What Really Breaks Early-Stage Startups in Europe - Andreas Klinger (Prototype Capital)

Oct 2, 2025

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What does it really take to build ambitious companies in Europe when the system feels stacked against you? Is the problem a lack of talent, or the quiet friction founders are expected to accept as normal?

Follow the Gradient sits down with Andreas Klinger, technical founder turned investor at Prototype Capital and one of the driving forces behind EU Inc. Andreas has built and backed companies across Europe and the US, and now finds himself working to remove the structural constraints that quietly slow European founders down.

This conversation is less about policy details and more about how systems shape ambition, how founder energy gets wasted, and what changes when a community decides to stop treating friction as inevitable.

We talk about:

Why European founders lose momentum not from lack of ideas, but from repeated legal and operational drag
How EU Inc reframes incorporation as an acceleration problem rather than a compliance exercise
The hidden cost of notaries, fragmented rules, and last minute investor dropouts
Why ambition is a product of environment, not personality
How small, intense founder circles outperform large but diluted ecosystems
What Europe could unlock by thinking in cross regional hubs instead of national borders

This episode is an exercise in zooming out. Instead of chasing tactics, it explores how incentives, defaults, and shared beliefs shape what founders attempt in the first place, and why changing the system may matter more than motivating individuals.

Our biggest takeaways, including Andreas’s view on what founders misunderstand about ambition and structural constraints:

https://followthegradient.io/p/andreas-klinger-podcast

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Where to find Andreas Klinger:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasklinger/

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🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

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