Europe produces some of the most advanced deeptech innovations in the world. From quantum breakthroughs to life-changing biotech, the region leads in scientific discovery. Yet when European founders take the stage, investors hesitate, with European startups half as likely to raise growth rounds compared to their US counterparts.
But here is the important part – it’s not about the technology—it’s about how that technology is sold and the story it tells. Too often, European entrepreneurs approach fundraising like they would a grant proposal: precise, cautious, and full of technical disclaimers. Meanwhile, their US counterparts confidently project dominance, certainty and a strong narrative.
Our claim is that Europe needs to stop underselling itself and instead project a confident, high-growth identity, backed by strong leadership presence. This aligns with findings from the State of European Tech report, which highlights that while Europe has significantly improved its entrepreneurial mindset over the past decade, there is still a long way to go in terms of ambition, risk-taking, and investor storytelling.
In fact, if Europe wants to lead deeptech globally, it must invest resources as much in storytelling, leadership, and executive presence as it does in technology.
1. The Investor Perception Gap
During a recent EIT Global Outreach-led roadshow across Boston and Canada, where European deeptech startups pitched to VCs, the contrast was striking:
Guess who investors trusted with their money?
This is a pattern seen across accelerator demo days, VC pitch meetings, and founder coaching sessions. European deeptech founders are trained to think and speak like researchers, not market leaders.
The result? Investors perceive European startups as more cautious, more academic, and ultimately, higher-risk. This gap is even higher when it comes to Europe’s less developed regions.
This hesitation isn’t about competence. It’s about conditioning. And without strong storytelling, executive presence and leadership projection, even the best technology will struggle to secure funding.
2. The Double-Edged Sword of Public Funding: Advancing Deeptech but Delaying Investment-Readiness
Public funding has played a crucial role in advancing European deeptech, providing essential resources to bring ground-breaking technologies to life. However, it has also created a double-edged sword—while grants offer much-needed capital, they also shape founders into grant-focused entrepreneurs rather than investment-ready leaders.
The way funding is structured has influenced how founders communicate their ventures—often prioritizing technical precision and risk aversion over market potential. This has led to a storytelling gap, where startups are trained to communicate for grant evaluators—not investors.
The State of European Tech report further emphasizes that Europe’s regulatory and funding structures must be better aligned with the needs of high-growth tech companies competing in an international market, and even limited.
While initiatives like the EIC and other EU funding programs have made strides in bridging the gap, there remains a disconnect between how startups are trained to secure public grants and how they must pitch to investors.
3. The Storytelling, Leadership & Confidence Deficit
“In the US, founders are trained to tell the story before they even have a product, because they know one hard truth” … says Avital Tzubeli a US based storytelling expert “you can build something extraordinary, but without the right story, you will still be invisible”
Investors don’t just fund technology—they fund the people who make them believe in the technology. Yet, many European founders lack the training, exposure, and confidence to present themselves as visionary leaders.
Storytelling is still treated as secondary, rather than a core business skill. Deeptech founders often assume their technology will speak for itself—but it rarely does.
Not only that, European founders lack high-pressure pitching environments early in their journey. Unlike in the US, where founders are trained to command a room, many European entrepreneurs first encounter investor scrutiny late in the process, leaving them unprepared.
If European deeptech wants to attract the capital it deserves, it must close the storytelling, leadership, and confidence gap. This shift from a research-driven mindset to a commercial one will change the focus from proving why their technology works, to making a compelling case for why it will transform the market.
1. Make Storytelling, Leadership and Market Readiness a Deeptech Priority
Investor-readiness training should be integrated into deeptech education from day one. This means embedding leadership training, executive presence, and go-to-market strategies into entrepreneurial curricula—not just technology development.
This won’t happen on its own. Founders need structured support and embedded education to translate technical breakthroughs into compelling investment cases, ensuring their narratives resonate beyond the lab.
Investors fund confidence as much as competence, and founders must learn how to own the room, not just their research.
2. Rethink Public Funding
To truly support Europe’s next generation of global tech leaders, public funding must evolve. It should be designed not just to enable innovation, but to build investable companies. That means integrating investor-readiness into every stage—embedding market validation, storytelling, leadership development, and venture-building support alongside technical milestones.
Public grants should be structured more like investments, rewarding scalable business models and growth potential, not just R&D outputs. By funding with the end game in mind—commercial success—Europe can better prepare its startups to raise capital, enter markets, and lead on the global stage.
3. The Social Proof: Strengthen Europe’s Deeptech Ecosystem to Build Investor Trust
Investor confidence is strengthened through peer validation and social proof. Founders who are integrated in strong ecosystems, where they regularly engage with investors, corporates, policymakers, and global markets, are better equipped to approach funders with confidence and a compelling case for success.
By strengthening Europe’s deeptech ecosystems through targeted initiatives that boost interconnectivity and build networks across Europe, including its underrepresented regions, we can create essential conditions for startups to form these crucial relationships and gain the credibility needed that will secure them their next investment.
4. Bridge the Funding Gap in Underserved Regions
Some of Europe’s best engineering talent comes from regions with limited access to capital, forcing many founders to relocate into saturated markets, rather than scale locally.
To close this gap, Europe must prioritise cross-border VC initiatives, industry partnerships, and local investor education—ensuring that deeptech talent doesn’t have to leave to succeed.
We’ve established that Europe already has world-class innovation, talent, and breakthroughs—but to close the funding gap it needs a stronger, more market ready voice on the global stage.
Because in the end, innovation isn’t just about what you build—it’s about how you make the world believe in it.
Adi Barel leads the EIT Global Outreach, where she builds global bridges for EU innovation. With over a decade of experience, she designs and drives high-impact initiatives that spark startup growth, unlock new markets, and elevate innovation ecosystems. Based in New York, Adi works closely with investors, startups, and ecosystem leaders across both sides of the Atlantic—turning strategic partnerships into real-world results—funding, traction, and scale.
References:
State of European Tech 2024 Report. State of European Tech Homepage
The European Deep Tech Report 2025, Dealroom. Dealroom
Acknowledgements: Special thanks to Adina Beer (EIT Global Outreach), Balázs Fürjes (EIT Health InnoStars), and Marta Kaczmarek (EIT Strategic Regional Innovations Cluster) for their contribution, insights, and support throughout the development of this blog.
About EIT Global Outreach:
As the global arm of the EIT, EIT Global Outreach accelerates the international expansion of top European startups, equipping them with the resources, expertise, and networks needed to commercialise breakthrough innovations, secure investment, and scale in key global markets. By providing direct access to leading innovation hubs worldwide, the programme drives tangible growth opportunities, strengthens Europe’s global competitiveness, and ensures long-term success for its entrepreneurs.
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The Health not The Death is a fundamental human right. A healthy population is not to be seen as human and social capital, an input, or by-product, towards economic growth. Alongside a healthy and sustainable environment, a solidarity, a healthy population must be the ultimate goal especially nowadays in helping Ukrainian migrants with cancer and their families.
Solidarity in health is a cornerstone of EU health policy. There are wide disparities in many health outcomes across the region and those outcomes. The access rules dramatically affect healthcare systems which are at the forefront of the migrant way, the people who are searching for help and the way how we could enhance and support their healthier and wellbeing status.
In order to ensure their access to care and continued cure in need, the probability of receiving a timely diagnosis and of surviving differs greatly from country to country where they are now. There is lack of information, help and inequalities in access. People need help in navigating cancer knowledge, diagnostics, secondary monitoring and prevention, way of treatments, and care.
Shifting our mindset, supporting healthcare connectivity, removing inequalities overall across Europe is our mission and even more now in a time of crisis, helping the Ukrainian people dealing with cancer is a good place to begin this transformative revolution.
1) Whether we have a chance to foster more holistic and integrated approaches to receive information and care, by supporting coordination and maximising an enabling and health-enhancing effect of care across services from different countries?
2) Whether actions should address the social determinants of health, the countries where they are now, the health need which they have, the social and language barriers are the conditions which have to be taken into consideration in a coordinated manner?
How might we improve patients and /or people who seek healthcare support, access to healthcare services at an EU & the Member States Healthcare systems level? Especially in a time of crisis in Europe.
How might we support refugees fleeing from their countries by navigating them to medical centres to receive best available care?
Precision medicine aims to personalise care for every individual. Nongenomic and genomic determinants, combined with information from patient symptoms, clinical history, and lifestyle (nutrition, physical activity, stress etc.), can facilitate personalised diagnosis and prognostics. Yet this goal requires access to massive amounts of data which may come from different structured and unstructured sources; these can be our medical records, laboratory testing, a range of medical devices as well as from the patient himself. AI & ML can combine input from these multiple sources, analyse them and identify biomarkers that can support health professionals make more informed decisions. The convergence of precision medicine with the advanced AI capabilities will improve the ability to personalise care – improve diagnosis, risk prediction as well as therapy planning.
HCPs want to better predict treatment response, given uncertainty around which treatment to prescribe to which patient and when to prescribe. How do we risk assess the patients, match them with the right treatment (personalised). How can we transform the wealth of data and link it to the predictive nature of how the patient will respond?
Being diagnosed with cancer is overwhelming and comes as a blow. Patients may feel on a roller coaster of emotions—they are scared, lost & confused not knowing what to expect, who to refer to, what to do and how to tell their loved ones. They directly refer to “Dr. Google” to look for information about their disease, possible treatments, QoL strategies with the aim to have better understanding of their disease and learn how to better cope with their disease & treatment, yet information is not always valid, accessible, nor personalised or tailored to the patient’s status and needs therefore left with huge amounts of non-relevant information. Coming to the doctor, the physician’s time is limited and mostly focusing on the physical aspects of the disease & treatment, not leaving much time to ask questions nor discuss more holistic aspects of the disease such as emotional, psychological, social aspects. The patient (& caregiver in many cases) leaves the room with unanswered questions, doesn’t remember much of what has been said, and feels he is not heard, nor seen as a whole.
The need for navigating this journey along the emotional psychological stress is overwhelming & patients and their caregivers look for support (case manager/companion/partner) to help manage their disease holistically – starting from having clarity around their disease and treatment by having access to reliable and personalised information during their journey as well as having an integrated holistic care system , supporting them and their loved ones to navigate through the different aspects of their disease – medical, emotional, logistical, psychological, social, rights.
How can we support patients to navigate through the complexity of their disease and treatment ensuring they have validated holistic information about their disease journey & treatment and be empowered to effectively manage their care
As medical events pivoted from conference centres and meeting rooms to the virtual settings, learning opportunities continue. Lectures and presentations are translated to the new digital world, yet the ability to connect and network is relatively lost. Peer interaction is essential not only for information exchange but to share practical insights, allows consultation & in-person experience cross country and across borders leading to better disease management.
This peer-based learning/ consultation is highly valued amongst practising clinicians and was generally achieved when HCPs and KOLs met their peers in national & Intl conferences, group debates, advisory boards and even during quick corridor conversations. Attempting to replicate these in-person experiences into the digital space creates challenges and are not effective nor impactful as face-to-face engagements.
How might we improve HCP medical exchange enabling physicians to easily communicate, consult, exchange opinions leveraging individual experts & centres of excellence knowledge, experiences, and practices?
How can we leverage the technological expertise to allow HCPs to connect with leading experts across countries to get advice / counselling for their cases?
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