“The high level of education, entrepreneurship and creativity put the Dutch in a frontrunner position in terms of innovation. The Netherlands has a long history of innovation in technology and digital transformations, for example, Philips, ASML, NXP, Adyen, Booking.com and Wetransfer originated in The Netherlands. Today, the Netherlands holds several conglomerates of international startup communities in Amsterdam, The Hague, Enschede and Eindhoven, open to collaboration and exchange of expertise, creating interesting opportunities.”  Marjolein Geus, a partner in Bird & Bird’s office in Hague.

Corporate gateway to Europe

There are several obvious factors which make the Netherlands attractive to multinationals as a European Headquarters or regional hub, and therefore attractive to startups as well. Evidenced by the volume of nearly 200 companies choosing Amsterdam as their European Headquarters (such as Netflix and Salesforce), the Netherlands is English speaking, and geographically well placed as a gateway to Europe. The Netherlands’ main airport, Schipol, is one of the busiest airports in Europe and acts as a popular flight connection hub for global as well as for dutch traffic.

Perhaps less well known, but significant to multinationals attraction of international talent is the ’30 % ruling’ for knowledge workers. International talent may be eligible for 30% of their salary to be paid tax-free, as compensation for the expenses that the employee has by working outside his/her home country.

Regional Strengths

According to Startup Genome, particular sub-sector strengths in Amsterdam include Agtech and New Food, and Life Sciences. Our search has been broader than just Amsterdam, of course, and more focused on Enterprise IT. Interesting highlights so far have included:

• Eindhoven Home to ASML, self-labelled as ‘the most important tech company you’ve never heard of’! ASML employs over 23,000 globally, supplying technology to the semiconductor industry.  Eindhoven is also home to the Eindhoven University of Technology, which runs the STARTUP/Eindhoven incubator, offering a soft landing to entrepreneurs to start and grow their business.
• Rotterdam The port has recently been awarded the ‘best port infrastructure in the world’ status from the World Economic Forum for the seventh consecutive time. However, the port authority recognises that further efficiencies will not be available to carriers without further digitisation of the port.
• The Hague The second largest city in the Netherlands, and home of the Dutch parliament and the UN’s International Court of Justice, this government city offers startups the ability to connect with the government in a very direct way.

Trends

As ever, we applied a fairly broad brush in our search for startups this year, principally using our organic network reach and independent research. This does not give an indicator of the regional trends on a macro scale but does offer up some insights through prominence in our search endeavours of European Technology.

Software Architecture & Development Platforms

One category that quickly rose to the surface involved either interoperability, frameworks or tooling for Software architecture and Development. For example, Vamp.io, a StartupBootcamp alumni recently took on $2.5M Series A funding led by Vortex Capital Partners to help them prepare for international launch. Another example is AxionIQ provides infrastructure and a development platform for Microservices and Event Sourcing architecture, and are well-positioned to exploit the popularity and wave of Microservices adoption.

Blockchain & Security

Perhaps no surprise that the Netherlands might offer up some technologies targetted at the financial services industry. We found numerous product and services based companies that exploit Blockchain technology. Whether it’s securing digital assets as per V-ID, or enabling Multi-Party-Computation solutions (TNO), we hope to witness some traction in bringing Blockchain technologies to market within and outside of Financial Services.

Ecosystem Engagement

There is also evidence of plenty of structural support for startups, and for corporates looking to engage with the ecosystem in the form of Innovation programmes, Incubators and Accelerators. All encompass providing access to the market, skills and capital in some shape or form. Notable examples we’ve encountered include:

• ‘HSD’, the Hague Security Delta, is a “network of businesses, government and knowledge institutions, that work together on knowledge development and innovation in security.”
• StartupBootCamp, founded in 2010 in Copenhagen, SBC provides both a global reach and industry-focus to their portfolio companies
• Rockstart – launched in 2011, one of Europe’s first startup accelerators, Rockstart focus on Energy, Health, Agrifood, and Emerging Technologies

Register your Interest

This article is just a flavour of what I’ve uncovered in preparing for this year’s tech summit in the Netherlands – which promises to be an illuminating event, with a wide range of technologies on show, including some real tangible use-cases for innovative use of AI and Blockchain.

Drop me a message on LinkedIn if you want to hear more about these topics, or click here to register your interest in attending the event itself.

References

https://www.portofrotterdam.com/en/doing-business/port-of-the-future/digitisation/digital-developments

https://startupgenome.com/ecosystems/amsterdam-startupdelta

https://www.expatica.com/nl/finance/taxes/the-dutch-30-ruling-explained-101641/

https://www.thehaguesecuritydelta.com/about