In October 2024, at the Scale 100 Forum in Athens, Greece, 72 scale-ups from 24 countries were announced to join the EIC Scaling Club. During the event, we were fortunate to catch up with Keith Sequeira, Head of the European Innovation Council Unit at DG Research & Innovation, European Commission, for a brief interview about the future of European scale-ups and beyond.
Listen to the interview here:
As Head of the European Innovation Council Unit, Keith Sequeira leads a 15-person team whose core responsibility is strategy development, closely aligned with the EIC Board of Advisors. The team also manages relationships with key stakeholders, including EISMEA (the EIC's implementing agency), the European Investment Bank, and the EIC Fund.
Beyond these operational tasks, Mr. Sequeira is dedicated to integrating the EIC into broader EU policy discussions. Given the EIC's pivotal role in numerous policy areas, he ensures its involvement in relevant policy debates.
“Europe has made huge progress on the number of startups coming out of the ecosystem, but we have a big gap in scaling up the companies. So that's very much where the EIC Scaling Club comes in,” says Mr. Sequeira and adds that Europe is an excellent environment for scaling businesses and that many European companies have the potential to become global leaders.
Despite the immense potential of EIC Scaling Club members, Mr. Sequeira acknowledges that policy work is necessary to establish Europe as the premier destination for scaling companies. “I think the EIC Scaling Club is also super important in showing companies the way. We have successful examples in Europe of scaling up companies, so we can do it well,” he notes and mentions European quantum companies as a prospective field to look out for.
Mr. Sequeira also notes that European policy is placing a strong emphasis on scale-ups:
“In the new Commission, we will have the first-ever Commissioner for Startups, Research, and Innovation. [...] There are lots of ideas and dynamism that I haven't seen before. It's very exciting.”
Additionally, Mr. Sequeira emphasizes the importance of demonstrating Europe's ability to foster successful companies at all stages of development. He believes European companies stand out globally with their focus on addressing significant societal challenges: “I think it's time to re-evaluate Europe as a place to grow your company. Much has changed in the right direction.”
See our full interview with Keith Sequeira in the video below, or visit our YouTube channel (and enjoy our other videos while you're there!).
The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.
The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.
The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.
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