France-style startup support needed to unleash potential of young tech entrepreneurs

While funding for Europe's innovation ecosystem experienced a marked dip last year, one country has bucked the trend. In 2022, France was the only major country on the continent to boost capital investment in startups – $14.6 billion compared to $13.5 billion in 2021 – while fundraising in Germany and the UK, the long-time European leader, plummeted by over 20%.

President Macron's ambitious 'Startup Nation' vision has been brought to life by massive public funding support via government startup agency La French Tech, which has recently launched new programmes to fuel the growth of the agritech, climate tech and healthtech sectors specifically. What's more, through state bank Bpifrance, in January the French government announced a further €500 million for deeptech startups, while exploring additional reforms to spur innovative, tech-driven entrepreneurship that will fuel job creation and future-proof its economy.

Governments around the world should take note and gear public policies towards supporting entrepreneurs with transformative solutions to the world's most pressing challenges, from climate change and sustainable food production to widening inequality, stagnating growth and pandemics. Young entrepreneurs in particular—such as the four profiled here— have shown themselves to be exceptionally creative and driven, exemplifying the possibilities for a better future.

 Jeremy Jawish making insurtech waves

 French entrepreneur Jeremy Jawish is among this rising new generation of young tech leaders. After an internship at a major insurance firm sparked his realisation that the industry needed a disruptive revolution, Jawish founded the innovative insurtech firm Shift Technology in 2014, which has since grown into one of just three French—and 18 European— deeptech 'unicorns', or privately-held startups valued over $1 billion.

Capitalising on Jawish's previous expertise, Shift Technology uses an internally-developed AI platform to automate and enhance insurer decision-making while detecting key risks such as claims fraud, improper payments and financial crime in the health, property and casualty, and life and disability insurance markets. As Jawish sees it, these AI solutions boost efficiency and save employees time, in effect freeing up insurance professionals to focus on more complex claims, ones "where the policyholder may need a little more attention and compassion."

In an age of pandemics and climate change-driven natural disasters, this approach is truly essential—encouragingly, Jawish has his sights set on expanding Shift Technology's solutions to overseas markets.

 Lu Heng's Internet governance innovation

Lu Heng, a Netherlands-educated tech entrepreneur based between Hong Kong, Cyprus and the UAE, has brought a similar spirit of innovation to a field where it is in short supply: Internet governance. Building on his decade-plus background within the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) community, whose constituent organisations promote and allocate IP addresses worldwide, Lu Heng founded LARUS Limited in 2016.

In the ensuing years, LARUS has become a global leader in IP solutions. Beyond its IP management service for major ISPs, LARUS's innovative IPv4 leasing model provides small ISP businesses and tech startups in African and Asian Internet markets access to this critical yet scarce and costly digital resource. Crucially, this supports the digital transition in these emerging economies, as well as the associated economic and low-carbon benefits.

In 2021, Lu acquired the .help top level domain to provide a platform to promote his vision of the betterment of the internet. Conscious of future challenges, Lu Heng launched LARUS Foundation in 2019 to promote Internet Governance education and inspire an innovative generation of young people and future entrepreneurs to keep the Internet free, open and accessible to all. This 'One World, One Internet' vision forms the core of his election campaign for the Executive Council of RIR APNIC, where he hopes to help fuel a sustainable, inclusive digitalisation of the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region.

Peter Carlsson's budding green tech behemoth

 While software and intelligence-based tech entrepreneurs are making a major impact in sustainability, Northvolt founder and CEO Peter Carlsson has shown that industrial deeptech startups have an equally vital role to play.

Formerly a Tesla employee, Carlsson started Northvolt in 2016 with the ambition to develop the world's top low-carbon battery manufacturer, recognising the opportunity to produce lithium-ion batteries on a large scale with little financial and carbon cost. This venture quickly garnered the interest of high-profile investors – including Spotify founder and fellow tech entrepreneur Daniel Ek, who has just launched a pivot into healthtech with AI-driven medial scanning firm Neko Health – and its investor popularity has only grown with time, breaking the record for deeptech funding in 2021 with €2.8 billion.

Beyond market position, Carlsson's guiding aim is for Northvolt to produce the world's most sustainable batteries, highlighting that the company is fundamentally "trying to solve…the global problem of global warming. " With its EV batteries already generating an 80% lower carbon footprint than most competitors on the market, this rising star of greentech is well on its way.

Will Wells mobilising agritech for sustainability

 If you ask Will Wells, a young agritech entrepreneur, sustainable farming innovation is also crucial for tackling climate change. In January 2016, Wells founded Hummingbird Technologies, developing Machine Learning algorithms within the Imperial College technology incubator which would go on to help farmers around the world effectively implement regenerative agriculture practices.

Using AI-powered satellite imagery and analytics, Hummingbird Technologies provides farmers crucial data on crop health, disease detection and predicted yield quantities, allowing them to optimise agricultural inputs like fertilisers and pesticides while boosting food production. Wells has cited the opportunity to combine sustainability and food security needs as the driving force of his entrepreneurship, as his firm's solutions help "alleviate the chemical burden of feeding the world."

Hummingbird Technologies' innovations have been applied to over 500,000 hectares of farmland, and they are just getting started. After a COP26 event showcasing their agricultural sustainability monitoring services, the firm formed a partnership with Rabobank to monitor the regenerative agriculture practices of the latter's farming clients, with the aim of supporting the removal of 1 billion tons of carbon by 2030.

Working hand in hand with the private sector, governments should capitalise on new opportunities in emerging markets by driving up tech startup investment and unlocking the potential of forward-thinking, disruptive entrepreneurs to pave the way to a more sustainable, prosperous and inclusive future.