🏦 Yolo to Euronext

Adyen 🇳🇱 listed on Euronext Amsterdam in June 2018 at a €7bn market cap. Seven years on, the Dutch fintech is worth €43bn, a 17% annualised return for shareholders. Its global payments engine, 250 methods across 187 currencies, was built entirely as a public company. Quarterly earnings, analyst scrutiny, short-sellers circling. The public market as a construction tool, not an exit ramp.

That model was the exception. It ought to become the norm again. For fifteen years, the prevailing orthodoxy has been that startups should stay private as long as possible. The median age at IPO has crept from five years in the 1990s to fourteen in 2024. The result is not more value created. It is more capital consumed for weaker exits, and LPs left waiting for distributions. Klarna 🇸🇪, which listed on the NYSE last September at €14bn, has since shed 56% in five months. « Stay private longer » did not protect investors. It merely postponed the reckoning.

Europe has a structural hand to play. The 700 listed tech companies on Euronext account for just €1,400bn of market cap, roughly 21% of a €6,500bn exchange. And 75% of flows into the Tech Leaders segment already come from international investors. Institutional demand is there. What is missing is supply. In 2025, only 115 IPOs took place across all European exchanges, the vast majority of which were not venture-backed. The EU Listing Act, which came into force last December, simplifies prospectuses and introduces dual-class share structures for growth markets. Euronext has launched IPOready 2026 with 160 companies from 22 countries, 69% of them in tech. The framework is being assembled. The bottleneck is supply, not demand.

The pipeline is tangible. Revolut 🇬🇧, whose choice between London and New York will say a great deal about where European founders see their future. Raisin 🇩🇪, a profitable savings platform targeting north of €2bn. Exotec 🇫🇷, 1,300 employees and a €2bn valuation in logistics robotics, backed by Goldman Sachs and Bpifrance. Behind them sits €66bn of venture capital deployed across Europe in 2025, with AI as the leading investment sector for the first time, and entry valuations that remain structurally more rational than those across the Atlantic.

The mechanics are straightforward. Enter at lower valuations, back companies that build public-market governance from the outset, and exit earlier into a market where scarcity creates a premium. Shorter holding periods, faster distributions, less dependence on late-stage rounds that dilute without creating value. Those investing today in European companies designed for IPO are not betting on convergence with the US. They are positioning where the next multiple expansion will be public.