Europe’s technology startups are doing just fine

Never has a crisis been so exciting. Startup valuations are plunging, tech layoffs abound and fresh venture capital (VC) is hard to come by. But at Slush, a big annual tech shindig which wrapped up in Helsinki on December 1st, founders and their financiers were partying almost like it was 1999, the height of the dotcom bubble. More than 13,000 people, a record number that included 5,000 entrepreneurs and 3,000 investors, spent two days in a cavernous trade-show, witnessing presentations, panels and lots of laser beams.