Balderton’s ‘Built in Europe’ push backed by Revolut, Mistral, Wayve founders

European tech has long suffered from a nagging sense of inadequacy, even as its achievements stack up. The startups are thriving, exits are happening, and yet the prevailing narrative remains one of forever trailing behind Silicon Valley.

Balderton Capital is determined to flip that script. On Monday, the venture firm unveiled “Built in Europe,” a campaign supported by over 100 founders that functions less as a debate and more as a declaration: Europe already produces world-class companies, so it’s time to stop apologizing for it.

The initiative is rolling out across London, Paris, Stockholm, Berlin, and Munich, using billboards, city banners, and digital advertising vans to plant the message in each city’s tech hub. In London, the campaign takes over the iconic Old Street roundabout screen, the symbolic nerve center of the startup scene. In Paris, it covers the facade of Station F; in Stockholm, the Stureplan billboard. The launch is timed to coincide with London Tech Week, Founders Forum, and the lead-up to VivaTech in Paris.

The roster of founders backing the campaign spans the full spectrum of the ecosystem. It includes AI powerhouses like Mistral, ElevenLabs, Lovable, and Synthesia; deep-tech and infrastructure names such as Wayve, Quantum Systems, Proxima Fusion, and The Exploration Company; and consumer brands like Revolut, Voi, and Alan. Balderton, the largest VC firm focused exclusively on European founders, has backed many of these companies, with a track record that extends from Revolut and Wayve to past hits like Darktrace, Depop, and MySQL.

The real staying power, however, lies beyond the advertising. BuiltInEurope.com hosts a jobs platform that aggregates open roles from what Balderton calls Europe’s top 1,000 tech startups. Built in-house using direct data feeds and API integrations, it is pitched as the continent’s largest startup talent hub. A billboard fades after a campaign; a working jobs board is the kind of infrastructure that could endure, provided the listings remain current.

The messaging from participating founders is intentionally uniform. Suranga Chandratillake, a general partner at Balderton, said the campaign aims to “shift the conversation from potential to proof.” Wayve’s Alex Kendall called building a startup in Europe “the most adventurous, exciting thing you could do,” while Lovable’s Anton Osika argued there has “never been a better time to build from Europe.” The talent, the capital, and the ambition, the refrain goes, are already here.

This is, plainly, a marketing campaign from a firm with a commercial stake in seeing more European companies founded, and the optimism is the point rather than a neutral assessment. But it taps into a real movement. Initiatives like Project Europe, which pooled scores of founders to fund under-25 entrepreneurs, reflect the same anxiety about talent draining to the US and the same desire to keep it home.

Balderton, fresh off a $1.3bn fundraise, is betting that confidence is partly a story a sector tells about itself, and that it is time European tech told a louder one.