Revolut, Mistral and Wayve founders back Balderton’s ‘Built in Europe’ push

European tech has a confidence problem that has little to do with its results. The companies are there, the exits are there, and yet the dominant story has long been one of catching up to Silicon Valley.

Balderton Capital wants to change the register. On Monday it launched “Built in Europe,” a campaign backed by more than 100 founders that is less an argument than an assertion: the continent already builds world-class companies, so stop apologising for it.

The campaign goes live across London, Paris, Stockholm, Berlin and Munich, with billboards, city banners and digital advertising vans planted in each city’s tech quarter.

In London it takes the Old Street roundabout screen, the symbolic heart of the city’s startup scene; in Paris, the facade of Station F; in Stockholm, the Stureplan billboard. The timing is deliberate, coinciding with London Tech Week, Founders Forum and the run-up to VivaTech in Paris.

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The founders lending their names span the breadth of the ecosystem. The roster includes AI companies such as Mistral, ElevenLabs, Lovable and Synthesia; deep-tech and infrastructure names like Wayve, Quantum Systems, Proxima Fusion and

The Exploration Company; and consumer brands including Revolut, Voi and Alan. Balderton, the largest VC firm dedicated solely to European founders, has backed a number of them, and its own track record runs from Revolut and Wayve to past names like Darktrace, Depop and MySQL.

Underneath the advertising is the part with staying power. BuiltInEurope.com hosts a jobs platform that aggregates open roles from what Balderton calls Europe’s top 1,000 tech startups, built in-house using direct data feeds and API integrations, and pitched as the continent’s largest startup talent hub.

A billboard fades after a campaign; a working jobs board is the kind of infrastructure that could outlast it, if the listings stay fresh.

The messaging from the participating founders is uniform by design. Suranga Chandratillake, a general partner at Balderton, said the campaign aims to “shift the conversation from potential to proof.”

Wayve’s Alex Kendall called building a startup in Europe “the most adventurous, exciting thing you could do,” and Lovable’s Anton Osika argued there has “never been a better time to build from Europe.” The talent, the capital and the ambition, runs the refrain, are all already here.

It is, plainly, a marketing campaign from a firm with a commercial interest in more people starting European companies, and the optimism is the point rather than a neutral assessment.

But it joins a real movement. Initiatives like Project Europe, which pooled scores of founders to fund under-25 entrepreneurs, reflect the same anxiety about talent draining to the US and the same wish to keep it home.

Balderton, fresh off a $1.3bn fundraise, is betting that confidence is partly a story a sector tells about itself, and that it is time European tech told a louder one.