We recently spoke to a couple of local entrepreneurs who voiced some of the same concerns you hear a lot when you travel around the continent: Europe is risk averse, Europe is short on capital, Europe doesn’t have enough big successes to build on.

Here, you can see what they said:

“I think that the visions in the U.S. are a lot bigger, right from the beginning,” said Stefan Jørgensen of ItemBase, a Danish startup that wants to help you keep track of what you own. “The culture in Europe is that you don’t dare to dream as big.”

Belgian Pieter Dubois, founder of online payment plaform Paycento, agreed that the scale of people’s ambition was too small. “What you see is that in Europe people want immediately to see cashflows, they want immediately to have these customers,” he said. “That’s important, but sometimes an idea needs some time to really come to fruition.”

They are not alone. These complaints, or variations of them, have been echoing round for years — and show no signs of going away.

But…

Now, however, you can see a growing number of people who are starting to buck the trend and try to fix the problems they see around them.

Last week I reported the comments of Index Ventures partner Neil Rimer, who thinks that big European companies should stop being “defeatist” and consider going public.

“My sense is that if the right company were presented in the right context and at the right valuation to the right investors, there would be a meeting of minds and the company would be able to sell its shares to the public and complete an IPO in London.

I am also convinced that these companies exist, are ready to go public and are simply waiting for their management teams, boards and advisors to have the guts to do pull the trigger. My prediction is that a few days after some of these companies complete their offerings, boards and management teams will be advised that the London IPO market is now miraculously open again.”

He’s joined by a cohort of others who aren’t moaning, they’re just getting things done. There are dozens of startups we’ve reported on that are building global businesses from London, Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere

For example, Stefan Glaenzer, a prominent entrepreneur-turned-investor with Passion Capital, told me recently that Europe should stop constantly looking to California and recognize the successes that have happened at home.

“I’m not aware of a single European founder who made it big in the Valley,” he said. “We have created at least five to 10 billion dollar companies in the past 10 years here in Europe, so let’s build on that — let’s not lose out to America.”

And then, of course, there’s Germany’s Rocket Internet. Love them or hate them (and most people hate them) the Samwer brothers aren’t asking for anyone’s permission to make significant web-based businesses in Europe: they’re out raising money and launching dozens of companies across nearly 60 countries.

At the heart of this movement is the idea that European businesses can turn their weaknesses — facing a fragmented market with lots of linguistic and cultural boundaries — into their strengths: gathering the skills to go global early.

That’s something that ItemBase’s Jørgensen agreed with.

“The world is my market, because there’s no difference if I launch in Germany or France or Brazil,” he said. “There’s no difference because the challenges are more or less the same. If I want to launch in the US that would be the same as going to France.”

Between them, all of these people see that complaining that Europe isn’t Silicon Valley is beside the point. Focus on what you can, not what you can’t.

Still, I don’t know whether this will put to bed the entire discussion about Europe’s weaknesses — clearly it’s a subject people have a lot of affection for (perhaps affection isn’t the right word). But it’s certainly a sentiment that’s gaining momentum.

Is this the beginning of something?

Photograph of Neil Rimer used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Lift conference;

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Google and the Ghost of Silicon Valley Past
• 11 steps for scaling a startup
• Social 2013: The enterprise strikes back

ItemBase is a Berlin based startup that promises to keep track of what you own (including all the receipts, warranties and user manuals), discover new things to buy, and sell the stuff you no longer want. It was founded by Denmark native Stefan Jørgensen who came up with the idea after realizing he had scads of old mobile phones floating around his home and no idea what to do with them.

The company received seed round and launched a private beta in Germany and Denmark. Jørgensen is on the hunt for $1.5 million (USD) in new funding as he looks to open up ItemBase to the public in the next couple of months.

I met with Jørgensen at the recent Founder Showcase in San Francisco, where ItemBase actually won the pitch competition. He stopped by for a quick video chat to explain ItemBase and talk about why he created it.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Will cloud computing push the BRIC market to the front?
• Facebook’s tactical retreat on privacy
• Will Standardizing the Cloud Cause Clarity or Confusion?