A Volcano Plays Merry Hell With European Startups

So like everyone else in Europe right now, I am fascinated by the impact of the volcano in Iceland, which is spreading ash all over northern Europe and shutting down the airlines. Eyjafjallajokull is now the new in vogue swear word in Europe, if you can say it. Yesterday my Twitter stream was full of entrepreneurs suddenly saying their travel plans were being thrown into chaos. It seems that Europe's startup economy has been running partly on the spread low-cost airlines for the past 5 years, and without airlines the startups, along with the whole of the general business sector, are going to be badly affected. As I have long said, the quintessential startup in Europe is: CEO from anywhere, money from a pan European investor (often based in London, the biggest financial centre) and developers/engineers often in Central Europe. That implies plenty of travel. After all, by plane we are all, at the most, two or three hours away from eachother. With planes grounded, that is going to have a huge effect.