E620 | EUVC Live powered by Woven Capital at The Drop | Daniel Wiegand, World Fund: Turning Crisis into Collaboration

Welcome back to EUVC Live in Malmö, where we bring you unfiltered conversations with the voices shaping Europe’s venture ecosystem.

In this session, Daniel Wiegand, Founding Partner at World Fund, takes the stage with a powerful message: Europe’s strength has always been its ability to turn crisis into collaboration — and it must do so again.

Daniel traces Europe’s journey from the coal and steel community of 1951 to today’s climate and geopolitical challenges. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to COVID and the war in Ukraine, he reminds us that Europe’s greatest leaps have always come from unity, resilience, and investment in shared progress.

Now, as Europe faces an era of “polycrisis” — encompassing war, climate change, supply chain fragility, and tech disruption — Daniel calls for a new act of radical innovation: rebuilding Europe’s industrial leadership through collaboration, deep technology, and climate investment.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:30 The Coal and Steel Treaty of 1951 — when Europe chose collaboration over conflict.

• 02:00 From war to unity — Daniel’s personal story of a continent rebuilt through cooperation.

• 03:00 The “Age of Polycrisis” — or, as Daniel reframes it, the age of opportunity for those who collaborate.

• 04:00 Europe’s new sovereignty — not armies and flags, but semiconductors, raw materials, data, and AI.

• 04:30 The hard numbers: 98% of rare earths and 97% of lithium imported; 80% of solar panels made in Asia.

• 05:30 Europe at risk of becoming a spectator in a game it helped invent — and why collaboration is the antidote.

• 06:00 Lessons from history — how Europe expanded prosperity after 1989 and launched the NextGenEU fund during COVID.

• 07:30 Real transformation: cutting Russian gas dependency from 40% to 11% in two years — with renewables as resilience.

• 08:30 The venture challenge — Europe raises 7x less VC than the US, and only 11% of climate startups reach Series B.

• 09:00 Hope in motion — from €300M climate funds to €1B+ deep tech and climate vehicles driving the next wave.

• 09:30 European champions

• 10:30 The next phase — Europe needs ambitious scale-up capital, public–private partnerships, and a shared mission.

• 11:00 The call to action — Europe’s story isn’t stagnation; it’s reinvention through unity and belief.