Europe's Young Entrepreneurs 2007

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Other role models include France's Tariq Krim, the creator of news aggregation and Web personalization site Netvibes, and Benjamin Bejbaum, founder of online video site Daily Motion, a rival to YouTube (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/14/06, "Can Daily Motion Challenge YouTube?"). Then there's Spanish serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, who founded alternative telco Jazztel and Web portal Ya.com (DT). His latest venture, called FON Technology, aims to create a free worldwide phone network built on open Wi-Fi connections (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/7/06, "From Hot Spots to Fon Zones?").

Making Entrepreneurship Accessible

Such European success stories are inspiring an entire generation of young people to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. One startling bit of evidence: A recent study completed for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a program of Babson College and the London Business School, found that 64% of 18- to 24-year-olds in Britain were actively considering entrepreneurship as a career choice—the highest percentage ever measured.

"Entrepreneurship is becoming a credible career path," says Jonathan Kestenbaum, CEO of Britain's National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts, the country's largest provider of early-stage startup funding. "It's no longer seen solely as the realm of people with a particular flair."

It helps that there's also more money and help available than ever before, whether from business mentors and incubators or traditional venture capitalists. Final figures aren't yet available, but when the European Venture Capital & Private Equity Assn. releases numbers in June, they're expected to show an eye-popping tenfold increase in seed funding for startups in 2006 vs. the year before and a doubling in early-stage financing.

The Friends and Family Plan

Not many of the people on this list, who were nominated by BusinessWeek.com readers between Apr. 1 and May 14 and screened by our editors, have received venture funding. Instead, many came out of junior achievement programs or business schools around Europe and relied on friends or family for limited investments to bootstrap their operations.

A few, like Ireland's Cullen, have been running businesses since they were kids. But many others fell into entrepreneurialism almost by accident. Britain's Monshur Alam, for instance, first dreamed of becoming a filmmaker when he picked up a book about Quentin Tarantino and discovered that the famous director of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill had no formal training. Now, he and his brothers run their own film production company and offer workshops in digital filmmaking.

Whether pursuing a life dream or taking a new chance—one of the companies in the contest was founded just four months ago—all of the young Europeans in this year's contest have a refreshing sense of excitement and optimism. Spend a few minutes perusing the slide show of the nominees and cast your vote for the business that you think has the best chance of success. Europe's brave crop of young entrepreneurs deserves your encouragement.

With Jennifer L. Schenker in Paris.

Reinhardt is Europe channel editor for BusinessWeek.com.