Crises are times when heroes are born. Only in the direst times can humans show their true quality. There are those who bury their head in the sand or wait until the storm has passed. And there are others who set sail, recognize the possibilities, and seize the opportunity. If anything good can come out of a crisis, it’s a real chance to reimagine the world.

Not many people can see these opportunities, but those who recognize them will grow in a crisis. And so will their personality. And we will need many, many more of these people in the future.

As someone who manages 70 start-up and  20 Fund investments, I can say that I know at least 70 business leaders. All of them took advantage of opportunities and grew in a particular crisis. Why then? Because life as a start-up basically is a permanent crisis, just like the Calm/Storm slogan: “Entrepreneurship is a continuous storm”. Founders work on their projects 24 hours a day, seven days a week are constantly around their colleagues and confronted with existential concerns.

If everything goes smoothly, people survive, but big players become who they are in a crisis.

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Truly good founders are always special personalities and have a healthy level of craziness.

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After all, they have to recognize a groundbreaking product that does not exist yet. The product that everyone wants, even if they don’t even know that they want it.

Founders are not necessarily great with numbers. They don’t even have to be great programmers. They are the ones with a vision for a team built around their leadership. If you don’t have the skills to set up a strong team, even the best ideas and smartest business models are doomed to fail. Conversely, an ambitious group of founders and collaborators can turn any average idea into something big.

What all companies must have is a strong entrepreneur at the top who can withstand the headwind of countless nay-sayers and pessimists. Their creative impulse must be greater and louder than the voices telling you that nobody needs your product or that your company will never be successful.

But where do we get more entrepreneurs with the necessary level of craziness that are so urgently needed for our future and society? By no means do I want to import American culture to Europe, but we can certainly envy aspects of the collective mentality in the US:

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Positive thinking, the belief that success is right around the corner, as well as a healthy way of  dealing with failure, because the  vast majority of start-ups are  not success stories.

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It’s the same everywhere, but it does make a difference whether you are confronted with a lecturing “I told you so” or genuine respect: “It’s great that you tried it. It’s great that you learned from it. It will definitely be better next time.” I miss this approach in our culture.

Of course, Europe cannot change its rather skeptical mentality overnight. We are talking about a long process of rethinking. Yes, ongoing digitization already forces us to do things differently. Transformations in the business world, the fact that workers are changing jobs much more often, or sometimes work more than one job, have all radically altered circumstances and created unforeseen challenges. But is that enough for Europe to play a key role on the world stage? Once more, I may have to answer this question rather pessimistically.

Europe is withering on the vine. We are a patchwork of around 30 countries, each member state pulling in a different direction. No one really seems to understand that being a serious player in the global market means acting as one.

It is embarrassing to see how incompetent and inconsistent Europe is in a time of crisis, especially because we are facing a golden opportunity to set the course for the future. Our continent can only be a global player if we promote innovation, and we could actually do that very quickly.

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We are multicultural societies with many different languages, and our collective experience based on over 2,000 years of history offers incredible potential for visionary  thinking and  decisive action.

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But we have to make a commitment.

What is the purpose of all our money if we do not invest in the future? Money is absolutely meaningless unless it’s put to use. And I don’t just mean € 72 million government funding for start-ups just to show that we care. We should expand it into a billion-investment just in Austria, knowing that  € 600 to € 700 million will ultimately be spent on unsuccessful companies. But even then, the tens of thousands of jobs created and the countless entrepreneurs who will have gained experience will still be a remarkable return from which every state will benefit in the long run.

This age of paradigm shifts in which our lives are changing dramatically and permanently is a time for problem-solving. Unfortunately, crises are rarely used for imagining ideas and future innovations. There are so many people with good ideas in Europe; there really is no shortage of them. But there is a lack of structure to successfully implement these ideas.

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We have to teach our children entrepreneurship, encourage strong personalities.

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We have to make “Entrepreneurship” a subject in school, revive debating clubs and discussion groups, and reform our educational system, which is still stuck in the age of the Habsburgs and has completely lost touch with the reality of our lives.

It's time to wake up! Yes, we are fine. In Europe, we are fortunate enough to generally be able to meet our basic needs. The majority of people can go out, eat in a restaurant, and travel cheaply. We are a thoroughly saturated society.

But this contentment has its pitfalls. When you are saturated, you stop wanting new things that go beyond mere consumption.

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Big ideas are born when people are “hungry.”

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I lived in Spain for 20 years and witnessed two severe economic crises. Between 2007 and 2012 the economy collapsed; youth unemployment was up to 50 %. Many college graduates left the country or ended up at the employment office. And what came after that? Necessity is the mother of invention. Thousands of young people became innovative and founded their own companies.

Barcelona and Madrid have become start-up hotspots in Europe, not out of a situation of prosperity, but in the wake of crisis.Not everything will work out in the end. Following World War II, we have had an incredibly long period without deep transformations in our lives. No disasters on our continent, no wars.

And today? The moment COVID ended the Ukraine war broke out, then the energy crisis, rapid inflation. In the last three years, it seems as if everything has come at us at once. And as macabre as it may sound at first, perhaps we needed this to wake up. In any case, we urgently need to wake up.

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This text was written by Max Gfrerer, based on an interview with Hansi Hansmann (updated on March 26, 2023).

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