EUVC E541 | Ties Boukema, Dawn Capital: Building Rolodex: Why Venture Needs Its Own Tech Stack
Welcome to a new episode of the EUVC Podcast, where we bring you the people and perspectives shaping European venture.
Today, we’re joined by Ties Boukema, Head of Data, Tech & AI at Dawn Capital, one of Europe’s leading B2B SaaS and Fintech investors. With a background spanning law, statistics, Google Health, and five brain surgeries, Ties brings a rare mix of grit, optimism, and technical firepower to Venture and he’s putting it to use by building Rolodex, an internal AI-powered operating system for Dawn.
This is not an AI trends episode. This is an inside look at what it takes to build and deploy technology within a venture firm—and why the industry has been lagging behind.
🎯 This Episode’s Themes:
How a near-death experience shaped Ties’ perspective—and his edge
Why most software in VC is “surprisingly bad” and what to do about it
How Dawn is building Rolodex: AI-powered prep, network graphs, and event intelligence
The myth of “no data in early-stage” and why private markets still need software
What Gawande’s checklist manifesto can teach European venture
Here’s what’s covered:
02:00 | Meet Ties: From New York brain surgery to Google to Dawn
04:00 | Life Before Surgery: Growing up with 200+ hospital stays
09:30 | A Second Life: What changed post-op—and how it shaped his drive
11:00 | From Sales to AI: Ties' journey at Google and pivot into health
12:45 | Why Venture: “These people are smart… but why are they fixing slides at 2 AM?”
14:00 | Perspective as Edge: Handling pressure, breaking rules, and ignoring experts
17:30 | AI vs Experts: The false trust in tradition—and how AI challenges it
20:00 | The Speed Mismatch: We can produce info 100x faster than we can understand it
24:00 | Building Tech for Venture: The reality, the resistance, the rewards
29:00 | Buy vs Build: Why VC firms should think like operators, not tinkerers
32:00 | Rolodex Origins: The deal Dawn lost—and what it taught them
36:00 | Entity Resolution Hell: Why syncing your contacts is harder than you think
40:00 | Rolodex in Action: Deal prep, relationship mapping, board meeting alerts
44:00 | Quantifying Network Power: How Dawn tracks angels & co-investors
46:00 | Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: Why Ties changed his mind on VC’s “human core”
50:00 | The Checklist Revelation: What brain surgeons taught him about process