“We f**cked it up” – Europe’s Media Companies Don’t Get Startups
November 30, 2009 at 13:08 PM EST
There were some interesting panel discussion today at the NOAH conference - a new event in London aimed at presented tech companies to the private equity and banking sector - but the plethora of suited and booted attendees were shocked out of their chairs a little when Klaus Hommels, (one of the first angel investors in Skype, QXL and XING and recently a venture partner with Balderton (formerly Benchmark Capital Europe) spoke his mind. The panel he was on had been beating about the bush on investing in tech startups, until he broke into the discussion to make some salient points: "Structurally we fucked it up. European tech companies would normally have been picked up by media companies in Europe but they are in such a bad state this is not possible. So before anyone puts money into new companies, we need to ask: who is going to by all the shit in our existing portfolios?!" (I think he might have meant to say 'stuff', however...)