Schmidt: Europe Needs Some 'Crazy' Talk

Eric Schmidt has some advice for Europeans: they should get a little bit crazy.

“You've got to have the crazy entrepreneur types, who you've got to celebrate, which we do in America. And you've got to have the venture capital, which really is 'at risk' capital and is different from other capital," the Google CEO told The Telegraph in London.

Schmidt told the paper that he saw a lackluster venture capital industry throughout Europe. "It takes a very long time to get a proper venture capital industry going. And in Europe there are many countries where the failure of venture capital is in fact seen as criminal, Germany, for example.”

If Europeans don't seem so keen on entrepreneurship or venture capital, does that create an opening for Americans to play bigger on a European stage? Last month at Portfolio.com, we took an in-depth look at the VC industry and discovered that American firms definitely had bigger aspirations, though much of these seemed to be more focused on China and India.

“I think there’s a universal grammar about our pursuit that transcends borders and boundaries and time zones and cultures,” Michael Moritz, general partner at Sequoia Capital, told Portfolio news editor Kent Bernhard Jr. Sequoia, which is based in California's Silicon Valley, has seven offices globally, including outposts in China and Israel.