Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

This week we discuss:01:18 Checkout.com faces exec team exodus and makes layoffs ‘by stealth’05:30 ‘Mini-revolt’ as TravelPerk U-turns on remote work08:26 Founders had to wait ‘far too long’ for EIC Fund cash, admits chair11:09 YC alum SolarMente raises for subscription solar panel service17:57 Coworking retreats and hiking holidays: Inside the biggest startup community you’ve never heard of

This week it’s another long form interview and we’re joined in the studio with Johannes Schildt from Stockholm-based digital healthcare provider Kry. After a tough 2022, the founder reflects on dealing with layoffs at the company, pausing operations in Germany and the challenges of working with disjointed healthcare systems. He also looks ahead to how exciting technologies like large language models (which power the likes of GPT-4) could supercharge healthcare in the future, and tells us what he’s like as a boss. 

This week we discuss:03:54: Starting to take off: German rocket maker Isar Aerospace raises $165m06:43: Europe’s spacetech report06:59: Climate tech Agreena raises €46m Series B to fight climate change with carbon sinks09:52 Channel 4-backed fintech shuts down, searches for buyer12:39: ‘We are super, super fucked’: Meet the man trying to stop an AI apocalypse19:11: Gloria Bäuerlein closes one of Europe’s first female solo GP funds

This week it's a longer form interview with Matt Clifford, founder of early stage investor and startup builder Entrepreneur First. He's also recently been appointed as an AI advisor to the UK government, so we brought him into the Sifted studio to ask him how the UK and Europe can have an AI strategy that moves the needle, as companies like Microsoft and Google increasingly dominate the space.

This week we're doing a special episode looking at the Silicon Valley Bank crash, why it happened, why the tech sector was so exposed and how the government stepped in to help save the UK subsidiary of the business.We’re joined by special guests Dom Hallas, from UK tech lobby group Coadec, and Benedikt von Thüngen, cofounder of diagnostics startup Sanome which had 85% of its cash in SVB.We also analyse what the UK budget means for startups, including big spending on quantum research and more support for AI innovation, plus cut to R&D tax credits.The articles we discuss this week:- UK Spring budget: R&D cuts but huge quantum spend- SVB UK: the latest on the startup bank’s collapse — and sale to HSBC- SVB UK still funding loans after HSBC buyout, say sources- SVB: Why did so many UK startups only have one bank account?- ‘It was terrifying’: 48 nightmare hours for European tech founders as SVB collapsed- VCs are ‘absolutely to blame’ for SVB chaos, says Seedcamp’s Reshma Sohoni- Opinion: UK government should not bailout SVB UK

This week we’ve got a special episode focusing on Swedish tech. Sifted has been visiting the Nordic Nation for our Stockholm Sessions event, where we caught up with founders working in everything from electric-powered boats to a plan to build a metaverse-powered aquarium at the bottom of a real-life fjord.We were also joined by Klarna’s Sebastian Siemiatkowski, who gave an interview on what the media gets wrong about his company, and why it’s sometimes ok to lose $100m a month.

This week we discuss:02:18 Revolut reports its first-ever year of profit05:29 Klarna posts $1bn annual loss, its largest ever09:55 Want to drive using mind control?13:14 GitLab and Remote backer Inkef loses its sole LP17:16 Wise and Monzo founders back legal generative AI startup’s $10.5m Series A23:16 I’m not a billionaire — will I ever go to space? 

This week it's a long form interview with founder-turned-investor Taavet Hinrikus. He's half a year into his journey as a VC and says that his new fund Plural is going to do things differently. He came into the Sifted studio to tell us about why investor committees are useless, how you can't build a business on a four-day week and the biggest lessons he learnt from building Wise.

This week we discuss:01:13 Lumai lands £1.1m grant to achieve ‘world’s fastest computation’ and power the AI revolution04:16 German edtech Knowunity, a TikTok for kk, raises €9m Series A extension07:15 New €3.75bn European Investment Fund pot to back late-stage VCs08:40 Which investor has backed the most European unicorns?10:25 Inside Daniel Ek's new boday scanning startup15:10 Heart Aerospace hopes to build a plane even Greta Thunberg would fly on18:52 Counteract closes £15m fund for carbon removal solutions

In this special episode of Startup Europe, Sifted’s central and eastern Europe correspondent Zosia Wanat looks under the surface of some of the continent’s most resilient startups.Based on extensive interviews with Ukrainian founders, the episode reveals how people working in the tech sector — which is so vital to the country’s economy — have battled to keep their businesses alive.The podcast tells the stories of Ukrainian entrepreneurs in their own words, from colleagues trapped in basements with Russian troops on the streets, to investors pulling funding and big business pivots to stay afloat.