Upside Upside #38 - Turkish Tech, Tough Love & Trends for '25
Apr 19, 2025
58:37
🎙 Upside: The Real Stories Behind European Venture
Hosts: Dan (SuperSeed), Lomax (Outsized), Andrew (7%),
Guest: Dilek Dayinlarli (Scalex Ventures)
⏪ In This Episode
This week on Upside, the gang is joined by the brilliant Dilek Dayinlarli, founder and managing partner at Scalex Ventures. Together, they unpack the latest headlines, industry trends, and ecosystem insights — with a deep dive into the fast-emerging Turkish tech scene.
🔥 What We Cover
⚡ Rapid-fire News Roundup
- Murati raises $2B at $10B valuation — with talent from OpenAI and the Albanian PM cheering her on
- Synthesia hits $100M ARR and partners with Adobe — a UK generative AI success story
- Controversy as EIF refuses to back weapons/defence startups, even as Europe ramps defence spending
- ASML's Q1: Strong results but order volumes down — signs of tariff jitters?
- Figma confidentially files for IPO, bucking the trend
- Hugging Face acquires a French humanoid robotics startup
- Dollar drops: good for European stocks, not so good for US VC-backed markups
- UK's bid for a piece of the $500B Stargate AI data centre project
- New Finnish startup hub Maria 01 scaling up to 70K sq ft — the Paris Station F playbook
📈 Reports & Market Trends
- Dealroom x HSBC Q1 Report: UK startups raised $4.2B in Q1 2024 - led by healthtech, with outsized deals like Isomorphic ($600M) and Vediva ($400M)
- Concerns over UK IPO pipeline - will LSE stage a comeback?
- The "founder flywheel" is spinning: UK seeing post-exit talent build new ventures
- Big players still dominate fundraising: EIF, British Business Bank, British Patient Capital lead LP activity
💬 Big Conversations
- Liquidity crisis in European VC: money going in, but exits not keeping pace
- Why mid-sized exits matter more than ever
- Capital efficiency in emerging markets vs. “go big or go home” mentality
- Can European VCs stomach the high-stakes bets their founders need?
- Secondary markets & the art of managing the “middle third” of your portfolio
🌍 Spotlight on Turkey Dilek brings us into the fast-growing Turkish tech ecosystem:
- From $10M invested in 2012 to $2.6B+ in 2023
- Gaming, fintech, defence tech, and B2B software leading the charge
- Massive spillover effects: Peak Games and Getir have spawned 100+ startups
- Entry valuations 60% lower than the US, and capital efficiency is key
- Series B gap remains a challenge — but momentum is building
- Turkey’s global diaspora plays a crucial role in scaling internationally
🏆 Deals of the Week
- Dilek: Incident.io raises $62M Series B — another evolution in incident management
- Lomax: Strava acquires Runna, a top 3 UK fitness app — a quick win, or premature exit?
🔗 Resources Mentioned