The most counterintuitive element of Estonian success has been its small size. Sten Tamkivi Partner, Plural Platform Any tech project in Estonia always begins with the scrappy lens of “how can we get ALL THIS done with 3 people?” You can never build a massive company on a local market of a million people, which means every founder is forced to think global from day one. When all founders look outside of Estonia, their backs are together: we have the most supportive community of peers anywhere. US investors retracting The global retraction in investment volumes has a knock-on effect on the 昀氀ow of capital between regions. This becomes most evident when looking at the capital contribution of US-based investors into European tech companies. At the peak in 2021, each dollar invested by European investors was matched by 66 cents from the US. This measure has shrunk each year for the past two years, bottoming out at 34 cents in 2023, down 48% vs. 2021. Not surprisingly, this retraction has been felt most acutely by later-stage founders raising larger rounds. This material decline is driven not only by a declining share of rounds that have any US investor participation at all, but also by a reduction in the average count of US investors participating in any given round. In other words, 2023 has seen a signi昀椀cant reduction in the count of large rounds that involved the participation of multiple US investors in the same round. 117 | Companies