The interesting thing with Y-Combinator is that it is by techies and entrepreneurs for techies and entrepreneurs. My experience in the European funding market i

The interesting thing with Y-Combinator is that it is by techies and entrepreneurs for techies and entrepreneurs. My experience in the European funding market is that there are not enough techies and entrepreneurs that have made good money, and therefor don't/can't invest themselves. The funds in the UK and Sweden (where I have direct experience, as well as San Francisco) are handled by people who are one step away from entrepreneurship/tech stuff, which IMO means that the people handling the startup funds don't connect as well with the entrepreneurs. In Stockholm, Sweden, we are seeing a lot more activity in the last couple of years, with investors/entrepreneurship support like STING <http://www.stockholminnovation.com/&#62 http://www.stockholminnovation.com/> and Venture Cup <http://www.venturecup.se/> http://www.venturecup.se/>, but it is nothing like in California, or even Massachusetts. The investors in Sweden are also too small to be able to handle investments at the scale the US investors do. And the investment market is fragmented over several European geographical locations. UK investors don't have good representation in Stockholm, for example. It is harder for entrepreneurs to move to a different location in the EU where the suitable money is, than it is in the US. Y-Combinator used to make everyone come over to Cambridge/Boston for a while when working on the startup (maybe they still do). This is harder in Stockholm, than in Cambridge, Mass., where the cultural barriers for someone from say Portugal or Ireland, are higher. There seem to be no investment movement between the UK/Scandinavian market and Germany for example. Furthermore, there are less available "exits" in European market, as most successful "exits" in the IT industry happens in the US. Which again makes things harder. It is clear to me that the talent in the UK/Swedish market is there, but the infrastructure around the investments and the cultural barriers are higher, which makes it harder.