. Yeah, yeah, sure. Summer spring. Aline Jaco, where would you go? Are we good to go? Brazil is full. Yeah, but... No more visa for Brazil. Yes, I'm going to Asia because I don't need the visa for there. And also because of this making prototypes movement of makers and hackers, I would go to Asia because it's the place where we can scale up if it is a product. So I definitely go to Asia. Right. So, I mean, I really have the feeling that it's more Europe that might be needing the rest of the world and in your field, the rest of the world needing Europe, which is very interesting because I think the Europeans still think that they're so innovative and technologies all done and thought about in Europe and Germany especially. So this is a really interesting insight, I suppose. What do you think? What would Europe have to do to be more outgoing, to get more engaged in the scenery and the community except for gatherings like this? I think it should be more present. For example, mostly of the big startups, universities, incubators and all of the famous programs from the US, they have office people or at least they're traveling to Brazil. And that is not that common from Europe. It's like we're not receiving that much people from projects from Europe countries. And when we are receiving that, the people are really hoping to come. So it's like, I think it's giving more content, giving more of the reference, be more in the media and travel more around the country and try to see how great it is and how the things are working here. Okay, Taya, you already know two worlds. You know the US and you know, of course, quite a lot about Africa. What would you say from this double viewpoint? What does Europe need to do? Honestly, I would say do the math. The center of gravity economically, financially, politically to a certain extent is shifting. It's been shifting. I've all heard the statistics about GDP growth in Africa and in Asia. So it's really about seizing opportunity. I mean, the GDP growth, I mean, Europe is a continent so I hate to make generalizations, but GDP growth, the age of the population suggests that there's a need to look elsewhere for profit, for opportunities for innovation. So you know, if you're not able to ride your own innovation curve, then I suggest you get on someone else's. Right on. Okay, we let that sink in for a second and I'll stay. You know, it's not just Europe that's looking for attention with regards to tax startups. I've seen a lot of jurisdictions establish incentive programs for startups to actually move to there. Let's say Canada, for example. Canada actually has an active startup migration program. They actually go to Asia and they search out some startups that they like and they try to convince them to set up in Canada. And that might be a good process to try. But it's, to me, it sort of looks very desperate. Like why would you want to move to Canada? I mean, it's really cold there. It's colder than winter here in Berlin, I guess. Beautiful nature with no internet. And no people to... It's a huge country, no people. Yeah, they're actually going to those lengths to try to attract complete companies to transplant themselves. But I can't really believe that tax incentives, for example, are the right means to attract anybody in this room. Ooh, which? Anybody in this room, tax incentives? Uh-huh. I don't know. Well, it's not just tax. Maybe it's even how do you call this? Immigration benefits. Colleges. Yeah, okay. Educational benefits. So they enjoy, maybe from a developing country, you enjoy the benefits of being a citizen of Canada that might actually be the compelling reason to go because you've got free healthcare, very good healthcare, you know, those things. You're talking about that? You could come to Berlin again. We have good healthcare. I know, yeah. Okay. But that does seem to show that maybe the relationship between countries and tech hubs is more one of a competition than of collaboration because I think every single tech hub needs critical mass. This is something that we in Berlin believe in totally, that we need a certain number of entrepreneurs in this city, a certain number of developers, designers, a certain number of capital and only if that critical mass has been reached, then true innovation can happen and big companies can happen. And this is something that Berlin has been looking for for the past 10 years. All the time the Berlin ecosystem has been existing. All the while, all the companies here had to do the track over to London to look for capital and many times then the companies just stayed in London because if that's where the money is, then why not move there all together? And I think in that sense, that might be an explanation why many of the tech hubs in the world are more focused inwards. If they collaborate with other tech hubs, then it might be more because they want to get the talent and they want to attract the talent. That's also why maybe it might be healthier to focus just on a couple of tech hubs per continent so to speak, so not to spread the talent thin. But I don't know how your experiences in Africa with decentralization versus real hubs forming which attract the talents from all over the continent. Maybe you should answer that. I would say, and I'll answer this from the hub level as opposed to the city level, what we tend to see is that at the beginning there's a clustering of activity that's broad instead of deep. So many of the members in the network do server variety of functions. They're co-working, they're incubating, they're accelerating, they're serving coffee, they're doing training. But as you see more hubs emerge in a particular city, then you start to see differentiation partially driven by competition. So have one sort of figure out, okay, well, if I focus on community building and pre-incubation, I have a role and I'm incentivized to play that role in a certain way and then I pass on to the incubators, the accelerators, what have you. So I think there's definitely a need for hubs to find a specialization of some type. So London, for example, I think I could be wrong, is known for fintech. There's a very good reason why it's known for fintech. Other areas are probably known for e-commerce. I think there's a competitive advantage in figuring out what you're good at and doing that. I mean, obviously when you're talking about distribution of resources, you can't have a fragmented ecosystem. So if someone has to leave Copenhagen to go to London to get money, then there's a problem and I think that's where the clustering needs to come in. But in terms of how your startups are going to compete, I think differentiation is really important. Or competitive advantage identification is really important. You just make me very happy because besides Berlin, we now have London and Copenhagen in the game. Because we also had the question on the list given by the republic like what European hubs are visible at all. And so far we basically had Berlin in it, maybe out of politeness because that's where we are. And then London in for the money, but then Copenhagen is coming up. So what other points, what other cities also for clustering might be visible in Europe? Is there any other place, maybe also in Eastern Europe, if they say they start applying for jobs, for contracts, what are the other places? Well Eastern Europe is known for a lot of innovation actually. Startup innovation, Skype. Because they're pretty good programmers in not just Eastern Europe for example. But I'd like to revisit what Thay was saying. I think the answer could be the verticals. One city specializing in fintech, another in health tech because that's in the state. Tech is in the East Coast, New York, health tech is in Boston, and then so on and so forth. It seems to me that it's futile for Europe for example to try to look for outsiders to come in. Because there's so much competition. Eastern the United States has its own problems trying to attract the different states. So it might be a good approach to stick to Europe for example and let it play out. Maybe hopefully establish some vertical strength in particular hubs around Europe like fintech. And then just wait for people to pass through or decide to come through depending on the advantages that emerge as they develop these hubs. Because for example China, Asia is pretty good for hardware because that's where you send your prototypes and that's where you end up mass producing. For example would be Spark project, they really housed themselves in China. In fact they went there and they sought out all these different places to prototype their product and that's where they're at now. I have one last chance. Harry Dakar, you haven't said yet what you think what Europe needs to do in order to become more attractive and more engaged in the international level. I think for us as for now Europe is well known for the education because you have a good system of education that we don't necessarily have any Madagascar. And I'm talking like for example young student from Madagascar going to France. So now we are in a process that this brain drain we want to catch up with them using our hub to tackle competitions or something like that because the brain are outside the country and they are in Europe because of the system of education which is free which is really high level education. So that's what could interest me in Europe for example for now because of there is no job, most of the young people from our country we don't stay here for this job problem in Europe. Okay but that of course means that it's attractive to come here, learn a lot and then make sure that you leave. I mean you come here for the studies but then take all the knowledge and everything that you developed back home which is probably interesting for you and your home country but probably not what the free education system in Europe wants. Yes but we could use that to exchange this knowledge we don't necessarily have to come here and you try to figure out the kind of solution that we can like take advantage of this together as a continent or as a country. I mean you're a good example of that you also studied in France or in Europe and then you also have a very close network in France still or you're keeping that up? Yes I still have this relationship there but I've never think I'm going to work there because the show is so high there and in Madagascar there's a lot of opportunity. I mean every problem we are solving there is for an entrepreneur is an opportunity to do business something that's going to happen in France for example so as an entrepreneur we better go and also solve those problems. Coming back to the main question of this panel which is Europe playing hard to get. I have the feeling we have to rewrite that a little. It's tending I'm working on that but it's tending into Europe who wants it. Anyway who doesn't thank you for that. I was going to ask what the title was again to be reminded because I was about to ask what does Europe want from us. Thank you because that's exactly the question I wanted to have for Lukas now. Plus if you have any questions in the audience then we give him a chance to think about it what we want from Europe and then we start with Mr. Yes and White. Good afternoon. Please say your name and where you're from. Yes I'm Ricardo I'm from Brazil and you are very welcome. There's really just one thing I think taxes is nice as well. I come from a city that changed from the first world since in the world to one of the best now because we had an isention of taxes for technical industry so in 15 years now we have the biggest market in technology in Brazil that's Recife and it was very it happened because of these tax things but it's not about that it's a little bit more complicated. Sorry before we get into the really complicated things because we only have like nine minutes left so that's me. Yes please. It's obvious that there is a very big problem in immigration issues in in Europe as a whole and a very big problem in a right wing wave from the next five years maybe. So is Europe prepared to have leaders from other countries is Europe prepared to have some Brazilian or some Madagascar people leading a company leading policies leading health. I collect the second question. Thanks a lot to everybody. My question is to Lucas. Sorry who are you. My name is Jan. I work for CTIC Dakar Technology Business Incubator in Senegal. Lucas is there any way we can talk more to European companies so that they don't look every time at the US and try to really position themselves more in the partnership model with emerging markets. I'm thinking about Rocket Internet that is a huge company base here that's colonizing entirely the e-commerce scene in Africa and we can do it definitely better but do you think we have to talk to your company to your startups about those kind of model and try to build sustainable partnership with local tech hubs instead of having all this company going to the US, pouring tons of VC money over there and to fail. What's your stake on that? Let me just come back to your question. I'm not trying to get that. I have the feeling I need to answer that a little myself. If you say... I'm just thinking about leaders of German companies I can at least think of that are not German and we do have quite a few. Most of them... I'm not going to say of course most of them are Europeans from other European countries but we have for example from DHL, one of the biggest logistics and fright groups. The CEO here is from Senegal. If I dig a little further there will be more but of course you're very right. It is still very little. People from abroad that sort of lead the companies that take the seat of a CEO but I think while we're still struggling to have women in the CEO seat no matter what color they have the visa topic on top will still be an issue but maybe you can talk to my colleague later on because he will have some more ideas more of foreigners leading German or other European companies so I'm not forgetting about your question but now Lukas has the floor to answer your question and to answer my question. So your first question was what is Europe looking for in these other tech hubs, other countries right? I think it's like everything else will be alive but every tech hub in the world is looking for talents and doesn't really necessarily care where those talents are from as long as they have skills, they have ideas, they have drive, you want those people. And with talents I don't just mean individuals but I also mean whole companies coming and working on something and obviously every tech hub in every continent tries to position themselves to attract those people, maybe through incentives, maybe through offering verticals, etc. But beyond that I think it's also important to realize we can't have 10 Silicon Valleys in the world, that doesn't make sense. But every continent has very unique problems that they're working on and I think it makes sense for the people that grew up with these problems and have those insights and know how to tackle them to also do that in their continent. So I don't think there's necessarily need for everything to be interconnected and everybody working on everything else but I do think it's necessary for exchange to take place because some of these ideas they're revolutionary enough for the rest of the world and then it's important to have some insight, some connection to people that know how the market works. So I think Europe is then looking for on the one hand obviously talent as everybody else but I think more importantly is going to be a dialogue and Europe is very self-centered for various reasons, some of them good, some of them bad but I think if we can improve that dialogue in the future then it can be a two-way street where not only Europe is taking and taking the talent or shoving products over to the new territories but there hopefully can be an exchange with best practices, with technologies, with how do you approach things, how do you share your experience. So I would say it's a lie not to talk about talents and brain drain and all that but at the end of the day I think the hope for everyone is that there is just meaningful dialogue which doesn't necessarily mean taking and giving physical things in that regard but really just an exchange and shared knowledge. Okay, before we get to the last round where I would like each of you to find a new title for the session we need to answer the last question. Can you quickly summarize that in just one sentence, your question again? Yeah, one sentence would be very welcome. Yeah, how can you talk to your companies in Berlin so that you build more relevant partnerships with tech hubs to build worldwide companies in Africa or an emerging market instead of pushing them going to the US? So how can you incentivize European companies to go into other countries other than the US? Well, I think that's one of the particular things about Europe is that we have here 28 nations in the EU and a certain number of languages, right? So as a European entrepreneur very early on you're forced to think about internationalization because your home market will only be like, I don't know, on average 50 million people. So you have to think about translating your services, your marketing, etc. and enter different markets and once you've tackled, let's say Spain and Portugal then why not then go to Latin America. I think that the focus on the US for European companies still has a lot to do with the availability of capital in the US which is just still completely unmatched here in Europe. But I do hope that Europe will have more confidence in the future to think about other territories first and be more self-confident because here in Europe we still think unless you made it in America you haven't really made it at all. And that's probably not a very healthy attitude. So I think it's just going to take some time. It's going to take further development of the ecosystems here and further big companies, further exits and then I think European tech companies will have the confidence not to believe that they're inferior to American companies if they don't have a presence there but rather maybe bypass America and look for other interesting companies first. And actually a good example of that is the enemy of all entrepreneurs, so to speak, rocket internet because what they do is they go to all kinds of countries but not the US and they're extremely successful with that. So this is a rather anti-intuitive example of a German company or a European company with the confidence. Okay, thanks a lot. I invite you to take a drink outside together to have more examples on the rest of the discussion. What's the new title of our session? A new title, Understanding Europe. Understanding Europe. Okay. I take that one. Thank you. Tayo, what and why? I would say something like Europe looking outward for inspiration, innovation and opportunities for growth. Maybe you should truncate that a little bit. Yeah, afterwards we also meet for a drink and shorten that out but that year is clear. Thank you. How can Europe become more relevant in the global tech ecosystem? Okay. I would say something like bringing diversity to the center of the process in innovation, something smaller than that but with this idea. Sorry, great. Bringing diversity for the center of innovation like in the process of innovation. Okay. A lot better. From my point of view. Lucas. I would say Europe finding its place in the world. Okay. Yeah, that's going in that way. I was thinking we had this very famous study on Africa, Lions on the Move and maybe we can have Europe on the Move. While we're moving out of this room for now and closing this session and I hope there will be a lot of more discussions afterwards. Thank you very much to all of you for joining and thank you for listening. Thank you.
 One of our most faithful participants, and I try to pronounce his name the right way,  but I won't succeed, Harijanka Ratatatsu Manana from Madagascar.  The most charming person and also supporter of the global innovation gathering from Ulabi,  Gabriela Augustini from Brazil.  All of us would not be here without you, Tayo from Chicago,  director of AFRILEF, the umbrella organization of all the African tech hubs.  The last panelist, Lukas from the factory in Berlin, we had the pleasure to visit your  space already.  I'm very happy to have you here to represent the Berlin startup scene.  And as a charming moderator, we have Judith from the German African Business Association.  As you can see, we have not done a lot of preparation.  Some of us have met before, Tayo, we have worked together, Lukas, even though we have  the same roots in Berlin, we have met before.  Welcome to all of you.  I'm really looking forward to this discussion.  We had a few controversies already in the back during the last panel.  I'm really looking forward to how we're going to find Europe and whether Europe is hard  to get in this panel.  So welcome to you all.  We're going to have a very, very quick introduction round.  After that already, I would welcome all of you to feel free to ask questions.  We really want to have a discussion here at the almost end of the Republic and make sure  that we make most of the time we have here with these five fabulous discussions.  Tayo, one of the ladies is first.  Can I ask you to start?  Sure.  My name is Tayo Akinyemi.  I am the Executive Director of Afrolabs, which is a Pan-African network of tech innovation  hubs.  We currently have 40 hubs in 20 countries.  And for those of you who may not be familiar, a hub is basically a physical nexus point.  There are people in institutions that are interested in entrepreneurship and innovation.  So these can be students, they can be financiers, obviously technologists, developers and entrepreneurs.  Okay, let me guess.  Out of those 20 countries, five on Europe.  We're working on it.  Okay.  So is it a flat zero so far?  Okay.  So we're working on that one.  Next lady, please.  Hi, everyone.  I'm Gabrielle Gustini.  I'm from Brazil.  I'm founder of Afrolab Maker Space, which is a space that provides tools and space like  for collaboration between entrepreneurs and tech innovators who want to find solutions  for the global challenge in our reality.  Okay.  Good.  Thanks a lot.  Then we're working from east to west, Jay.  I'm Jay Farno.  Can you guys hear me?  No.  How about now?  No.  Okay.  I can try to.  There you go.  Try again.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.  Why did you do her in jacka?  That's okay.  Now.  Now?  Maybe move here.  Okay.  Then we can have how to in jacka start.  Time.  This is fixed.  Yes.  Thank you.  My name is Arin Jacka.  I'm from Madagascar.  I'm from Madagascar.  I'm from Madagascar.  I'm from Madagascar.  I'm from Madagascar.  I'm from Madagascar.  I'm from Madagascar.  I'm from Madagascar.  I'm from Madagascar.  Founder of Habaka Hub Technology Innovation Space for the community in Madagascar.  I'm really happy to be here.  Okay.  I do need Lucas to finish the round.  So yes, please take that mic then, Jay.  I'll give you a mine.  Okay, one more time.  I'm Jay Fajardo.  I'm from the Philippines.  I'm the program director of Launch Garage Innovation Hub in Manila.  And you do work a lot with Europe?  No.  Okay.  We'll get to that in a second.  The good thing is we have you here and you're working from Berlin in Europe.  Lucas.  I am, yes.  My name is Lucas Kampfmann and I'm the chief marketing officer at Factory Berlin.  Factory is the first and the largest startup campus here in Berlin.  We run 16,000 square meters of office space for startups from any given size.  So we have residents like SoundCloud, Twitter, Uber.  And we really imagine ourselves as a place, as a community for those tech startups, which  means we want to bring together very early stage startups and people that are just getting  started with prototypes, with these larger growth stage startups like SoundCloud, Twitter,  et cetera.  And we want to provide all the services that an entrepreneur could need.  And we want to bring in all the economy from Europe and Germany into our tech hub.  And that's what we do at Factory Berlin.  Okay.  So let me know what is, from your point of view, the advantage for you in Berlin and your  colleagues in Europe to work with other countries and how do you choose collaboration partners?  Right.  So I think in Europe we actually do have a very Eurocentric view of things.  And the reason for that might be that when you look at the European Union, you have 28  different countries, you have 500 million citizens.  So just Europe in itself is a huge market, but it's also a fairly humongous market.  So you have about the same level in terms of economy, technology, education.  And since we are in the European Union, it's possible to easily hire people from other  countries, it's possible to travel and so on.  And I think that that's the reason that a lot of the companies within Europe, they look  to other European tech hubs.  So when you're in Berlin, you're going to be traveling to London because in London there  is more capital or you might be traveling to Tel Aviv because Tel Aviv has very good  connections to America.  So the way I see it is that Europe is indeed very much centered on Europe in itself.  Whether or not that's a good thing we should discuss.  You would go to the US via Tel Aviv?  It's a possibility because actually a lot of the startups from Tel Aviv, they have very  good connections to the US.  When you work out of Tel Aviv, you kind of tend to bypass the European market and rather  you go straight to New York or to San Francisco.  So that's an interesting phenomenon that has to do with the immigrant community from Israel  that has a lot of partners and roots in the US, of course.  Okay.  I'll tell you, as I know that you are based in the US, but working with Africa, I have  to ask the backwards question.  Are you going to Europe via Tel Aviv?  I doubt it.  While I can understand why that might make sense in the former case and the reverse case,  not so much.  So, for example, the pathway to Europe will probably partially depend on historical relationships.  I have, well, we have at least two hubs that are currently looking into relationships with  European incubators, but it's a historical relationship.  So there are Francophone incubators looking for partnerships in France.  Okay.  So when you choose, it's more on a personal basis when you choose new countries to join  your network.  Well, in terms of with whom they partner, if that's the question you're asking, it's  depending on what they're looking for and what the easiest entry points are.  So some of these incubators already have a predilection or ideas about where they need  to get resources, and so they'll follow that path.  Okay.  Jay, for you, is it?  At all?  Please don't say no.  Attractive to work with European hubs?  Yeah, because of, I guess because of talent, for example.  Let's say you're a startup and you're looking for development talent.  There are some very good coders here and technologists.  So in that aspect, yes.  But it's really a stretch.  The go-to really is to start locally, of course, because it's cheaper back home.  We have been contacted by some European developers for jobs because I also run a developer company  back home.  We do Ruby on Rails development, but we've been receiving some companies from Eastern  Europe, for example, that are looking for jobs, that we can send to them.  So it's actually a very weird circuitous thing that's happening now.  US startups outsource to our development jobs back home, and then you've got European  developer jobs looking for jobs.  We're considering sending jobs over there because we're running out of talent as well.  So that's kind of a weird thing that's emerging.  But with regards to who to go to, the natural tendency is to go to the United States, both  historically because of the language, we're a colonial country, we're colonized by the  United States.  So there seems to be that kind of historical pattern, countries, for example, in Africa,  colonized by France, the tendency is to funnel through there.  As we go to the States, sometimes we go to Singapore.  That's a fairly recent development, but that's for cash, it's for funding.  And also there have been a lot of venture capital coming into Southeast Asia and Asia.  But because of the different legal framework in Asia with regards to taxation, data domains,  et cetera, a lot of the investors would ask you to fold up your company and incorporate  it in the United States or some friendly jurisdiction.  So that's the whole complex thing that's happening.  But then is Euro-blacking inspiration for you?  Is it any inspiration at all?  Yes.  Well, Berlin, for example, is actually becoming the, it's actually an attractive place to  go to for setting up a startup just because of the atmosphere.  And there's a big cultural compelling personality to it.  However, vis-a-vis the UK, London, I think it's expensive in London, right?  So it doesn't make any economic sense.  And however, Berlin, I understand, is starting to become a little expensive as well.  So then it becomes less and less attractive.  Okay.  I think so far we're still that cheap compared to London or Paris.  But I get your point, yes.  Harin Dhaka, I guess most of the people here know your story or part of your story of how  not to travel to Europe.  And while Lucas said that where we are traveling or where the Germans and the Europeans are  all traveling to, is this still existing and not just for developers and innovation  existing barrier on the vis-a-vis policy, for example, so that physical exchange is not  possible?  Is that still a barrier for you to say, I feel welcome in Europe?  I think this is the place to go to?  Yes.  I think it's still a barrier and we have that in the door of Europe every day.  Not for me no more, luckily, because I have the German parliament who's taking care of  my case.  But the thing is, it's really hard to come to Europe as an African.  You are skilled, not skilled.  The thing is, they are very hard on the vis-a-vis process and there is no point as a developer  or as a techie to travel like working here because we can do all in digital way online,  especially for the conference, for example, you have to travel a little bit for work.  I think we can do it from our country more and more.  Yes, I also thought that you are doing everything just on the virtual basis.  I was very happy when Taiyou said that it's still personal networks, personal meetings  on how you decide on developing and expanding your network.  So it still is important to travel and to meet people like here in this meeting and  it's great that everybody takes up the effort to come here at the end of the day.  Besides the travelling problems, what is the attraction, if at all, for you to come to  Europe on the working level?  Yes, attraction is the network and the learning because I'm very much, you don't have it  yet in Madagascar, for example, and we learn because we are going to build the equivalence  or the same ecosystem in our country and then we think that Europe has advanced in terms  of working space or kind of ecosystem for startups.  So that is the interest of coming here.  At the end, we are going to try to compete as a country as well in this ecosystem field.  And when you're working in Madagascar, do you have like close exchange with any, well,  I can't really say neighbouring countries, but more or less neighbouring countries?  Are you working together with anybody there where you say, well, we might have similar  issues, similar topics, or are you sort of focused on Madagascar and your group there?  Yes, we are working mostly with the continent in Africa.  We are part of Africa, for example, because we are sharing the same environment.  So that same environment is where we are growing.  So we are now thinking about the other environment because the market in Africa is today represent  a huge market for our startups.  So we focus on that for now, but for the infrastructure and for the knowledge we need and inspiration  from the US and from Europe.  So that's make us want to learn and to also contribute in this entire economy.  Okay, great, thank you.  Gabi, you're close to the US.  Is that the first place for you to go to?  Yeah, in Brazil, especially when we are talking about innovation and technology, it's really  US-centric and Silicon Valley model.  Everyone's like talking about that.  But sometimes you can find, when the other reference arrives, people are really happy  to see how can be different.  And for example, in this Internet of Things scene and some scene close to tech and hardware,  this approach that comes from Europe that is more looking to the cities, to urban process  and putting the citizenship in the process is really welcome in Brazil, especially from  the people who are working with digital innovation.  So we have this connection and we also have some relations in the way that we are looking  to public policy and all the concerns about data and about privacy and all these issues.  So we are really happy when we can find that reference and we can think that we can be  connected.  And also there is another role in this situation about how Europe can look into the entrepreneurship  and innovation ecosystem in the world that is not like looking in a way to build another  Silicon Valley but working in a different way, much more close in the way that we are  used to work nowadays, more collaborative.  So Europe is leading a kind of conversation, for example, between the global south and  trying to bring new ideas and people together.  And then we can try to find an ecosystem, an innovation ecosystem that's much more collaborative  and diverse.  And then we can try to find solutions and space from everyone from different parts of the  world and that is connected to Europe but also with space from people coming from Africa,  Asia, Latin America and all these kinds of things.  So your start is really true collaboration in all directions and the aim is not to be  another Silicon Valley.  Yeah, I think Silicon Valley is not a model to reproduce, I hope so.  And it's like if we can start to tell our own histories and if we can start to have  more space from the ideas and innovators that are coming from all around the world.  And we probably can see some problems solving that is like, problems that is really important  and that are really struggling that's so side and all days.  And then we can have space to replicate and scale the solutions and maybe we can have  a better ecosystem and more equal society.  Okay, the people you work with back at home, you've taken a lot of people from abroad.  I mean like, Dave was saying that they might give jobs without the people physically coming  to the Philippines, I suppose.  So just give out jobs to Eastern Europe.  Is that something that you also do or do the people come to Brazil to work with you?  Brazil is really big so we have problems even to talk with different areas in the country  because it's like, it's one of the biggest countries in the world with 200 million people  inside so it's quite difficult even to connect.  And also as we have a big problem with inequality, it's even difficult to connect to the different  peoples and ideas that we have inside the country.  So our main focus of course is trying to work in Rio de Janeiro, it's the city that  we are based in and try to connect and integrate the different areas because we have like a  really rich people in one side and a really poor people in the other side and a lot of  things that come with this inequality.  So we are at this moment really focusing on our reality and try to bring something that  is more integrated.  This is why we are like, we are doing the moment.  But we are also of course really open and want to talk and understand in the future what  can you do to be more connected and especially try to bring these histories and this is  invasion, it's coming from the different parts of the world, especially in the global  south.  Okay, but that means that Brazil is still quite busy with itself.  Yes, like, yes, there are a lot of quite things happening and we have a lot of problems to  solve.  So, yeah.  We all have that in common, that's not the problem.  Yeah, and that's like, that's good to be part of a meeting like that because we can share  ideas and think how can we collaborate and find solutions together to replicate to everyone  and then we can maybe go faster, do you know?  Okay, if each of you would have to choose the point, the working point, the working place  of another one in this group for a year, where would you go, Tayu?  Brazil.  No, no decision allowed just because of weather conditions, right?  No, but Gabby just made a very, I mean, she made some really eloquent points.  I mean, in as much as I am African, we've actually started talking about South-South  Exchange because one, you get better solutions, arguably, when you take into account better  perspectives and sort of assume that there's something new to create without replicating  the Silicon Valley example.  So there's a lot of exciting work-related reasons to collaborate.  Personally, I've actually been to Brazil for work and there's a lot of really exciting  things happening in entrepreneurship now.  There have been, I think, some regulatory challenges in terms of trying to wend your  way as a starter from Brazil, but the scene itself is emerging in similar ways, I mean,  it's a broad statement, similar ways to the way the African scene is emerging.  I think there are legitimate non-son and beach-related reasons.  But I do think it is actually a pretty good point with the weather because a phenomenon  that we here in Germany experience, and Berlin, especially in Berlin, you have awful winters  that just stretch endless.  And so what we've seen happening is that people started these kind of surf offices, either  in Gran Canaria and Morocco and other places, where they go to work for a couple of months  during the winter, and it's not justifications, they call it a work-cation.  And that's actually a point where there is some potential for collaboration, you know,  because if people from Berlin start working in another hemisphere for a couple of months  out of the year, then obviously, you know, that physical proximity to other people, that  makes it a lot easier.  Because when you're just sitting in Berlin at your laptop, you know, what reasons there  really is to get in touch with a Brazilian entrepreneur or with the Philippines.  But if you actually, you know, happen to live there for a couple of months, and you see  what kind of problems are these people working on, and you know, you tend to meet these people  and because you need internet and you need, you know, need to meet people, etc., etc.,  then that may or may not be in the future really a point where, you know, the world  does become a little bit smaller.  Yeah, but that's a very good point.  Because I always thought it was the other way around.  The worse the weather gets, the more you stay inside and work.  I think that was the old fashioned way.  And really, really thinking about it, I mean, this is a phenomenon that was not possible  10 years ago.  Like, right now, it's possible to, you know, here in Berlin, hop on an airplane, it's a  four-hour flight to Morocco, and you know, you'll have a degree difference of 20 degrees.  And you know, and you'll still have fast internet, you know, and all these things.  And with services like Airbnb, the world got smaller.  And that kind of thing was not possible 10 years ago.  And now, when we talk to new hires, we see that this is actually a factor where they  say, okay, it's something like this possible, you know.  So I think that with the future generations, like this kind of flexibility in terms of  what location do I want to work at, it's going to become more and more important.  Okay, make your decision.  You have four beautiful countries to choose from.  Thank you.  What's your choice?  It's difficult, but I would also, somewhere either Brazil or Philippines, because I do  like surfing, so, and both countries are nice for that.  Okay, do you have any business reasons on top why you would choose Brazil or the Philippines?  I do know what I heard about the Philippines is that a lot of American companies outsource  content production to the Philippines.  And that's a very interesting concept to think about it that way.  And I would be very much interested to learn more about that, because I would imagine that  there must be some kind of cultural divide that makes it difficult.  And yet somehow it does work.  So yeah, there are a bunch of companies from San Francisco that actually have back offices  in Manila.  In fact, they just left their marketing office in New York, like for example, Indanero. com, Jessica Ma, her back office was all moved to the Philippines.  She doesn't have any ethnic roots in the Philippines, except she just decided that it's a great  place to be.  And LinkedIn has a huge back office in the Philippines.  And Tascos, there's a whole bunch of Silicon Valley companies that actually have big operations  there.  But yeah, but going back to the exchange, right?  Like going back to Brazil.  I'd have to choose Brazil.  You're not allowed to stay in Manila, even if it's a great place to be.  But yeah, it's tough to choose, because not counting the wonderful weather and the cultural  richness, for example, there are advantages to coming to Berlin, for example.  It's all knowledge sharing that you're after.  And it's all...  The huge part of a startup success is really the vibe it works within.  I mean, if it's among peers, other startups, the success rate really rises from there.  Plus, access to mentors.  That's very important.  So if we have to go to the States, then you have a wealth of mentors there, because that's  pretty much the center of tech startups right now.  However, you can go now to Berlin and learn from...  It's been growing, the startup ecosystem here.  A lot of people are here as well.  And then you might want to take advantage of certain nuanced knowledge with regards to  market, culture, how to deal with culture, different cultures, how to design your UI  based on European context, maybe.  Stuff like that.  So you'd be brave to have...  Not in the winter.  No, no, you do the summer half in Berlin and the winter in Brazil.  Yeah, yeah, sure.  Summer spring.  Aline Jaco, where would you go?  Are we good to go?  Brazil is full.  Yeah, but...  No more visa for Brazil.  Yes, I'm going to Asia because I don't need the visa for there.  And also because of this making prototypes movement of makers and hackers, I would go  to Asia because it's the place where we can scale up if it is a product.  So I definitely go to Asia.  Right.  So, I mean, I really have the feeling that it's more Europe that might be needing  the rest of the world and in your field, the rest of the world needing Europe, which is  very interesting because I think the Europeans still think that they're so innovative and  technologies all done and thought about in Europe and Germany especially.  So this is a really interesting insight, I suppose.  What do you think?  What would Europe have to do to be more outgoing, to get more engaged in the scenery and the  community except for gatherings like this?  I think it should be more present.  For example, mostly of the big startups, universities, incubators and all of the famous  programs from the US, they have office people or at least they're traveling to Brazil.  And that is not that common from Europe.  It's like we're not receiving that much people from projects from Europe countries.  And when we are receiving that, the people are really hoping to come.  So it's like, I think it's giving more content, giving more of the reference, be more in the  media and travel more around the country and try to see how great it is and how the things  are working here.  Okay, Taya, you already know two worlds.  You know the US and you know, of course, quite a lot about Africa.  What would you say from this double viewpoint?  What does Europe need to do?  Honestly, I would say do the math.  The center of gravity economically, financially, politically to a certain extent is shifting.  It's been shifting.  I've all heard the statistics about GDP growth in Africa and in Asia.  So it's really about seizing opportunity.  I mean, the GDP growth, I mean, Europe is a continent so I hate to make generalizations,  but GDP growth, the age of the population suggests that there's a need to look elsewhere  for profit, for opportunities for innovation.  So you know, if you're not able to ride your own innovation curve, then I suggest you get  on someone else's.  Right on.  Okay, we let that sink in for a second and I'll stay.  You know, it's not just Europe that's looking for attention with regards to tax startups.  I've seen a lot of jurisdictions establish incentive programs for startups to actually  move to there.  Let's say Canada, for example.  Canada actually has an active startup migration program.  They actually go to Asia and they search out some startups that they like and they try  to convince them to set up in Canada.  And that might be a good process to try.  But it's, to me, it sort of looks very desperate.  Like why would you want to move to Canada?  I mean, it's really cold there.  It's colder than winter here in Berlin, I guess.  Beautiful nature with no internet.  And no people to...  It's a huge country, no people.  Yeah, they're actually going to those lengths to try to attract complete companies to transplant  themselves.  But I can't really believe that tax incentives, for example, are the right means to attract  anybody in this room.  Ooh, which?  Anybody in this room, tax incentives?  Uh-huh.  I don't know.  Well, it's not just tax.  Maybe it's even how do you call this?  Immigration benefits.  Colleges.  Yeah, okay.  Educational benefits.  So they enjoy, maybe from a developing country, you enjoy the benefits of being a citizen  of Canada that might actually be the compelling reason to go because you've got free healthcare,  very good healthcare, you know, those things.  You're talking about that?  You could come to Berlin again.  We have good healthcare.  I know, yeah.  Okay.  But that does seem to show that maybe the relationship between countries and tech hubs  is more one of a competition than of collaboration because I think every single tech hub needs  critical mass.  This is something that we in Berlin believe in totally, that we need a certain number  of entrepreneurs in this city, a certain number of developers, designers, a certain  number of capital and only if that critical mass has been reached, then true innovation  can happen and big companies can happen.  And this is something that Berlin has been looking for for the past 10 years.  All the time the Berlin ecosystem has been existing.  All the while, all the companies here had to do the track over to London to look for  capital and many times then the companies just stayed in London because if that's where  the money is, then why not move there all together?  And I think in that sense, that might be an explanation why many of the tech hubs in the  world are more focused inwards.  If they collaborate with other tech hubs, then it might be more because they want to  get the talent and they want to attract the talent.  That's also why maybe it might be healthier to focus just on a couple of tech hubs per  continent so to speak, so not to spread the talent thin.  But I don't know how your experiences in Africa with decentralization versus real hubs forming  which attract the talents from all over the continent.  Maybe you should answer that.  I would say, and I'll answer this from the hub level as opposed to the city level, what  we tend to see is that at the beginning there's a clustering of activity that's broad instead  of deep.  So many of the members in the network do server variety of functions.  They're co-working, they're incubating, they're accelerating, they're serving coffee, they're  doing training.  But as you see more hubs emerge in a particular city, then you start to see differentiation  partially driven by competition.  So have one sort of figure out, okay, well, if I focus on community building and pre-incubation,  I have a role and I'm incentivized to play that role in a certain way and then I pass  on to the incubators, the accelerators, what have you.  So I think there's definitely a need for hubs to find a specialization of some type.  So London, for example, I think I could be wrong, is known for fintech.  There's a very good reason why it's known for fintech.  Other areas are probably known for e-commerce.  I think there's a competitive advantage in figuring out what you're good at and doing  that.  I mean, obviously when you're talking about distribution of resources, you can't have  a fragmented ecosystem.  So if someone has to leave Copenhagen to go to London to get money, then there's a problem  and I think that's where the clustering needs to come in.  But in terms of how your startups are going to compete, I think differentiation is really  important.  Or competitive advantage identification is really important.  You just make me very happy because besides Berlin, we now have London and Copenhagen in  the game.  Because we also had the question on the list given by the republic like what European hubs  are visible at all.  And so far we basically had Berlin in it, maybe out of politeness because that's where  we are.  And then London in for the money, but then Copenhagen is coming up.  So what other points, what other cities also for clustering might be visible in Europe?  Is there any other place, maybe also in Eastern Europe, if they say they start applying for  jobs, for contracts, what are the other places?  Well Eastern Europe is known for a lot of innovation actually.  Startup innovation, Skype.  Because they're pretty good programmers in not just Eastern Europe for example.  But I'd like to revisit what Thay was saying.  I think the answer could be the verticals.  One city specializing in fintech, another in health tech because that's in the state.  Tech is in the East Coast, New York, health tech is in Boston, and then so on and so forth.  It seems to me that it's futile for Europe for example to try to look for outsiders to  come in.  Because there's so much competition.  Eastern the United States has its own problems trying to attract the different states.  So it might be a good approach to stick to Europe for example and let it play out.  Maybe hopefully establish some vertical strength in particular hubs around Europe like fintech.  And then just wait for people to pass through or decide to come through depending on the  advantages that emerge as they develop these hubs.  Because for example China, Asia is pretty good for hardware because that's where you  send your prototypes and that's where you end up mass producing.  For example would be Spark project, they really housed themselves in China.  In fact they went there and they sought out all these different places to prototype their  product and that's where they're at now.  I have one last chance.  Harry Dakar, you haven't said yet what you think what Europe needs to do in order to  become more attractive and more engaged in the international level.  I think for us as for now Europe is well known for the education because you have a good  system of education that we don't necessarily have any Madagascar.  And I'm talking like for example young student from Madagascar going to France.  So now we are in a process that this brain drain we want to catch up with them using  our hub to tackle competitions or something like that because the brain are outside the  country and they are in Europe because of the system of education which is free which is  really high level education.  So that's what could interest me in Europe for example for now because of there is no  job, most of the young people from our country we don't stay here for this job problem in  Europe.  Okay but that of course means that it's attractive to come here, learn a lot and then make sure  that you leave.  I mean you come here for the studies but then take all the knowledge and everything that  you developed back home which is probably interesting for you and your home country but probably  not what the free education system in Europe wants.  Yes but we could use that to exchange this knowledge we don't necessarily have to come  here and you try to figure out the kind of solution that we can like take advantage of  this together as a continent or as a country.  I mean you're a good example of that you also studied in France or in Europe and then you  also have a very close network in France still or you're keeping that up?  Yes I still have this relationship there but I've never think I'm going to work there  because the show is so high there and in Madagascar there's a lot of opportunity.  I mean every problem we are solving there is for an entrepreneur is an opportunity to  do business something that's going to happen in France for example so as an entrepreneur  we better go and also solve those problems.  Coming back to the main question of this panel which is Europe playing hard to get.  I have the feeling we have to rewrite that a little.  It's tending I'm working on that but it's tending into Europe who wants it.  Anyway who doesn't thank you for that.  I was going to ask what the title was again to be reminded because I was about to ask  what does Europe want from us.  Thank you because that's exactly the question I wanted to have for Lukas now.  Plus if you have any questions in the audience then we give him a chance to think about it  what we want from Europe and then we start with Mr. Yes and White.  Good afternoon.  Please say your name and where you're from.  Yes I'm Ricardo I'm from Brazil and you are very welcome.  There's really just one thing I think taxes is nice as well.  I come from a city that changed from the first world since in the world to one of the best  now because we had an isention of taxes for technical industry so in 15 years now we have  the biggest market in technology in Brazil that's Recife and it was very it happened  because of these tax things but it's not about that it's a little bit more complicated.  Sorry before we get into the really complicated things because we only have like nine minutes  left so that's me.  Yes please.  It's obvious that there is a very big problem in immigration issues in in Europe as a whole  and a very big problem in a right wing wave from the next five years maybe.  So is Europe prepared to have leaders from other countries is Europe prepared to have  some Brazilian or some Madagascar people leading a company leading policies leading health.  I collect the second question.  Thanks a lot to everybody.  My question is to Lucas.  Sorry who are you.  My name is Jan.  I work for CTIC Dakar Technology Business Incubator in Senegal.  Lucas is there any way we can talk more to European companies so that they don't look  every time at the US and try to really position themselves more in the partnership model with  emerging markets.  I'm thinking about Rocket Internet that is a huge company base here that's colonizing  entirely the e-commerce scene in Africa and we can do it definitely better but do you  think we have to talk to your company to your startups about those kind of model and try  to build sustainable partnership with local tech hubs instead of having all this company  going to the US, pouring tons of VC money over there and to fail.  What's your stake on that?  Let me just come back to your question.  I'm not trying to get that.  I have the feeling I need to answer that a little myself.  If you say...  I'm just thinking about leaders of German companies I can at least think of that are  not German and we do have quite a few.  Most of them...  I'm not going to say of course most of them are Europeans from other European countries  but we have for example from DHL, one of the biggest logistics and fright groups.  The CEO here is from Senegal.  If I dig a little further there will be more but of course you're very right.  It is still very little.  People from abroad that sort of lead the companies that take the seat of a CEO but I think while  we're still struggling to have women in the CEO seat no matter what color they have the  visa topic on top will still be an issue but maybe you can talk to my colleague later on  because he will have some more ideas more of foreigners leading German or other European  companies so I'm not forgetting about your question but now Lukas has the floor to answer  your question and to answer my question.  So your first question was what is Europe looking for in these other tech hubs, other  countries right?  I think it's like everything else will be alive but every tech hub in the world is looking  for talents and doesn't really necessarily care where those talents are from as long  as they have skills, they have ideas, they have drive, you want those people.  And with talents I don't just mean individuals but I also mean whole companies coming and  working on something and obviously every tech hub in every continent tries to position themselves  to attract those people, maybe through incentives, maybe through offering verticals, etc.  But beyond that I think it's also important to realize we can't have 10 Silicon Valleys  in the world, that doesn't make sense.  But every continent has very unique problems that they're working on and I think it makes  sense for the people that grew up with these problems and have those insights and know  how to tackle them to also do that in their continent.  So I don't think there's necessarily need for everything to be interconnected and everybody  working on everything else but I do think it's necessary for exchange to take place  because some of these ideas they're revolutionary enough for the rest of the world and then  it's important to have some insight, some connection to people that know how the market  works.  So I think Europe is then looking for on the one hand obviously talent as everybody else  but I think more importantly is going to be a dialogue and Europe is very self-centered  for various reasons, some of them good, some of them bad but I think if we can improve  that dialogue in the future then it can be a two-way street where not only Europe is  taking and taking the talent or shoving products over to the new territories but there hopefully  can be an exchange with best practices, with technologies, with how do you approach things,  how do you share your experience.  So I would say it's a lie not to talk about talents and brain drain and all that but at  the end of the day I think the hope for everyone is that there is just meaningful dialogue  which doesn't necessarily mean taking and giving physical things in that regard but  really just an exchange and shared knowledge.  Okay, before we get to the last round where I would like each of you to find a new title  for the session we need to answer the last question.  Can you quickly summarize that in just one sentence, your question again?  Yeah, one sentence would be very welcome.  Yeah, how can you talk to your companies in Berlin so that you build more relevant  partnerships with tech hubs to build worldwide companies in Africa or an emerging market  instead of pushing them going to the US?  So how can you incentivize European companies to go into other countries other than the  US?  Well, I think that's one of the particular things about Europe is that we have here 28  nations in the EU and a certain number of languages, right?  So as a European entrepreneur very early on you're forced to think about internationalization  because your home market will only be like, I don't know, on average 50 million people.  So you have to think about translating your services, your marketing, etc. and enter different  markets and once you've tackled, let's say Spain and Portugal then why not then go to  Latin America.  I think that the focus on the US for European companies still has a lot to do with the availability  of capital in the US which is just still completely unmatched here in Europe.  But I do hope that Europe will have more confidence in the future to think about other territories  first and be more self-confident because here in Europe we still think unless you made it  in America you haven't really made it at all.  And that's probably not a very healthy attitude.  So I think it's just going to take some time.  It's going to take further development of the ecosystems here and further big companies,  further exits and then I think European tech companies will have the confidence not to  believe that they're inferior to American companies if they don't have a presence there  but rather maybe bypass America and look for other interesting companies first.  And actually a good example of that is the enemy of all entrepreneurs, so to speak, rocket  internet because what they do is they go to all kinds of countries but not the US and  they're extremely successful with that.  So this is a rather anti-intuitive example of a German company or a European company  with the confidence.  Okay, thanks a lot.  I invite you to take a drink outside together to have more examples on the rest of the discussion.  What's the new title of our session?  A new title, Understanding Europe.  Understanding Europe.  Okay.  I take that one.  Thank you.  Tayo, what and why?  I would say something like Europe looking outward for inspiration, innovation and opportunities  for growth.  Maybe you should truncate that a little bit.  Yeah, afterwards we also meet for a drink and shorten that out but that year is clear.  Thank you.  How can Europe become more relevant in the global tech ecosystem?  Okay.  I would say something like bringing diversity to the center of the process in innovation,  something smaller than that but with this idea.  Sorry, great.  Bringing diversity for the center of innovation like in the process of innovation.  Okay.  A lot better.  From my point of view.  Lucas.  I would say Europe finding its place in the world.  Okay.  Yeah, that's going in that way.  I was thinking we had this very famous study on Africa, Lions on the Move and maybe we  can have Europe on the Move.  While we're moving out of this room for now and closing this session and I hope there  will be a lot of more discussions afterwards.  Thank you very much to all of you for joining and thank you for listening.  Thank you.
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