Microsoft Biz Spark had its European Summit in Paris yesterday. No big surprises. Paris is Paris, i.e. no train information in English when trains don’t arrive, and coffee and Cola Cola is in tiny cups. And Microsoft is Microsoft, official speeches from Corporate Presidents and Vice Presidents, and they swear that they have entrepreneur and startup spirit and attitude (and if you don’t believe, here is a picture of Bill and Paul from 1970′s). And then there were startups that told they have a huge market potential, and they can cut customer’s costs and increase sales. Okay, I stop the cynical part, actually the summit was a nice surprise for me, a lot of interesting people, some really good discussions, and Biz Spark people also like to work with startups.

There were some really interesting startups. Especially I liked those guys that have got something to customers with their own very small money. So, something is already available, people really use it, and the funding plans are reasonable. Often those solutions are offered to consumers or SME’s. Then there were also startups that have used 1 to 2 Million (often partly public funding) to build a very smart solution for large corporations, they told they have nice testimonies from some corporate people, not yet sales, but the alpha version is ready soon. It is much harder to believe in those cases. Generally I would like to see more startups that really would like to be game changers, not only offer something to improve processes. If we expect really big success stories from Europe, we must also have guys that want to change the world. And of course, we must get the funding market together work so that it is possible.

Guy Kawasaki was the host and he had many good points as usually. We also got his latest book Reality Check. The first sentence I noticed from the book is “Venture capital is something to do at the end of your career, not in the beginning. It should be your last job, not your first.” I like that, it includes many relevant points. Now I must remind that we at Grow VC don’t feel to be venture capitalists, our VC stands for Venture Community, and we are more like community facilitators.

Maybe the most interesting part of the event was the last panel: “Building a virtuous ecosystem in Europe”. The panelists were Jan Muehlfeit, Marc Julien, Peter Jungen, Gearoid Mooney, Cliff Reeves, Chris Shipley, and Reshma Sohoni. I have heard now many panels, how to get European startups work better. European really believe that discussions solve problems. One interesting comment came from a London based venture capitalist, who two times wanted to remind there are much more drinking events for entrepreneurs in London nowadays. It is nice to know entrepreneur communities are more active. But Europe really needs really hard working entrepreneurs who are able to compete against all American, Indian, and Chinese.  They must get products out, be better everyday, and really do also some impossible things.

I think Chris made one of the most interesting comments in the panel. She said “you shouldn’t copy the Valley model, it is 30-year-old model and so traditional VC centric, things can be more virtual nowadays, people move out from the Valley but are still very connected there”. This is very valid comment. And it is in line with our Virtual Silicon Valley vision. This is not about Europe, Asia or US. We need more global solutions that right people and companies anywhere can work together and create success stories. Of course, local support can be useful and valuable, but people and companies must think globally if they really want to build success stories. And global thinking doesn’t exclude local acting, but it is a mind set to offer solutions and services that change the world.