The inability to internationalize is a major reason few European startups have been able to grow into global technology companies. Unlike American startups, which can first sell their product in a domestic market of 296 million people and then go international. No European startup operates in a domestic market greater than 80 million people. This makes venturing across borders early on in a European startup's life vital.

Dartfish is doing it. The Swiss startup makes video software based on technology that was spun out of the EPFL in Lausanne. The company is focused on the sports vertical for now. 450 schools in the U.K. have bought the software to help their students enhance their athletic performances by comparing their technique to that of a professional or a peer on a split screen or in an overlapping format.

Dartfish has a separate technology called StroMotion. This should be familiar to baseball fans. Fox uses the technology to trace the path of a ball thrown by a pitcher and ABC uses it to track the flight of a figure skater.

Dartfish chairman Anton Affentranger told me at the Innovate! Europe '05 conference this morning that the company records $7.5 million in annual revenues and is growing at 50% on an annual basis. It's looking to expand into new verticals and consider raising more venture capital next year. But, no matter what it does in the future, nothing may top its achievement of convincing the conservative Fox Network to buy software from a company in the French part of Switzerland. —Joshua Jaffe from Innovate! Europe '05

Demo Dartfish's technology
Read about the most tense moment at the conference
Go to The Innovate! Europe '05 Photoblog
Go to a live blog of the event