Arthur Jordão, Executive Director of ESNA, in an interview with the Bulgarian newspaper Capital
Arthur Jordão, Executive Director of ESNA, in an interview with the Bulgarian newspaper Capital, spoke about the alliance and its priorities.
The interview covered the results of the past four years and the European ecosystem.
Since its launch in 2021, ESNA has brought together 22 active Member States with the shared goal of advancing regulatory standards, improving public policy coordination, and strengthening data-driven decision-making in the European startup ecosystem.
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Interview with Capital Bulgaria- English Translation
Arthur Jordão, ESNA: “If I could choose one policy priority for all of Europe, it would be the 28th regime”
The Executive Director of the Europe Startup Nations Alliance, talks to Capital about data, policy, and the road to a competitive European startup ecosystem
The Europe Startup Nations Alliance (ESNA) was established in 2021 as a direct result of the EU's Startup Nations Standard declaration, signed by 26 member states and Iceland. Its mission is to accelerate the growth of European entrepreneurship by improving national policy frameworks and providing evidence-based tools for policymakers. In Bulgaria, ESNA is represented by BESCO, the Bulgarian Entrepreneurship and Startup Association, selected by the Ministry of Economy as the country's focal point within the alliance.
Why does ESNA exist and what is its purpose?
To explain that, I need to give some background context on how the organisation was created. Almost five years ago the members of ESNA recognised that Europe is lagging behind other blocs of the globe in terms of competitiveness and maturity of the startup ecosystem. And because of that, they also acknowledged there wasn't necessarily a dedicated body at the EU level addressing this with full focus and supporting countries in dedicating themselves to this particular matter.
So what they agreed within a ministerial declaration was that we need to uplift our game collectively. For that, they committed together to implement eight policy practices that are friendly for startups - hence the Startup Nations Standards of Excellence. Essentially, what we're talking about is: creation of a company in a fast mode below 100 euros, attraction and retention of talent, stock option regimes, innovation in procurement, innovation in regulation, access to finance measures, social inclusion and diversity, and finally a digital-first approach in how these companies interact with public entities. These were the eight dimensions they collectively agreed to implement so that every country could become a startup nation, and the whole of Europe could be in a better position.
What went from aspirational to operational was the creation of ESNA. ESNA is a European organisation with a clear mandate to support the member states in uplifting their game when it comes to policies and measures for the startup ecosystem.
One element is the creation of tools. The monitoring we do - the Startup Nations Standards report is published on a yearly basis and assesses how countries are evolving across these dimensions. The other is our data tools. I want to emphasize this aspect because we incorporated one very important principle: what you cannot measure, you cannot manage.
And that was the reality of Europe. We didn't know how many startups, scale-ups, and everything that derives from analysis within these two basic concepts actually existed on the continent. With ESNA and the data tools we provide we're changing that.
Europe and the EU are often criticized for the amount of bureaucracy and processes that hinder innovative companies' ability to scale the way they do in Silicon Valley. What specific mechanisms has ESNA created to address that?
There's no straight answer to that, in the sense that you can't say: because of specific acts that ESNA did, Europe is less bureaucratic, it is much more multi-layered and complex. But to try to get an answer, it all comes down to political will, political priorities, the strategy as a whole. I think it's becoming more and more evident to the top-tier political spheres of decision-making that we are at an urgent moment. We need to do something about competitiveness. We need to do something about sovereignty in many domains, including defense, tech, and energy.
And ESNA works in a subsector of the economy that clearly plays a role as a motor of innovation. What we do is we don't advocate, but instead develop concrete tools through an independent platform, and as an organisation created by the member states, we contribute with better knowledge so that better navigation and policymaking can happen.
Now, what you assume through your question, it would be dishonest to say that's not really what's happening in Europe. The hindrance of innovation, the heavy load of regulation and legislation, the fragmentation, not just the fact that we don't have a true single market and a seamless way to operate across Europe yet. But all the efforts we've been seeing indicate that the path is toward overcoming them. One thing that I think is important to be clear about: the alternative, or at least the way to reach what we desire for Europe, is not a full deregulation of things. There are certain principles and values in Europe that we cherish too much to simply mimic or imitate exactly what's happening in other blocks.
In Bulgaria, ESNA is represented by BESCO. How does that representation work in practice?
The governments of each country indicate one organisation to represent them in ESNA. There's no ambition or KPI to get as many members as possible. There's only one per country, chosen by the government. At the time, the Ministry of Economy indicated BESCO.
Now, BESCO is a private nonprofit organisation, which is not the case for most of our members. There was a degree of freedom in this choice. We have a couple of other countries in a similar situation, such as Portugal or Poland. But many others are represented either by the state's innovation agency, the venture capital arm of the government, or a trade organisation.
In terms of what we do directly with BESCO, they work as a focal point. Much of the work we do to have a better understanding and collect better data about the several ecosystems relies on them. They're the ones responsible for pivoting all of this work in Bulgaria. I'm sure they don't do it alone, they interact with many state agencies and entities to collect some of the data and also to broker any kind of relationship or endeavor that we have in the country.
Now, for future reference, and I think it's important to mention this, we as an organisation are evolving into a European legal nature that was recently created by the European Commission, called the European Digital Infrastructure Consortium, or EDIC. When we convert to that reality, the governance logic I've just explained will change slightly. From that moment on, it will be the governments directly, in the case of Bulgaria, the Bulgarian government, who will be the members of ESNA. We're expecting to have it by the end of this year or the beginning of next.
Why is this new form of governance better?
It's better for several reasons. First, it will give us a fully European legal nature, which helps the organisation's endeavours. Second, we'll have the European Commission as part of the governance. Even now, we've been funded by the Commission a couple of times. Having them inside the governance and as part of the social bodies gives us clear additional strength. We'll also be better aligned strategically with EU-level efforts, particularly around the Digital Decade, because the EDIC framework comes within those objectives and ambitions. Funding should also become easier.
You've mentioned the need to catch up to other blocks. What are ESNA's most critical priorities for the next two to three years?
The focus and the wider mission won't change for the next couple of years. What I think will change is the clarity of the picture. Let me put it this way: the startup conversation in Europe has been conducted heavily on the basis of perceptions. And we don't think that the seriousness, the importance, and the weight of this ecosystem on the wider good of society deserves to rest on perceptions alone. The opposite of perceptions is exactly what I was explaining - it's evidence-based. It's data. It's having the same language and the same indicators so we can actually talk about the same things.
We know for a fact that over the past decade and more, strategies, plans, and information that is out there has been produced with data that is not comparable and that lacks transparency in terms of methodology. So there are no true conclusions, or at least the ones that are made are constructed to fit a certain narrative that is favourable to one side over another.
What we're bringing is clarity to the discussion, to the decisions, and to the path forward. So when I say converging and catching up, there's no way around comparing how much investment is done on each side of the ocean. There's no avoiding how much this ecosystem weighs on the economy. There's no avoiding how each side contributes to development and innovation in critical areas for society.
Can you put this in numbers? What does Europe need to achieve in order to catch up?
We could spend a whole day on that, but to name a few, it comes down to relative comparisons in terms of per capita figures. The number of startups per capita. The amount of investment per capita. The weight that innovation has on GDP. The contribution of revenues from this type of company to GDP. The capacity to convert intellectual property into commercial products.
Then you can break it down further. Is Europe truly now a harbour for later-stage investment? Is scale-up funding no longer an issue? How does the comparison between publicly funded and privately funded look? On the public side, we see that there is no big difference between us and our counterparts across the Atlantic, though we can obviously discuss efficiencies. The gap is much more visible on the private side.
These are all indicators we should contemplate when we do this forward-looking exercise and try to envision where Europe needs to go and what progress looks like.
If you could get one policy change adopted across all ESNA members, what would it be?
That's a difficult one. I'm trying to figure out if I give you the answer you want to hear or if I'm honest about it. But knowing that the conversation right now has been around cutting the red tape, I would say the 28th regime. It could be a game changer, in terms of being the stepping stone to other things and potentially unblocking many other areas, such as funding, such as cross-border talent mobility. So the red tape, absolutely, being able to truly operate one organization within Europe with everything it entails, I would go with that.