UK-based Segerstrale, who sold social gaming company Playfish to Electronic Arts for an initial $275 million (£173 million) last November, says that those running start-ups in Europe should stop being ‘shy’ and not be afraid to take on big business.

Adds Segerstrale, ‘Almost any business today can go out and be a dinosaur slayer. That’s what we decided to do with Playfish, take a $50 billion [games] industry and turn it on its head.’

Speaking to GrowthBusiness, Segerstrale remarks that recent technological advances have favoured entrepreneurs, lowering barriers to entry.

He states, ‘New start-ups are enormously capital-efficient. If you have a laptop, you can access the greatest supercomputers in the world through the cloud.

‘Six or seven years ago you had to think about your own data centre, web server… all this stuff today is totally run-of-the-mill.’

Some 204,361 new businesses were launched in the UK in the first six months of this year, compared to 157,185 in the first half of 2009, according to analysis of Companies House data from web consultancy Yoodoo.