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

Please meet Francesco Simoneschi - Co-Founder and CEO of TrueLayer. In a couple of short years Francesco and his co-Founder Luca, have built TrueLayer into one of the world's leading providers of financial APIs. Their mission is to grow the Open Banking economy by creating a truly global platform for companies to develop new financial services and products. In September 2021 they’ve raised a 130m dollar round led by Tiger Global and Stripe pushing the company to unicorn status. Previous investors count the likes of Northzone, Temasek, and Anthemis. During this episode, we discuss the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, open banking, and the challenge of managing a high-growth company that raised over $100m at the top of the market. A million thanks to Tony Jamous the founder and CEO of Oyster invested one of the first tickets in the company in 2017.  Enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Affinity - a relationship intelligence platform that empowers teams to find, manage, and close high-quality deals. Find out why firms like Octopus Ventures, Dawn, and Firstminute Capital choose Affinity by heading to Affinity. Networks are everything: don’t forget to mention you're a friend of Venture Europe when you chat with the team.

Happy New Year you lovely humans, I hope you had a relaxing holiday season together with your loved ones and you are ready to rock'n'roll 2023. Our guest today is Joel Nordström, co-founder and CEO of Atlar. At Atlar, they automate and streamline bank payments for companies. Prior to founding Atlar, Joel was employee #12 at Tink – the open banking pioneer acquired by Visa for $2.2 billion – where he also met his cofounders. They recently raised €5M Euros round led by Index Ventures and joined by La Famiglia, Cocoa, and some prominent angels like Revolut CFO Mikko Salovaara, former Executive Vice President of global sales at Adyen, Thijn Lamers, and N26 CFO Jan Kemper. During this episode we discuss how Joel hustled to get the job at Tink, how they ideated and tested ideas until reaching and settling for Atlar, and their product strategy for global domination. Enjoy! Sponsored by Affinity - the most powerful relationship intelligence platform enabling teams to leverage their network and close the next big deal. Used by Lightspeed, Dawn, and Firstminute Capital among others. Say you are a friend of the pod and get a discount ;)

DHH is the Creator of Ruby on Rails the popular web development framework used by companies like Twitter, Github, Shopify, AirBnb, Square, Twitch and Zendesk to name a few. He is also a co-owner and the CTO of 37signals the company responsible for developing Basecamp and Hey email service. David has many talents, besides being a top programmer, he is a bestselling author and a Le Mans class-winning racing driver. During this episode, we discuss his anti-VC philosophy, why Ruby on Rails became so popular, and his learnings from building a bootstrapped company and working remotely for the last 20 years.

Kerry Murphy is the founder and CEO of The Fabricant. The Fabricant is a digital fashion house that operates at the intersection of technology and fashion. They use technology to create seductive fashion narratives unconstrained by the boundaries of the physical realm. They recently raised a 14 million dollar Series A round led by Greenfield One with participation from Ashton Kutcher and other strategic angels. During this episode, we discuss the importance of fashion in our identity, the components of a story, and the vision of The Fabricant in the future of the Metaverse.

Sebastian Pollok is a founding Partner of Visionaries Club. Visionaries Club is a Berlin-based early stage VC fund, backed by leading European digital founders and family business entrepreneurs. They recently raised 400 million Euros of fresh capital across 3 funds. A seed fund, a growth fund, and a science-driven focused fund. They have an excellent track record, having previously invested in Personio, Miro, Choco, Xentral, TrueLayer, Pigment, just to name a few, and they invested alongside top-tier VCs such as Sequoia, Accel, Index, Lightspeed and Bessemer. Previously, Sebastian was the co-founder and co-CEO of AMORELIE, which he exited to ProSiebenSat.1 Media in 2018. During this episode, we discuss why Europe has to wake up to compete in the global arena, how he asses founders, and why it’s all about the people. Please enjoy this excellent conversation with Sebastian Pollok founding Partner at Visionaries Club.

Julien Codorniu is a partner and investor at Felix Capital, the 600m Euro fund investing in brands and related enabling technologies.  At Felix he focuses on SaaS (Worktech in particular) and gaming investments. Before joining Felix, Julien spent 11 years at Facebook, where he led the global platform partnerships team, helping Facebook partners build, grow and monetize their mobile apps and games. Also he has been serving as Vice President of Facebook Workplace. Under his leadership, Workplace went from 0 to 10 million paid subscribers at companies like Walmart, Nestlé, McDonald's, Chevron, Astrazeneca, Spotify and many others. His angel portfolio include fantastic companies like TripleDot Studios, BeReal, Linktree, Bloom & Wild, Pigment, Xentral, and Bits, among others. He grew up in France, and he loves croissants. Now he lives in London with his wife and their two boys. During this episode, we discuss the crazy growth journey that he experienced with Facebook from 500m users to the IPO, how the best investments he made took 2 seconds to decide and why sometimes you should go slow and don’t break things.

Michel Traore - the co-founder and CEO of anotherblock, a Web3 platform democratizing music ownership through NFTs. Anotherblock connects music rights to NFTs, and creates a smooth and easy way to both buy and sell music rights. With his cofounders, Michel plans to introduce music to a free and open market, increasing its value and solving the imbalance of power within the industry. Before Anotherblock he spent several years at Schibsted, and in the European startup scene, building fintech products from scratch. Growing up between the pop-wonder of Sweden and Burkina Faso, where his father created its first modern label - Music has been a big part of his life. In 2021, Michel combined his fintech expertise and love of music to found Anotherblock. During this episode, we discuss web3, NFTs, how they are fractionalizing music, and how the holders will earn royalties. Also, we discuss their latest drop coming October 20 for the song - Alone part II by Alan Walker and Eva Max - a song that has 400m streams only on Spotify today. Without further ado, please enjoy this wonderful conversation with Michel Traore, co-founder and CEO of Anotherblock.

My guest today is Timmu Tõke - the founder and CEO of Ready Player Me. Ready Player Me is a cross-game avatar platform for the metaverse and more than 4,000 companies use their avatars in their products. They recently announced their series B of 56 million dollars led by a16z with participation from some iconic names like Roblox co-founder David Baszucki, King Games co-founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi, and Twitch cofounder - Justin Kan among many others. Before building Ready Player Me the young team spent many years building avatar tech for enterprise customers like Tencent, HTC, Vodafone, Wargaming, H&M, and Huawei. During this episode, we discuss about grit and persistence, why you should Play to win, and the importance of knowing your strengths. Please enjoy this excellent conversation with Timmu Tõke - co-founder and CEO of Ready Player Me.

Daniel Bakh and Dorin Tarau are the founders of Fullview, a customer support suite that lets you instantly monitor, control, and analyze user sessions for faster real-time customer support. The guys founded Fullview in 2021 and in record time they’ve raised 10 million Euros in just 10 months from top investors like Cherry, Seedcamp, and later on from Lightspeed. During this episode we discuss about how to build momentum and create urgency when fundraising, how to hire player-coaches and how Anoushka from Lightspeed convinced the team to choose Lightspeed instead of another VC on a higher valuation. Big thank you to Max from Cherry and Anoushka from Lightspeed for the input in the preparation for this episode. Enjoy!

Xavier Collins is currently a Vice President of Turo, the American unicorn, facilitating car sharing. At Turo, he’s responsible for launching and building the UK business as well as leading their international expansion. Prior to Turo, he held roles at Deliveroo and Uber and most recently founded one of the UK’s largest angel investment syndicates. During this episode, we discuss why he left a secure career in law to join Uber, why you usually get what you measure and how he finally became a singer and a songwriter with an album published on Spotify. Enjoy!