Winning formula: How Europe's top tech start-ups get it right

European start-ups are being created and growing at an unprecedented pace these days, attracting the attention of global investors, customers, and corporate partners alike. In the process, they are proving the conventional wisdom wrong: launching a start-up amid the continent's fragmented value pool doesn't necessarily have to be such a challenging proposition. Despite the range of systemic challenges start-ups still face, including regulatory and cultural challenges, growing numbers of dynamic new ventures are thriving. These bold players offer valuable lessons for others aspiring to similar heights--and to a European continent striving to stay economically and technologically competitive with the rest of the world. To better understand how these standouts succeed, we studied the top 1,000 European tech start-ups founded after 2000 in 33 countries, which include 21st-century companies such as Spotify, Adyen, and BioNTech.