Ciaran O'Leary, BlueYard

Ciaran O'Leary is a co-founder and general partner at BlueYard, a thesis-driven early-stage venture capital firm based in Germany. In the past several years, BlueYard has backed companies like Protocol Labs (Filecoin) and Open Source Coin in the Blockchain space, Meatable and Bit Bio at the intersection of science and technology, Pitch and Vectary in open data, among other fascinating companies and theses. In this episode, we discuss the European tech and venture capital environment over the past decade, what led Ciaran to Earlybird and then BlueYard, raising two funds for BlueYard since, how their thesis and strategy has evolved in recent years, and what the future holds in store for BlueYard and European tech startups. We also touched on how Ciaran and team are navigating the current Covid-19 crisis. This was a fascinating discussion and hope you find it as interesting as we did.