EUVC

Today is a special one as we have three guests with us, Joe Schorge and Chloe Dagnell from Isomer Capital (Europe’s hands-down best Fund of Fund — full disclaimer, we’re VP at Isomer! lol) and Benjamin Notlev, COO and CIO at TechBBQ, the leading tech conference in the Nordics - and also (announcement alert!), EUVC’s Country Ambassador in Denmark 🚀.As anyone would expect, EUVC is a community play and part of that is being super close with the best people in each ecosystem and Benjamin is one of the best around in Denmark, so we were super excited to have Benjamin invest with us and get closer with him (as well as the TechBBQ gang) as we of course share the same passion for connecting the industry.

Today we have Chris Smith with us, a repeat offender here at the EUVC podcast. If you’re a loyal long time listener you may recall Chris from our episode #14. Chris is a Managing Partner at Playfair, a generalist VC 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 resource to help companies post-investment. Playfair is investing out of their $70m Fund 3 and has an established portfolio of **100+ companies across two funds including AeroCloud, Thought Machine, Andela, Mapillary, Recycleye and Orca AI.At Playfair, Chris is focused on pre-seed opportunities in the UK, Europe and Israel. He loves finding companies operating in overlooked sectors that are ripe for disruption and is particularly interested in autonomous transportation, business and industrial automation (especially through AI, ML and computer vision), HealthTech (except diagnostics and therapeutics) and B2B SaaS.

Today, we're happy to welcome David Nothacker, angel investor, CEO & co-founder of Sennder, a digital truck freight forwarding business. Together with his co-founders, David has built up a team of over 1,000 employees across eleven offices in Europe. In the process, they have been supported by strong investors such as Scania, Accel and Project A, and have secured over €300 million in funding. They are quite active angels, particularly in the German ecosystem.In this episode you will learn:Why David considers his investments into Gorillas and Cargo 1 his most memorable angel dealsDavid’s learnings from managing startup boardsWhy David has two different, yet synergistic, investment strategies: investing early in logistics & supply chain startups and co-investing with VCs in opportunistic dealsHow LP investing can complement your angel activities when starting to do more international investmentsHow angel investing makes you a better, more experienced business leader

Emma Steele, Partner at Ascension VC, discusses the journey towards impact investing, the downsides of venture capital, relationship management, the importance of supportive LPs, unpacking gut feelings in decision making, and top tips for emerging VCs.

Today we are happy to welcome Ameer Awadiyeh, VP of Investments at AlphaQ Venture Capital, a founder-led VC Fund of Funds. Prior to joining AQVC, Ameer was part of the investment team at Israel-based Vintage Investment Partners, where he developed deep expertise within the global VC fund ecosystem through sourcing, conducting in-depth due diligence, and modeling primary and secondary VC investment opportunities in both established and emerging managers, overseeing the fund of funds pipeline and budget allocation, and establishing a broad network of VCs and VC allocators across the U.S., Europe and Israel.Alph Q has 9 funds and counting, Whitestart Capital, Scale Venture Partners, Abstract Ventures, Nucleus Capital, Signature Ventures, Pale Blue Dot, Maple Capital, Symbol Ventures. AlphaQ is becoming the European gateway to a diversified venture capital fund portfolio via one single stock.

Today we are happy to welcome Simone Brummelhuis, Founding Partner & Fund Director of Borski Fund, a VC fund investing in technology leaders and diversity. Simone is Supervisory Board Member of Royal Schiphol group, Rabo Amsterdam and Media Huis Nederland. She previously founded The Next Women, providing access to capital, programs, resources and networks for female entrepreneur and is Founding Investor and Director of The Next Women Crowd Fund.

The U.S. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), which regulates the country's financial markets, just changed the game for private equity, hedge fund, private credit, and venture capital funds registered in the U.S.Yesterday, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler (above) announced the commission Enhances the Regulation of Private Fund Advisers, a set of rules originally proposed in February 2022. And Europe would never be “out-regulated”, so…Dive in to learn what the meaning and implications of this is!

Today, we're happy to welcome you to Manolis Manassakis, CEO of Qogita, a leading global wholesale supplier revolutionizing the market through technology. He was formerly the Director of Operations for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Uber. Earlier in his career, he worked at Google as an Industry Manager, helping European businesses boost their online sales and make the most out of the web.Parallel to his work, Manolis co-founded Lawspot, providing openness and transparency to the law, to all citizens. Lawspot is now Greece's no1 open online hub for all things legal, trusted by 1M monthly users. Through Cloud Nine Ventures, Manolis is also an active angel investor, passionate about the European tech ecosystem, and loves helping startups and mentoring founders on operations, scaling and international expansion.

Today we have Omar Hassan with us. Omar is a General Partner at MENA Tech Fund (MTF), a $25m, Pre-seed/Seed stage venture fund in Dubai to back Middle Eastern & North African AgriTech, FinTech & B2B SAAS businesses in Egypt, Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia or UK tech with market fit into the MENA region.MTF are investing out of Fund One with a total 25 AUM and an established portfolio of 9 companies including Soos Lenkie Wuilt Selectika. At MTF, Omar focuses on SAAS and AgriTech in MENA and have led the investments into Wuilt, SwftBox, Selectika, Lenkie.As warm-up for eu.vc delegation going to Dubai for the Expand North Star Conference, we sat down with Omar for a dedicated episode on raising capital in the region.

Today we're happy to welcome Anna Brandt and Noor van Boven, two amazing angel investors, co-founders of Invested. They accelerate growth through consulting and investing, being focused on the Future of Work, specifically when Fintech meets HR Tech.In this episode you’ll learn:- How to think about joining forces as angels, what it takes and the superpowers it can give you- Why Anna & Noor pick their investments based on the problem the startups target, the disruption they can bring about and the connection, belief and match they have with the founding team- How Anna & Noor think about scaling their investment activity and what it takes from them as a team and individuals- Reflections on having invested through the boom and the bust cycle- How the team think about working with the European Venture ecosystem and to optimize their role in it