As a keynote speaker and panelist at this year’s conference, Laurits shared his perspective on how angel investors can accelerate Deep Tech and Climate Tech commercialisation, and why Europe’s private capital markets must play a more active role in the continent’s push to reindustrialise.

In this interview, Laurits discusses the challenges and opportunities ahead for Europe’s financial ecosystem — from improving asset quality and competitiveness to bridging the gap between early-stage capital and industrial growth.

Interview:

1. How can a conference like this support a more coherent financial ecosystem?

The financial ecosystem is paralysed by a lack of quality assets. The way to best ensure higher quality is by supporting more companies to reach a capital-efficient level more quickly, where growth is de-risked and diligently managed. To do this, we need a new playbook for how to create growth, mitigate risk, prepare for rapid organisational transformation and map out pathways to the most attainable value peaks. However the first step is to create a common language around the new market reality, where Europe is challenged on competitiveness and commercialisation rates, and share insights on new and effective models.

2. Why is it critical that the investment community becomes more engaged in the European reindustrialisation as a sector?

Reindustrialisation is a matter of resilience and geopolitical security. Reindustrialisation means increased production capacities at home, localised manufacturing and more direct access to near-shore energy. It is critical for Europe that the investment community gathered here today becomes more engaged, because the EU or the individual member states cannot fund reindustrialisation on their own. The US/Chinese federal budgets are 30x ours, and they are already leading in all critical technologies.

3. How can the investment community boost European competitiveness?

If the European investment community is to boost competitiveness, the most important element is that we find a better platform for improving asset quality in the early stages. China commercialises over 70% of new innovation, whereas we only commercialise 30% or less in Europe. Part of the reason is because early-stage companies rely on venture capital funds after the angel-stage, and VC tends to be less focused on operational value creation and more focused on the “home run-model”, where a small number of companies in large portfolios generate the majority of returns. And while that model works well in some sectors, industrial technology requires a much more active approach.

4. In your view, what political, technical, or financial hurdles must be overcome in the coming months to successfully support European reindustrialisation?

Business angels across Europe and especially in Austria hold the key to improving competitiveness and commercialisation. They are operational by nature, and they oversee fewer investments meaning they are closer to the data streams. By supporting them with new, potential fund structures where they can access PE support functions and operational capital, we can flip the current lack of active early-stage funding and operational engagement on the investor side.

5. What makes Austria an interesting market from your perspective as a sustainable hardware technology investor, and what would need to be improved to make the Austrian market more attractive?

Austria stands out as a strong innovator, with over 20% of Austrian startups being spinouts from universities and research institutions. At the same time, there is a strong industrial base in the country, with increasing demand for industrial technology and resilience-focused solutions. This makes Austria an attractive local hub for innovation and new technologies. The challenge however is centred around the fact that the growth system in the country is very much predicated on traditional VC or PE approaches, favouring established technologies with well-known value chains. Those players may not be ready or able to take new technologies through current commercialisation journeys in hypertransformative environments.