Venture Europe: Entrepreneurship | Technology | Venture Capital | Eu/Acc

Bjarne Kveim Lie - Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Verdane. Verdane invests in technology companies with equity tickets between 8 and 150m Euro, they have Eur 5B of committed capital and over 140 investments since 2003. They have a flexible mandate and can make both minority and majority investments. In addition to making individual investments they also act as a solution provider for GPs that seek liquidity and have completed over 50 so called ‘secondary directs’ over the years. They have been named Best European PE Growth Fund all the years between 2019 and 2023 and Best European mid-market PE fund in 2022. During this episode we discuss about the status of the growth stage as an asset class, the learnings from investing for over 20 years and the fun parallel between investing with an asymmetric risk reward ratio and Dr Alban. It’s my life!

James Currier - Founding Partner at NfX. James is a five-time Founder, an angel investor in DoorDash, Lyft, and Patreon, and a Founding Partner at the venture capital firm, NfX. Before becoming an investor, James was the co-founder and CEO of Tickle, one of the internet’s first successful user-generated-content companies. Tickle grew to the 18th largest website in the world with over 150 million registered users — before they were acquired in 2004 by Monster for $110 million. It was during this time that James realized the power of network effects as the core growth driver of both B2B and B2C successes across every vertical. James then co-founded three other successful companies – Wonderhill (online video games, merged with Kabam in 2010 which then sold for $800M), IronPearl (growth analytics SaaS, acquired by PayPal in 2013), and Jiff (enterprise healthcare software, raised $68M from Venrock, GE, J&J, merged with Castlight in 2017 — NASDAQ: CSLT). As a lifelong learner and developer of talent, James loves sharing wisdom among Founders. He speaks regularly at numerous industry conferences and has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and Silicon Valley Business Journal. During this episode we discuss about the importance of the founding team and learning velocity, we discuss about network effects and the white-hot center and touch upon some books recommendations across entrepreneurships, finding one self and marriage and relationships. Enjoy!

Zeynep Yavuz - Partner at General Catalyst. General Catalyst, has $28bn assets under management and is one of the world’s best known VC firms. They backed some of greatest businesses that you probably are very familiar with including Airbnb, Stripe, Discord and Snap among many many others others. Prior to joining GC, Zeynep worked as an operator focused on strategy and product at World Remit and invested at growth stages at TA Associates. At GC she focuses on fintech and crypto. During this episode we discuss about her career trajectory from working in investment banking to private equity to operator and now GC. We also discuss how she asses founders at early stage and we touch on the opportunities that lie at the intersection of fintech and crypto. Enjoy!

Chris Smith - Managing Partner of Playfair. (brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Seedrs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) Playfair is a generalist fund with a contrarian approach to pre-seed technology investing. Based in London, Playfair invests across the UK and Europe with an intentionally high conviction, low volume approach: making 6-8 investments a year and preserving time, capital and resources to help companies post-investment. Playfair has backed more than 70 companies across two funds including Thought Machine, Andela, Mapillary, Recycleye and Orca AI among others. During this episode we discuss how they asses investment opportunities at such an early stage, the number one mistake founders do when fundraising and how they support their founders to raise a Series A. Enjoy!

Rex Woodbury - founder and Managing Partner of Daybreak, an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City. (brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Seedrs⁠⁠⁠⁠) Before founding Daybreak, Rex was a Partner at Index Ventures the premier venture capital firm that invested in Adyen, Revolut, Roblox, Discord, and Figma among others. Rex focuses on the application layer of technology, often investing in internet, software, and marketplace businesses with the potential for viral adoption. He also writes Digital Native, a publication about people and technology that reaches 50,000 weekly readers which i highly recommend. During this episode we discuss about the art of early stage investing, the pros and cons of social media and the power of technology to bring people together.

Kirsty Grant - Managing Director at Seedrs - Europe’s leading private investing platform. Under her leadership, Seedrs has become the most active investor in early stage private companies in the UK, funding over 2,000 deals and participating in rounds totalling over £2.6 billion to date. This year, she played an instrumental role in launching Seedrs' EU regulated entity. During this episode we discuss the past and future of crowdfunding, how companies like Revolut and investors like Seedcamp used Seedrs to raise funds and why we need more founders in Europe. Enjoy!

Mark Kugel - co-founder and co-CEO of Yuri. (brought to you by ⁠⁠Seedrs⁠⁠) At Yuri they are sending payloads to space to take advantage of micro-gravity so they can build higher quality molecules and other useful biotech assets. Did you know that it is easier to print a heart in space as it has no gravity? During this episode we discuss how the CDTM (Center for Digital Technology and Management) cohort from 2014 produced more than Eur 15B from 24 students, including Hanno of Personio and Thomas of Trade Republic among other, we discuss Germany’s PR problem and why it might be a better idea to invest in startups solving difficult problems than the next Saas for Saas for Saas! Enjoy!

Ciao ragazzi e ragazze, I am here with Francesco Sciortino - co-founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion (brought to you by ⁠Seedrs⁠) Originally from Italy, his passion for physics and plasma, took him across the world from Imperial College London for undergrad, to EPFL in Switzerland for his masters, before moving to MIT in Boston for his PhD. Beginning of 2023, Francesco raised a 7.5M Euro pre-seed round from Plural, UVC Partners and High-Tech Grunderfonds, and co-founded Proxima Fusion a Munich-based startup that aims to develop robust, high-performance, and steady-state fusion power plants. Proxima is the first-ever spin-out company from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. During this episode we discuss his journey into plasma and different machines used to perform research, the difference between a Tokamak and Stellarator and Europes potential to compete in the global fusion race. Enjoy!

Mikkel Skarnager - co-founder and CEO of the stealth startup Spektr. (brought to you by Brevo and Seedrs) Mikkel is a second-time founder, prior to Spektr he was the founder and CEO of HelloFlow, an innovative no-code, drag-and-drop builder for client onboarding, monitoring, and digital workflow solutions --> orchestration layer for business identity. In February 2022 only 2 years after founding the company they got an acquisition offer and sold to Trulioo for around ~50m Eur, a number I found online, that Mikkel cannot confirm nor deny, returning 5X to 50X times money back to his seed and angel investors in a very short time. During this episode we discuss Mikkel's learnings with HelloFlow and his advice for first-time entrepreneurs, the first purchase he made after the exit, and his new company. Thanks so much to his co-founder Ciprian and previous investor Tom from Seedcamp for the input to this episode. Enjoy!

Fredrik Cassel - General Partner at Creandum. Creandum is a venture capital advisory firm with offices in Stockholm, San Francisco, London, and Berlin funding early stage entrepreneurs from a 450m euro fund. Fredrik has an exceptional track record having previously invested in several multibillion euro companies like Spotify, Kahoot!, Depop and Kry just to name a few. He doesn’t like to take the credit and attributes his success to the Creandum team. One Creandum as he likes to call it. During this episode we discuss Creandum's culture, what he learned from Daniel Ek when investing in Spotify, and how to find user love. Brought to you by ⁠Zoom⁠ and ⁠Brevo⁠. If you like the show please check out the sponsors as they are the ones making it possible. Thank you! 🙏