Venture Europe: Entrepreneurship | Technology | Venture Capital

Julius is a certified coach and has coached over 150 entrepreneurs backed by Atomico, a16z and Creandum among others, has trained over 100 venture investors and just recently released his first single on Spotify.

During this episode we discuss about the moment he decided to become a coach, the learnings along the coaching journey and what are the most common challenges founders and investors have, when they reach out to him.

Wanna join a peer-support community for founders? Join us at uTopic. :)

Dr. Nicole Paulk is the CEO and founder of the viral gene therapy startup Siren Biotechnology.

Prior to being a founder she was a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF in San Francisco, California where her lab worked at the forefront of developing and engineering enabling technologies to make viruses better medicines.

During this episode we discuss the evolution of modern medicine from ingesting medicinal leaves to gene therapy, we also discuss how she plans to use viruses to treat cancer and therapies for sleeping only 4h are closer than you think.

Enjoy!

Bharat Vasan, Partner and COO at The Production Board.

Bharat is overseeing the consumer technology portfolio and actively invests in, advises and serves on the boards of early-stage businesses.

He is one of Silicon Valley’s most battle-tested and proven CEOs and operators, with multiple successful exits and over $500M dollars raised.

During this episode we discuss about some trends in consumer tech around AI and food, how they asses founders when investing and how he struggled with weight loss and how Ozempic, the miracle drug made by Novo Nordisk changed his mind, body – and investment strategy.

Enjoy!

Bjarne Kveim Lie - Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Verdane.

Verdane invests in technology companies with equity tickets between 8 and 150m Euro, they have Eur 5B of committed capital and over 140 investments since 2003. They have a flexible mandate and can make both minority and majority investments. In addition to making individual investments they also act as a solution provider for GPs that seek liquidity and have completed over 50 so called ‘secondary directs’ over the years.

They have been named Best European PE Growth Fund all the years between 2019 and 2023 and Best European mid-market PE fund in 2022.

During this episode we discuss about the status of the growth stage as an asset class, the learnings from investing for over 20 years and the fun parallel between investing with an asymmetric risk reward ratio and Dr Alban. It’s my life!

James Currier - Founding Partner at NfX.

James is a five-time Founder, an angel investor in DoorDash, Lyft, and Patreon, and a Founding Partner at the venture capital firm, NfX.

Before becoming an investor, James was the co-founder and CEO of Tickle, one of the internet’s first successful user-generated-content companies. Tickle grew to the 18th largest website in the world with over 150 million registered users — before they were acquired in 2004 by Monster for $110 million. It was during this time that James realized the power of network effects as the core growth driver of both B2B and B2C successes across every vertical.

James then co-founded three other successful companies – Wonderhill (online video games, merged with Kabam in 2010 which then sold for $800M), IronPearl (growth analytics SaaS, acquired by PayPal in 2013), and Jiff (enterprise healthcare software, raised $68M from Venrock, GE, J&J, merged with Castlight in 2017 — NASDAQ: CSLT).

As a lifelong learner and developer of talent, James loves sharing wisdom among Founders. He speaks regularly at numerous industry conferences and has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and Silicon Valley Business Journal.

During this episode we discuss about the importance of the founding team and learning velocity, we discuss about network effects and the white-hot center and touch upon some books recommendations across entrepreneurships, finding one self and marriage and relationships.

Enjoy!

Zeynep Yavuz - Partner at General Catalyst.

General Catalyst, has $28bn assets under management and is one of the world’s best known VC firms. They backed some of greatest businesses that you probably are very familiar with including Airbnb, Stripe, Discord and Snap among many many others others.

Prior to joining GC, Zeynep worked as an operator focused on strategy and product at World Remit and invested at growth stages at TA Associates. At GC she focuses on fintech and crypto.

During this episode we discuss about her career trajectory from working in investment banking to private equity to operator and now GC. We also discuss how she asses founders at early stage and we touch on the opportunities that lie at the intersection of fintech and crypto.

Enjoy!

Chris Smith - Managing Partner of Playfair. (brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Seedrs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)

Playfair is a generalist fund with a contrarian approach to pre-seed technology investing. Based in London, Playfair invests across the UK and Europe with an intentionally high conviction, low volume approach: making 6-8 investments a year and preserving time, capital and resources to help companies post-investment.

Playfair has backed more than 70 companies across two funds including Thought Machine, Andela, Mapillary, Recycleye and Orca AI among others.

During this episode we discuss how they asses investment opportunities at such an early stage, the number one mistake founders do when fundraising and how they support their founders to raise a Series A.

Enjoy!

Rex Woodbury - founder and Managing Partner of Daybreak, an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City. (brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Seedrs⁠⁠⁠⁠)

Before founding Daybreak, Rex was a Partner at Index Ventures the premier venture capital firm that invested in Adyen, Revolut, Roblox, Discord, and Figma among others.

Rex focuses on the application layer of technology, often investing in internet, software, and marketplace businesses with the potential for viral adoption.

He also writes Digital Native, a publication about people and technology that reaches 50,000 weekly readers which i highly recommend.

During this episode we discuss about the art of early stage investing, the pros and cons of social media and the power of technology to bring people together.

Kirsty Grant - Managing Director at Seedrs - Europe’s leading private investing platform.

Under her leadership, Seedrs has become the most active investor in early stage private companies in the UK, funding over 2,000 deals and participating in rounds totalling over £2.6 billion to date.

This year, she played an instrumental role in launching Seedrs' EU regulated entity.

During this episode we discuss the past and future of crowdfunding, how companies like Revolut and investors like Seedcamp used Seedrs to raise funds and why we need more founders in Europe.

Enjoy!

Mark Kugel - co-founder and co-CEO of Yuri. (brought to you by ⁠⁠Seedrs⁠⁠)

At Yuri they are sending payloads to space to take advantage of micro-gravity so they can build higher quality molecules and other useful biotech assets. Did you know that it is easier to print a heart in space as it has no gravity?

During this episode we discuss how the CDTM (Center for Digital Technology and Management) cohort from 2014 produced more than Eur 15B from 24 students, including Hanno of Personio and Thomas of Trade Republic among other, we discuss Germany’s PR problem and why it might be a better idea to invest in startups solving difficult problems than the next Saas for Saas for Saas!

Enjoy!

Ciao ragazzi e ragazze, I am here with Francesco Sciortino - co-founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion (brought to you by ⁠Seedrs⁠)

Originally from Italy, his passion for physics and plasma, took him across the world from Imperial College London for undergrad, to EPFL in Switzerland for his masters, before moving to MIT in Boston for his PhD.

Beginning of 2023, Francesco raised a 7.5M Euro pre-seed round from Plural, UVC Partners and High-Tech Grunderfonds, and co-founded Proxima Fusion a Munich-based startup that aims to develop robust, high-performance, and steady-state fusion power plants.

Proxima is the first-ever spin-out company from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics.

During this episode we discuss his journey into plasma and different machines used to perform research, the difference between a Tokamak and Stellarator and Europes potential to compete in the global fusion race.

Enjoy!

Mikkel Skarnager - co-founder and CEO of the stealth startup Spektr. (brought to you by Brevo and Seedrs)

Mikkel is a second-time founder, prior to Spektr he was the founder and CEO of HelloFlow, an innovative no-code, drag-and-drop builder for client onboarding, monitoring, and digital workflow solutions --> orchestration layer for business identity.

In February 2022 only 2 years after founding the company they got an acquisition offer and sold to Trulioo for around ~50m Eur, a number I found online, that Mikkel cannot confirm nor deny, returning 5X to 50X times money back to his seed and angel investors in a very short time.

During this episode we discuss Mikkel's learnings with HelloFlow and his advice for first-time entrepreneurs, the first purchase he made after the exit, and his new company.

Thanks so much to his co-founder Ciprian and previous investor Tom from Seedcamp for the input to this episode.

Enjoy!

Fredrik Cassel - General Partner at Creandum.

Creandum is a venture capital advisory firm with offices in Stockholm, San Francisco, London, and Berlin funding early stage entrepreneurs from a 450m euro fund.

Fredrik has an exceptional track record having previously invested in several multibillion euro companies like Spotify, Kahoot!, Depop and Kry just to name a few. He doesn’t like to take the credit and attributes his success to the Creandum team. One Creandum as he likes to call it.

During this episode we discuss Creandum's culture, what he learned from Daniel Ek when investing in Spotify, and how to find user love.

Brought to you by ⁠Zoom⁠ and ⁠Brevo⁠. If you like the show please check out the sponsors as they are the ones making it possible. Thank you! 🙏

Brought to you by Zoom and Brevo. If you like the show please check out the sponsors as they are the ones making it possible. Thank you! 🙏

Jevan Nagarajah - is the founder and CEO of Better Dairy.

At Better Dairy they are using precision fermentation to produce the cheeses, yoghurts, ice creams, the type of products consumed and loved across the world but without having to use animals products.

During this episode we discuss about the founding story and how they managed to raise more than 20m Euros, splitting with his co-founder, his experience being part of the Rocket internet mafia and the future of tasty cheeses.

Enjoy!

Brought to you by Zoom and Brevo. If you like the show please check out the sponsors as they are the ones making it possible. Thank you! 🙏

Mars Geuze is one of the co-founders of Hardt Hyperloop.

Hardt Hyperloop is one of the leading teams in the world working to bring the concept of Hyperloop to life.

The Hardt Hyperloop team is a talented and ambitious team coming from Delft University. They were building race cars before taking on the challenge of building a hyperloop.

During this episode, we discuss how they transitioned from building race cars to winning the SpaceX Hyperloop competition, the complexity of building infrastructure, and their strategy of building a system that can be adopted globally and become standardized.

Enjoy!

Antoine Moyroud - Partner at Lightspeed.

Lightspeed is a venture capital firm focusing on multi-stage investments in the enterprise, consumer, and health sectors. Lightspeed invests in seed, early and growth-stage companies.

For over twenty years Lightspeed has been the first investor and an early backer of some of the most innovative companies in the world like Snapchat, Carta and BetterUp among many others.

During this episode we discuss about Antoine’s journey from failing Class Preparatoire to becoming a partner at Lightspeed at 28 years old, we discuss the firms commitment to Europe and the Eur 105M seed investment into the talented team of Mistral AI.

This is episode is brought to you by Zoom One, designed for however and wherever your team gets work done. Whether you need some focus time or want to collaborate with your hybrid team, Zoom One is the all-in-one platform designed to power your work day. Collaborate with your team and clients across phone, video, messaging, whiteboards, and even connect your favorite work apps – so you can focus on getting things done. Simplifying your work day and keeping your global team connected. One platform to connect. Zoom One.

Andre Retterath - Partner at Earlybird Capital, Lead of the EagleEye platform used for data driven sourcing and writing the popular newsletter Data-driven VC.

With over 2 billion Euro under management, nine IPOs and 31 trade sales, Earlybird is one of the most established and active venture capital firms in Europe, having made investments in formidable companies like UiPath and N26 among others.

Founded in 1997, Earlybird invests in all development and growth phases of technology companies and has grown to several autonomous, dedicated and specialized teams, focusing on different geographies and sectors.

During this episode we discuss about his journey from analyst to partner, the change in the competitive landscape for VCs and the drive to become more data driven, how they use primary and secondary sources for data driven sourcing and the extreme focus that founders should have on sustainable defensibility.

This is episode is brought to you by Zoom One, designed for however and wherever your team gets work done. Whether you need some focus time or want to collaborate with your hybrid team, Zoom One is the all-in-one platform designed to power your work day. Collaborate with your team and clients across phone, video, messaging, whiteboards, and even connect your favorite work apps – so you can focus on getting things done. Simplifying your work day and keeping your global team connected. One platform to connect. Zoom One.

Michel Elings is the founder of Vev.

Michel, has a history of delivering successful products with over 100 million users and with Vev they plan to empower millions of freelancers and SMBs by providing the basic tech tools they need so they can smoothly run their business.

Prior to Vev he founded and sold his first startup, Prss, to Apple and moved to Cupertino to help build Apple News. After returning to the Netherlands a couple of years later, he joined Booking to launch CityBook before founding his current company, Vev.

Recently they raised a Eur 5m seed round from Point Nine and Notion Capital.

During this episode we discuss about the founding story of Prss, his experience in Cupertino and the process of building a product used by millions of people, and the mission with Vev.

Enjoy!

Brought by - ⁠Edda⁠, the most collaborative tool for VCs and Private Equity investors that allows you to see in real-time the true dimension of your investments and the value and impact they create. From investment decision processes, to managing due diligence, supporting portfolio companies, data sharing and transparency – Edda streamlines the investment journey and fund operation management in an easy-to-use platform. Head to ⁠edda.co⁠ and use the code VPEDDA for a demo.

Jakob Sons is the co-founder of Cansativa.

Cansativa is building the largest cannabis platform in Europe and are offering the most desirable products and brands. Yummi!

In 2022 they’ve raised a 15m dollar round from Snoopp Dogg's, Casa Verde VC firm and currently they have a 20m euro run rate. Well done guys!

During this episode we discuss Jakobs transition from being a lawyer to founding a medical marijuana startup, his mindset of permanent improvement and the importance of deepwork and focus.

Enjoy!

Brought by - Edda, the most collaborative tool for VCs and Private Equity investors that allows you to see in real-time the true dimension of your investments and the value and impact they create. From investment decision processes, to managing due diligence, supporting portfolio companies, data sharing and transparency – Edda streamlines the investment journey and fund operation management in an easy-to-use platform. Head to edda.co and use the code VPEDDA for a demo.

Our guest today is Andreas Helbig - Partner at Atomico.

Atomico is the venture capital firm founded by the Niklas Zennstrom, one of the founders of Skype, and investing in disruptive technology companies from Series A onwards.

They have an exceptional track record having previously invested in Supercell, Wolt, Sorare and Lilium just to name a few.

During this episode we discuss about his journey as an investor from junior analyst at Project A to Partner at Atomico, what criteria they look for when investing and the exciting future of tech in Europe.

Please enjoy this this wonderful conversation with Andreas Helbig, partner at Atomico.

Brought by - Edda, the most collaborative tool for VCs and Private Equity investors that allows you to see in real-time the true dimension of your investments and the value and impact they create. From investment decision processes, to managing due diligence, supporting portfolio companies, data sharing and transparency – Edda streamlines the investment journey and fund operation management in an easy-to-use platform. Head to edda.co and use the code VPEDDA for a demo.

Our guest today is Kajetan von Armansperg, Co-CEO of Leapsome.

Leapsome is an all-in-one platform for people enablement. They combine the tools for goals and OKRs management, performance reviews and 360s, and compensation and surveys among other features. More than 1500 companies including Spotify, Northvolt and Unity use Leapsome platform to build high-performing teams.

After bootstrapping for 5 years, in 2022 they’ve raised a 60M dollar round from Insight Partners, Creandum and Visionaries Club.

During this episode we discuss about the importance of staying frugal, their bootstrapping journey from 0 to 10M ARR and the decision process of skipping seed and later opening an office in NY.

Many thanks to Sebastian Pollok for the intro.

Sponsored by - Edda, the most collaborative tool for VCs and Private Equity investors that allows you to see in real-time the true dimension of your investments and the value and impact they create. From investment decision processes, to managing due diligence, supporting portfolio companies, data sharing and transparency – Edda streamlines the investment journey and fund operation management in an easy-to-use platform. Head to edda.co and use the code VPEDDA for a demo.

Nathan Benaich is a General Partner at Air Street capital a investment firm investing in AI startups. When asking around in the European ecosystem his name came across several times as a thought leader in the AI space. I highly recommend you read the State of AI report which he co-authors. It’s an in depth report of about 100 pages long across Research, Industry, Politics and Safety.

Prior to founding Air Street Capital he was a scientist in residence at the investment firm PointNine for about 6 years.

During this episode we discuss his motivation and insight to start Air Street Capital in 2019 and how there were few to none VCs focusing exclusively on AI first startups, we talk about the power of AI models to make predictions across data sets and the increasing gap between academia and industry labs. We also discuss why AI should be on top of the political agenda and what does an AI first startup look like.

Enjoy!

FYI: We are launching a private network and peer-support group for CEOs working in the AI space in Europe. We already signed up some well-known tech CEOs from the ecosystem. The first gathering starts in September. If interested, sign up ⁠here⁠.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro to Nathan

(02:30) The key developments in AI in the last 12 months and the speed of development

(05:45) The maturation cycle of advanced technology and crossing the chasm from labs to consumers

(08:20) The only constraint to build software will be your creativity and not your capability to engineer

(09:00) The background and founding story of Air Street Capital

(13:45) How Transformer models work and their capability to learn and make predictions across domains

(17:30) Can we replicate a human mind?

(20:00) The gap between academia and industry labs and the interest by nation states to own the technology

(25:00) What does an AI first startup look like and tying your predictions to ROI

(28:00) What does a successful AI startup-team look like

(31:15) The moment of pleasure as an investor

(33:00) What was the driver for his success

(34:00) Advice to his younger self

Brought to you by:

Rows -  the spreadsheet where data comes to life. Connected with your business data and delightful to share, Rows is how teams work with numbers and share their results. 

Alex MacCaw is the founder and CEO of Reflect app. The note-taking tool that allows you to take notes the same way you think — by associating notes through backlinks.

Prior to Reflect he built and ran Clearbit a venture-backed 50M Eur annual recurring revenue B2B saas company.

During this episode we discuss about his journey with Clearbit from hacking the first sales to using the SaaS sales playbook, the differences between building a B2B and a B2C company, and the power of a committed community.

He is currently sailing around the world and this interview was made while he was docking in Grenada.

Please enjoy this excellent conversation with Alex MacCaw founder and CEO of Reflect app.

As mentioned during the episode we are launching a private network and peer support group for tech CEOs. We already signed up some well-known tech CEOs from the ecosystem. The first gathering starts in June. If interested, sign up here.

Brought to you by:

Rows -  the spreadsheet where data comes to life. Connected with your business data and delightful to share, Rows is how teams work with numbers and share their results. 

Athletic Greens - all-in-one nutritional insurance, AG1 covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.

David is the founder and CEO of The Production Board, a holding company that builds and invests in businesses that solve the most fundamental problems that affect our planet, by reimagining global systems of production; across food, agriculture, biomanufacturing, human health, and the broader life sciences.

Prior to The Production Board, he was the founder and CEO of The Climate Corporation which he sold for $1.1B dollars to Monsanto. Spanning his career, he has contributed to 32 patents.

On the fun side he is also the co-host of the All-in pod, the super popular podcast co-hosted together with David Sacks, Chamath Palihapatia, and Jason Calacanis where they talk all things science, markets, venture capital, and politics. Which I highly recommend you listen to.

During this episode, we discuss the founding story of The Climate Corporation and the exit to Monsanto, why as an entrepreneur you should always be biased towards action, and his deep optimism and his mission of reimagining earth.

Thanks a million to Jan Hammer from Index Ventures and Siraj Khaliq from Atomico for the input to this episode, very very much appreciated!

Please enjoy this geeky conversation with the Sultan of Science, David Albert Friedberg.

As mentioned during the episode we are launching a private network and peer support group for tech CEOs. We already signed up some well-known tech CEOs from the ecosystem. The first gathering starts in June. If interested, sign up here.

Brought to you by:

Rows -  the spreadsheet where data comes to life. Connected with your business data and delightful to share, Rows is how teams work with numbers and share their results. 

Athletic Greens - all-in-one nutritional insurance, AG1 covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.

Lina Chong is a Partner at Target Global.

Target Global is one of the leading European venture capital investors with more than 3bn EUR in AuM and offices across Berlin, London, Tel Aviv and Barcelona.

They have backed more than 15 unicorns including household names such as Delivery Hero, Revolut, Wefox, Flink, TravelPerk and many others.

Lina was named Partner at Target earlier this year after working her way up from Associate. An American transplant in Berlin, she leads Target's German operations and co-leads the fund's early stage strategy. She is also a two-time founder herself, having started two companies one in Southeast Asia, and the other based in Germany/US. One was later sold to Living Social.

During this episode we discuss her move to Germany from the US, how they asses investment opportunities at Target global and the importance to surrounding yourself with people that you admire.

Brought to you by:

Rows -  the spreadsheet where data comes to life. Connected with your business data and delightful to share, Rows is how teams work with numbers and share their results. 

Athletic Greens - all-in-one nutritional insurance, AG1 covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.

Koen Thijssen, founder and CEO of Insify. At Insify they modernize the insurance market for Europe’s small and medium companies.

Prior to founding Insify, Koen was the founder and CFO of Bloomon, a subscription based flower business disrupting the $60B flower industry, in 2021 Bloomon was acquired by Bloom & Wild.

12 months ago they’ve raised with Insify $17m round led by Accel with participation from Visionaries and Frontline to expand into more markets.

During this episode we discuss about the Rocket Internet Mafia and why there are so many great entrepreneurs coming out it, Formula 1 of entrepreneurship is the way he described it, how he stumbled upon a huge market while insuring goods and people at Bloomon and his new set of criteria when starting a new business.

A million thanks to Luca Bocchio from Accel and Robert Lacher from Visionaries for the input to this episode! Much appreciated!

Brough to you by:

Rows -  the spreadsheet where data comes to life. Connected with your business data and delightful to share, Rows is how teams work with numbers and share their results. 

Athletic Greens - all-in-one nutritional insurance, AG1 covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.

Stef van Grieken is the co-founder and CEO of the biotech company Cradle.

Based between Delft and Zurich, Cradle’s machine learning platform helps scientists to design and program ‘cell factories’ faster and more successfully, speeding up the development of a more environmentally friendly method of producing almost anything.

They have recently raised a 6 million dollar seed round co-led by Index Ventures and Kindred Capital.

Prior to Cradle, Stef spent 7 years with Google as a Senior product manager for Google AI known as Google Brain and Google X known for its moonshots projects.

During this episode we discuss about the founding story of Cradle, how you can program cells to produce milk, plastic and petrol-free chemicals among other things, and why Europeans should change from being definite pessimists to definite optimists and be more entrepreneurial.

Stef is one of those rare breeds of entrepreneurs with a high amount of raw intelligence paired with kindness.

Thanks so much for the input on this episode to Leila from Kindred and Sofia from Index! Thanks a million!

Enjoy!

Brough to you by:

Rows -  the spreadsheet where data comes to life. Connected with your business data and delightful to share, rows is how teams work with numbers and share their results. 

Athletic Greens - all-in-one nutritional insurance, AG covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.

Our guest today is Eric Lagier - founding Partner at byFounders.

byFounders is an early-stage venture fund backed by a collective of some of the most accomplished founders from the Nordics.

After eight years in Silicon Valley, where he built an extensive network of investors and founders, Eric returned to Copenhagen to found byFounders and support the next generation of globally ambitious founders building a better tomorrow.

‍Eric has more than 20 years of operational experience in Silicon Valley and in Europe, was part of the early team at Skype and Tradeshift and he founded Memolane, which was acquired by HP.

During this episode we discuss the journey to Silicon Valley with his startup Memolane, The importance of showing the ugly slide in a pitch deck and we talk about his tattoo, Muditā, meaning the pleasure that comes when seeing other people succeed.

Please enjoy this wonderful conversation with Eric Lagier - founding Partner of ByFounders.

This episode is brought to you by Affinity - a relationship intelligence platform that empowers teams to find, manage and close high-quality deals. Find out why firms like Octopus Ventures, Dawn, and Firstminute Capital choose Affinity by heading to Affinity. Networks are everything: don’t forget to mention you're a friend of Venture Europe when you chat with the team.

Our guest today is Filip Dames - Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures.

Cherry Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm led by a team of entrepreneurs with experience in building fast-scaling companies such as Zalando and Spotify. The firm backs Europe's boldest founders, usually as their first institutional investor.

They have a great track record having previously invested in the seed stage of over 90 companies across Europe, including FlixBus, Auto1 Group, Infarm, Forto, SellerX, Juni, and Flink just to name a few. They are based in Berlin with offies in Stockholm and London.

Before Cherry, Filip started his first startup company in 2008, a digital marketplace for art and collectibles (long before there were NFTs). He then joined Zalando (ZAL:GR) as member of the founding team and grew the business up to IPO.

During this episode we discuss about his journey with Zalando, the founding story of Cherry Ventures and why making the first million is the hardest.

Please enjoy this excellent conversation with Filip Dames, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures.

This episode is brought to you by Affinity - a relationship intelligence platform that empowers teams to find, manage, and close high-quality deals. Find out why firms like Octopus Ventures, Dawn, and Firstminute Capital choose Affinity by heading to Affinity. Networks are everything: don’t forget to mention you're a friend of Venture Europe when you chat with the team.

Our guest today is Sabina Wizander - Partner at Creandum.

Creandum is a venture capital advisory firm with offices in Stockholm, San Francisco, London, and Berlin funding early stage entrepreneurs from a 450m euro fund.

They have an exceptional track record having previously invested in Spotify, Klarna, Trade Republic, Kahoot! and Bolt just to name a few.

Part of her tenure as an investor at Creandum, Sabina joined the healthcare startup KRY. After they invested in their seed round she joined the team and was part of the journey from 20 to 1000 employees and from 0 to 150m Eur yearly revenue. In 2016 she rejoined the investment firm as a partner.

During this episode we discuss about her journey with Kry and how that changed her investor mentality to have more empathy towards the entrepreneurs, we discuss about the struggle of finding a balance when having a family but also a job that you love, and why she is excited about the energy industry.

Please enjoy this wonderful, heartfelt, honest conversation with Sabina Wizander - Partner at Creandum.

This episode is brought to you by Affinity - a relationship intelligence platform that empowers teams to find, manage, and close high-quality deals. Find out why firms like Octopus Ventures, Dawn, and Firstminute Capital choose Affinity by heading to Affinity. Networks are everything: don’t forget to mention you're a friend of Venture Europe when you chat with the team.

Julian Kley Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of AVI Medical.

Avi Medical is a Munich-based health tech company that runs patient-centric, tech-enabled medical practices that provide a convenient, personalized, and holistic digital and physical patient experience.

They recently raised a 50m Euros Series B, round led by Balderton with participation from Eurazeo, Heal Capital, and the UiPath founder and CEO Daniel Dines among others.

During this episode, we discuss about his career path from pursuing medicine to becoming an entrepreneur, how to learn to trust your gut instinct, and the future of healthcare.

Please enjoy this honest and wonderful conversation with Julian Kley, co-founder and COO of AVI Medical.

This episode is brought to you by Affinity - a relationship intelligence platform that empowers teams to find, manage, and close high-quality deals. Find out why firms like Octopus Ventures, Dawn, and Firstminute Capital choose Affinity by heading to Affinity. Networks are everything: don’t forget to mention you're a friend of Venture Europe when you chat with the team.

Our guest today will try to answer some of these questions so please welcome Alfonso Peccatiello Founder & CEO of The Macro Compass.

The Macro Compass is an investment strategy firm whose mission is to democratize professional macro analysis, by giving access to tools and portfolio strategies.

Before launching The Macro Compass, Alfonso was the Head of Investments for a $20 billion portfolio for ING Germany.

During this episode, we discuss the current macro environment and how got here, what should be the strategies for consumers and investors to protect themselves during this period, and some economic predictions for 2023.

Without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Alfonso Peccatiello, founder and CEO of the Macro Compass

This episode is brought to you by Affinity - a relationship intelligence platform that empowers teams to find, manage, and close high-quality deals. Find out why firms like Octopus Ventures, Dawn, and Firstminute Capital choose Affinity by heading to Affinity. Networks are everything: don’t forget to mention you're a friend of Venture Europe when you chat with the team.

Please meet Francesco Simoneschi - Co-Founder and CEO of TrueLayer.

In a couple of short years Francesco and his co-Founder Luca, have built TrueLayer into one of the world's leading providers of financial APIs.

Their mission is to grow the Open Banking economy by creating a truly global platform for companies to develop new financial services and products.

In September 2021 they’ve raised a 130m dollar round led by Tiger Global and Stripe pushing the company to unicorn status. Previous investors count the likes of Northzone, Temasek, and Anthemis.

During this episode, we discuss the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, open banking, and the challenge of managing a high-growth company that raised over $100m at the top of the market.

A million thanks to Tony Jamous the founder and CEO of Oyster invested one of the first tickets in the company in 2017. 

Enjoy!

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Our guest today is Joel Nordström, co-founder and CEO of Atlar. At Atlar, they automate and streamline bank payments for companies.

Prior to founding Atlar, Joel was employee #12 at Tink – the open banking pioneer acquired by Visa for $2.2 billion – where he also met his cofounders.

They recently raised €5M Euros round led by Index Ventures and joined by La Famiglia, Cocoa, and some prominent angels like Revolut CFO Mikko Salovaara, former Executive Vice President of global sales at Adyen, Thijn Lamers, and N26 CFO Jan Kemper.

During this episode we discuss how Joel hustled to get the job at Tink, how they ideated and tested ideas until reaching and settling for Atlar, and their product strategy for global domination.

Enjoy!

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DHH is the Creator of Ruby on Rails the popular web development framework used by companies like Twitter, Github, Shopify, AirBnb, Square, Twitch and Zendesk to name a few.

He is also a co-owner and the CTO of 37signals the company responsible for developing Basecamp and Hey email service.

David has many talents, besides being a top programmer, he is a bestselling author and a Le Mans class-winning racing driver.

During this episode, we discuss his anti-VC philosophy, why Ruby on Rails became so popular, and his learnings from building a bootstrapped company and working remotely for the last 20 years.

Kerry Murphy is the founder and CEO of The Fabricant.

The Fabricant is a digital fashion house that operates at the intersection of technology and fashion. They use technology to create seductive fashion narratives unconstrained by the boundaries of the physical realm.

They recently raised a 14 million dollar Series A round led by Greenfield One with participation from Ashton Kutcher and other strategic angels.

During this episode, we discuss the importance of fashion in our identity, the components of a story, and the vision of The Fabricant in the future of the Metaverse.

Sebastian Pollok is a founding Partner of Visionaries Club.

Visionaries Club is a Berlin-based early stage VC fund, backed by leading European digital founders and family business entrepreneurs.

They recently raised 400 million Euros of fresh capital across 3 funds. A seed fund, a growth fund, and a science-driven focused fund.

They have an excellent track record, having previously invested in Personio, Miro, Choco, Xentral, TrueLayer, Pigment, just to name a few, and they invested alongside top-tier VCs such as Sequoia, Accel, Index, Lightspeed and Bessemer.

Previously, Sebastian was the co-founder and co-CEO of AMORELIE, which he exited to ProSiebenSat.1 Media in 2018.

During this episode, we discuss why Europe has to wake up to compete in the global arena, how he asses founders, and why it’s all about the people.

Please enjoy this excellent conversation with Sebastian Pollok founding Partner at Visionaries Club.

Julien Codorniu is a partner and investor at Felix Capital, the 600m Euro fund investing in brands and related enabling technologies. 

At Felix he focuses on SaaS (Worktech in particular) and gaming investments.

Before joining Felix, Julien spent 11 years at Facebook, where he led the global platform partnerships team, helping Facebook partners build, grow and monetize their mobile apps and games. Also he has been serving as Vice President of Facebook Workplace. Under his leadership, Workplace went from 0 to 10 million paid subscribers at companies like Walmart, Nestlé, McDonald's, Chevron, Astrazeneca, Spotify and many others.

His angel portfolio include fantastic companies like TripleDot Studios, BeReal, Linktree, Bloom & Wild, Pigment, Xentral, and Bits, among others.

He grew up in France, and he loves croissants. Now he lives in London with his wife and their two boys.

During this episode, we discuss the crazy growth journey that he experienced with Facebook from 500m users to the IPO, how the best investments he made took 2 seconds to decide and why sometimes you should go slow and don’t break things.

Michel Traore - the co-founder and CEO of anotherblock, a Web3 platform democratizing music ownership through NFTs.

Anotherblock connects music rights to NFTs, and creates a smooth and easy way to both buy and sell music rights. With his cofounders, Michel plans to introduce music to a free and open market, increasing its value and solving the imbalance of power within the industry.

Before Anotherblock he spent several years at Schibsted, and in the European startup scene, building fintech products from scratch. Growing up between the pop-wonder of Sweden and Burkina Faso, where his father created its first modern label - Music has been a big part of his life. In 2021, Michel combined his fintech expertise and love of music to found Anotherblock.

During this episode, we discuss web3, NFTs, how they are fractionalizing music, and how the holders will earn royalties. Also, we discuss their latest drop coming October 20 for the song - Alone part II by Alan Walker and Eva Max - a song that has 400m streams only on Spotify today.

Without further ado, please enjoy this wonderful conversation with Michel Traore, co-founder and CEO of Anotherblock.

My guest today is Timmu Tõke - the founder and CEO of Ready Player Me.

Ready Player Me is a cross-game avatar platform for the metaverse and more than 4,000 companies use their avatars in their products.

They recently announced their series B of 56 million dollars led by a16z with participation from some iconic names like Roblox co-founder David Baszucki, King Games co-founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi, and Twitch cofounder - Justin Kan among many others.

Before building Ready Player Me the young team spent many years building avatar tech for enterprise customers like Tencent, HTC, Vodafone, Wargaming, H&M, and Huawei.

During this episode, we discuss about grit and persistence, why you should Play to win, and the importance of knowing your strengths.

Please enjoy this excellent conversation with Timmu Tõke - co-founder and CEO of Ready Player Me.

Anthony Danon is a co-founder and general partner at Cocoa, the angel fund 100% backed by founders. Anthony has spent the last 7+ years as an early-stage VC focused on investing in what he calls "fintech is everything".

He started his career as an operator in fintech, building credit risk models for an invoice financing company.

As an investor, Anthony has been lucky to partner with companies such as TrueLayer, Primer, Wayflyer, and Ramp Network, to name a few.

Prior to Cocoa he was a Partner at Speedinvest leading their Seed fintech strategy across Europe and an investor at Anthemis Group before that.

All that, after a failed career as a graffiti artist and an attempt at becoming a professional soccer player.

During this episode, we discuss how Anthony become a partner in a relatively short time, the key elements that make a good investor, and the positioning and mission of Cocoa.

Nina works with transformational companies like ServiceTitan, Shopmonkey, Gong, and DeepScribe.

During this episode we discuss about vertical Saas, VC career advice and how to separate a great a pitch from a great founder.

Please enjoy this excellent conversion with Nina Achadjian Partner at Index.

My guest today is Ulric Musset the founder of Vauban.

Vauban is a venture capital platform that makes it easy for investors & VCs to launch their funds, SPVs and syndicates. Over $1bn has been invested via Vauban's platform since its launch. Ulric is an angel investor as well as an entrepreneur with a keen passion for supporting the venture capital ecosystem.

During this episode, we discuss what led Ulric to become an entrepreneur, the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, and Vauban's mission.

Let's go and talk with Ulric.

Her investments for Index include Remote, a platform to enable distributed working; Multiverse, the company bringing apprenticeships into the digital age; Fonoa, the automated tax platform; and Beauty Pie, the online cosmetics and beauty subscription service.

During this episode, we discuss her first day at Index, how she assesses founders for grit and perseverance, and the future of work.

Please enjoy this excellent conversion with Hannah Seal Partner at Index.

They recently closed a 165M Euro seed round of Equity and Debt capital - round led by LocalGlobe with participation from Creandum and some prominent angels including Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen, Zettle by PayPal founder Jacob de Geer, Embark Studios founder Patrick Söderlund, King founder Sebastian Knutsson, and EQT Ventures founding partner Hjalmar Winbladh

Prior to ArK, Henrik was a partner at EQT Ventures - the Swedish venture capital fund that announced its first 566m Euro fund in 2016. At EQT Ventures Henrik was also leading EQT’s Motherbrain division. Motherbrain is the data platform that supports EQT to be truly data-driven in finding and assessing the best tech start-ups to invest in.

Before EQT, Henrik worked as the VP of analytics at Spotify during 2010-2016 when Spotify was one of the highest-growing scale-up in Europe. He is the mastermind behind Spotify’s award-winning Analytics team building it from the ground up and contributing to many major strategic initiatives to build the world’s largest music subscription business.

In the words of Ted Persson from EQT - Henrik has made “analytics” his trademarks, from Spotify to EQT Ventures and now ArK.

During this episode we discussed about data-driven decision making and the DIBBs framework, how to build a data-driven culture and why Henrik is called the 9-minutes man.

Without further ado, please enjoy this excellent conversion with Henrik Landgren co-founder and CPTO of Ark Kapital!