Podcast
Upside
Hosted by Dan Bowyer & Mads Jensen - SuperSeed · EN
This week's happenings in startup and investing land. Getting underneath VC, and discussing how to better support the European startup eco-system.
Every week we share what's been on our mind and get under the skin of VC, investing, startups and founder psychology.
From the team behind SuperSeed who invest in technical teams solving difficult business problems.
The network is run on LinkedIn so join me there - https://www.linkedin.com/in/danbowyer/
With full interview audio and video uploaded to all major outlets.
Love to hear from you - dan@superseed.com
40episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
100th Episode Special: What will our world look like in 2028?
1w ago01:05:41Tap to summarizeUpside #100 - Two Years, Two Wars, One Existential Crisis, Zero Trophies.Upside is a weekly podcast that looks behind headlines affecting European venture. Hosted by European emerging managers who all invest early into deep tech, space, physical AI, health, defence and resilience.[02:34] Football grief counselling. Lomax recounts dragging a foldable chair home through the streets in an England shirt "my low point of 2026." Denmark, meanwhile, won something in 1992, apparently.[04:20] News blast: EU Inc's five non-negotiables, Thinking Machines ships "Inkling" (toolkit: "Tinker," adorable), Uber eyes Delivery Hero, and Yan LeCun launches a fund then kills it roughly ten seconds later.[07:10] Markets wobble live on air. NASDAQ down, TSMC down, everyone blames memory and Iran.[08:09] Eli Lilly buys Atai Beckley for up to $3.8bn. Lomax explains DMT nasal spray with the confidence of a man who has opinions about ayahuasca ceremonies.[11:19] Earnings carnage. ASML and TSMC print growth "as far as the eye can see." IBM has its worst day since 1972 (-25%). Mads eulogises the mainframe; Andrew notes it at least doesn't hallucinate your bank balance.[17:43] Korea's memory supercycle; the KOSPI went from 2,500 to 9,000 to 7,000, which is fine and normal and not at all terrifying. Mads says the cycle will turn; the only question is when. [21:57] The main event: two years reviewed. Anthropic up 52x, SpaceX pulls off the biggest IPO in history, and Europe's share of global VC… halves from 16% to 8%. Cool cool cool. Mads insists Europe is thriving; Lomax insists Europe is missing the boat again; both are somehow right.[41:00] Predictions for 2028. Dan calls Bitcoin sub-$20k and declares Apple and Google will "win AI" then admits every prediction is just a personal grudge. Lomax: smart glasses become real and a quantum winter arrives. Andrew: tech is foreign policy, one big LLM ends up in trouble, and Europe manages eight orbital launches to America's ~180. Ouch.[57:12] SpaceX quietly stops taking rideshare bookings until 2028, casually orphaning every hardware startup on Earth. Lomax spots the European opportunity; Andrew reminds him we're "nowhere near" the industrial scale to seize it.[59:24] Deal of the Week: Valerian ($50m, the "anti-Palantir"), MicroAGI ($55m — largest seed in German history, and software-only), plus a repeat cheer for Atai Beckley.[1:02:20] Week ahead: the UK gets its seventh Prime Minister (lucky number seven!), Alphabet and SAP report, Farnborough flexes, and Lomax reveals he got a First in his Odyssey paper then threatens Christopher Nolan with notes.Thanks for a hundred episodes. Still not Joe Rogan. WiP.
Transcribe →China Blocks AI - Are UK Pensions Now In Venture!? - Is it 1999?
2w ago01:01:10Tap to summarizeLive from a Lisbon beach studio, Dan, Mads and Lomax dig behind the headlines shaping European venture. This week: China's AI power play, is UK pension money finally trickling into venture, and a full 10-vs-10 slugfest on whether we're partying like it's 1999.01:10 — Quick news roundup. Grok 4.5 with Cursor, all three flavours of GPT-5.6, Nvidia shedding $1tn (still up 1,500% since ChatGPT), and UK startups raising $17bn in H1 2026 across four mega-rounds.03:17 — Last week, settled. Tesla smashes deliveries at 480k on European demand; SpaceX's index entry proves a non-event; Samsung's 19x profit jump still can't lift the stock.06:13 — Burnham and the OBR. A sobering warning: £100bn a year in cuts or tax rises to stabilise debt, against a new PM promising to spend more.09:24 — GPT-5.6 gets the nod. OpenAI's public launch arrives only after government sign-off — a sign of the strange new times.10:41 — China's AI playbook. Distilling US models, then gating their own. The lads debate Europe's exposure and why Mads thinks Nvidia's Nemotron wins whatever happens next.21:10 — UK Pensions pile in. NEST's £200m venture sleeve via Schroders. Small beans, late-stage, top of the market — but is coercion or incentive the right unlock?32:00 — Is it 1999? Ten reasons yes (CAPE past 40, $800bn circular deals, burn rates) versus ten reasons no (real revenue, saner multiples, constrained demand). The core split: this time the tech actually works.46:13 — AI Corner. Fable 5 goes metered and chews credits alarmingly fast; Sonnet 5 mops up the low end; ID verification goes live.48:57 — Portugal special. The 1755 earthquake, Pombal's proto-prefab "birdcage" buildings, and why Lisbon punches above its weight on unicorns per capita.56:50 — Prediction. Europe's opening: win the real-world, industrial, regulated applications when the bubble deflates.58:15 — Deals of the week. Luffy AI (£8.1m), Proxima Fusion (€411m), QuantumDiamonds (€91m), plus Blue Origin's $130bn raise.1:00 — Week ahead. US CPI, ASML and TSMC earnings, and the VW restructuring showdown.New episode every week. Subscribe for the European venture view on global tech.#VentureCapital #AI #EuropeanTech #Startups
Transcribe →Burnham’s Britain - AI Creates A New World Order - How Trade Becomes War
3w ago01:06:07Tap to summarizeEvery week, Upside digs behind the headlines shaping European venture. This week Dan, Mads and Lomax get into Burnham's Britain and what a Manchester PM means for tech and capital; how AI is being pulled into a new world order as Washington moves from regulating the frontier to gating it, and possibly owning a slice of it; why June's "AI meltdown" was really a rotation, not a crash; trade turning into economic warfare across the US, EU and China; and the quiet return of the human, the rise of the forward-deployed engineer. Plus deals of the week and what to watch in the days ahead.Hosts: Dan (SuperSeed), Mads (SuperSeed) and Lomax (Outsized VC).CHAPTERS00:43 – Quick-fire news: fusion's "first", Musk's not-a-phone, Iran & Hormuz, Google's brain drain & Gemma 4 03:14 – It's Burnham's Britain: the Starmer scorecard & what a Manchester PM means for tech, tax and risk 19:31 – AI & the new world order: the Anthropic gate, model bans and Washington's 5% stake 33:51 – Markets: rotation, not meltdown and where the next bottleneck (energy) sits 41:41 – Trade as a weapon: 100% tariff threats, Volkswagen's cuts and the China pickle 53:21 – Send in the humans: the rise of the forward-deployed engineer 59:13 – Deals of the week: Quantum Systems & EquiLibre 1:04:14 – The week ahead: Tesla, SpaceX, Samsung, RAISE Summit, VW board, TSMC HIGHLIGHTS– Why the "seventh PM in ten years" problem is itself a drag on UK investment and the risk-free-society thesis behind flat growth since 2007. – Devolution vs. deployment: Burnham wants AI and capital pushed to the regions, but "sovereign British data centres" mean little without models of your own. – The US going from regulator, to gatekeeper, to prospective part-owner of the frontier and what that sovereign risk means for anyone building on top. – Multiple layers of the AI stack holding 80%+ margins at once, and why every memory super-cycle has ended in oversupply. – The forward-deployed engineer as history rhyming: IBM sent engineers in the '70s, and the pendulum's swinging back.DEALS OF THE WEEK– Quantum Systems (Munich) — $1.2bn Series D; Ukraine-proven autonomous drones, and a mooted Stark merger to build a European Anduril. – EquiLibre (Prague) — Creandum's largest-ever single bet; RL trading agents from the DeepStack poker team.MENTIONED THIS EPISODERealta Fusion · SpaceX · Google (Gemini 3.5 Pro, Gemma 4) · Anthropic (Fable, Mythos, Sonnet 5) · OpenAI · Tesla · Samsung · TSMC · Volkswagen · Alphabet EU fine · Mistral · Quantum Systems · Stark · EquiLibre · CreandumSOURCES & FURTHER READING– Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 5 (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/30/anthropic-launches-claude-sonnet-5-as-a-cheaper-way-to-run-agents/ – US jobs report (BLS): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm – Trump digital-tax tariff threat (BBC): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4rd71411ko – Additional analysis referenced from the Financial Times (AI world order, markets rotation, trade).
Transcribe →Why Does Micron Matter? Will UK Capital Flow? The AI Bill Is Due - Who’s Paying?
4w ago00:45:56Tap to summarizeUpside is a weekly podcast looking behind the headlines to see what's going to affect European venture, start-ups and investing. Hosted by Dan and Mads from Superseed, and this week our special guest is Neil Shah from the London Stock Exchange. A man, his pants, and an ice cube. Dan melts on air. Neil gets called an "artificial Indian" for failing British weather. The London Stock Exchange's tech chief joins to share how the tide is turning. 02:00 — Mini market update: AI infra gets a kickingSpaceX limps from 225 to 150, now flogging a $25bn bond and moonlighting as an NVIDIA reseller. Shiller PE knocking on dot-com's door. Nothing to see here.05:56 — Micron: the canary, the coal mine, the lie detectorMads explains why a memory maker tells you everything. Revenue up 346%, 85% "sassy" margins, sold out for the year, customers throwing deposits at them. Also: this is why your iPhone got 20% pricier.10:06 — Can the UK unlock capital? (Spoiler: pensions)A history lesson. UK pension AUM in equities: 53% in 1997, ~2.8% now. Neil tours Mansion House, PISCES, AIM reform, and 19 train stations of brand recognition. One silver bullet: pensions. Also a confession about a tragic cash ISA.21:34 — Euro Defence attracts billionsKNDS, Stark, the EIC discovering it's allowed to do defence now the paperwork matches. Mads connects the dots from air-con bans to North Sea oil to virtue-signalling our industry offshore. Buckle up.30:39 — The AI invoice is due. Who's paying?Qualcomm crashes the chip party, 300 US data-centre moratoriums, enterprises haggling their bills down. Neil reveals the LSEG runs on Copilot (he's coping) and covets your Granola.37:16 — Sovereign AI: let a thousand flowers bloomItaly's Domyn gets anointed Europe's frontier champion. Mads thinks picking winners is "wasted money" and we should copy the Chinese: be a customer, not a VC.41:47 — Anthropic, Mythos & the Fable blackoutfable5up.com says "no." Refresh: still no. Coming 8 July: government ID and facial scans for your fix. Backup plan: send the next PM to Washington with a letter from the King.43:13 — PredictionsDan: SpaceX halves to 120. Neil: please, god, no - it'll ruin his IPO pipeline.44:01 — Deal of the WeekBritish Business Bank backs ten first-time UK VCs. Dan talks his own book, shamelessly.45:07 — Week aheadBending Spoons IPOs (AOL and Evernote's retirement home), SpaceX joins the Nasdaq 100, EIC defence equity, and Microsoft threatens to rip Claude Code from its devs by Monday. Pour one out.
Transcribe →Anthropic’s Fable - Technical or Political - The G7 AI Backroom Chat - Europe's $Trillion Company
Jun 2000:44:51Tap to summarizeUpside is a weekly show that looks behind the headlines affecting European venture. This week Dan and Mads are joined by Joe Schorge of Isomer Capital — one of the people who literally decides which European VC funds get to exist. England beat Croatia 4:2, a new PM may have appeared overnight, and somehow we tied none of it back to venture. Onwards.02:25 Economic vibe check — S&P on a record tear (up ~24%), but 75% of economists now whisper "20% drop." The FTSE hits 10,504 and the UK quietly out-grows everyone in Q1. Stagflation: not great, not recession, very British.05:25 Accenture eats it — Shares down ~16-18% on a "thanks for that" earnings call. Mads unpacks whether AI grows consulting or guts it. Verdict: secular pain for the body-shop, maybe salvation for the reinventors. Not a melting ice cube. Probably.11:54 Anthropic gets unplugged — The US switches off Fable 5 and Mythos 5 worldwide, three days after launch. Dario warns AI is dangerous; AI gets controlled; Dario is surprised. The boring real lesson: don't single-source your model. One portco's app worked, then broke, in a single week.20:12 The G7 AI coalition — Amodei and Hassabis pitch a US-led, China-excluding club. China counter-pitches a global one the same day. Mads calls it a market-grab in a national-security costume, and probably self-defeating. Joe wants Europe in the front seat, not talking itself down for once.26:41 DeepSeek's $7.4bn — Raised at $50bn+ with five-year lockups, zero investor votes, and the state AI fund as the only one allowed near the steering wheel. Joe, ever the governance romantic: superpowers tend to become superproblems. Tell Elon.32:07 Mistral's €20bn — Nearly double September, for data centres and compute. Joe is delighted there's a European champion; nobody's entirely sure how much cash it takes to win a war. DeepSeek did it on a shoestring, after all.35:49 Can Europe build a trillion-dollar company? — ASML's basically there (~$720bn). We make more startups than the US, earn 6% higher returns, and watch 30% of our winners emigrate west. Joe: the next European trillion-dollar company already exists. He just wishes he knew which one.42:34 Deal of the Week — Theker (Barcelona): generalist factory robots, €73m Series A, Europe's largest robotics round. We sold KUKA and ABB; this is the comeback.43:47 Week Ahead — Micron's HBM print, GPT-5.6 rumours, and the Anthropic restoration watch.
Transcribe →Has AI Hit Its Glass Ceiling? Quantum IPOs at 500x Rev?! & Siri Goes Google!
Jun 1301:09:38Tap to summarizeUpside is a weekly show that looks behind the headlines that will affect European venture, start-ups and investing. On the show this week: 3:03 — SpaceX IPO day: pop, flop or nothing-burger?7:16 — OpenAI files for IPO — own OpenAI at $1tn or Anthropic at $965bn?9:50 — Bending Spoons files for Nasdaq: Europe's app-Berkshire14:01 — ECB's first hike since 2023, and Iran14:35 — European Quantum Week: inside OQC's £260m round24:45 — Quantum sensing: navigation without GPS31:08 — Fable & Mythos: Anthropic's new model and the AI glass ceiling41:30 — AI safety, ENISA and CADA: the European sovereignty angle46:17 — Lumen Sovereign: Britain's first sovereign frontier model54:55 — UK AI Hardware Week: the £1.1bn plan & the Playground Global cheque1:05:50 — WWDC: Siri reborn with Google Gemini under the hood1:06:58 — Deal of the week: ICEYE (Finland)1:07:56 — Deal of the week: Neura Robotics (Germany)1:10:30 — The week ahead: SpaceX trades, Bending Spoons, AI Act loosening, AccentureThis week's guest Callum Stewart — Investment Principal, Bullhound CapitalHosts Mads Jensen (SuperSeed) & Andrew Scott (7percent Ventures)Links & sourcesQuantumOQC Series C: https://oqc.tech/company/newsroom/series-cBBB £100m into OQC: https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/news-and-events/news/british-business-bank-commits-ps100m-oxford-quantum-circuitsQuobly €115m Series A: https://www.quobly.io/press-releases/quobly-secures-e115-million-series-a-to-bring-silicon-based-quantum-computers-to-marketIQM upsized PIPE: https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/06/02/iqm-and-real-asset-acquisition-corp-announce-upsized-146-million-pipe-with-new-commitment-from-ilmarinen/Anthropic — Fable & Mythoshttps://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/09/anthropics-claude-fable-5-is-a-version-of-mythos-the-public-can-access-today/https://the-decoder.com/anthropic-releases-claude-fable-5-and-mythos-5-with-major-gains-in-coding-and-science/ENISA / Mythos access: https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropic-mythos-eu-enisa-cybersecurity-accessLumen Sovereignhttps://cosine.sh/blog/building-lumen-sovereign-uk-industry-coalitionhttps://tech.eu/2026/06/08/cosine-secures-industry-backing-for-britain-s-first-sovereign-frontier-model/UK AI Hardware WeekGov £1.1bn plan: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/a-decisive-shift-to-power-british-ai-new-11-billion-plan-to-back-chip-firms-boost-computing-power-and-skills-for-the-ai-revolutionBBB / Playground Global: https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/news-and-events/events/silicon-valley-deeptech-vc-playground-global-launch-uk-support-british-business-bankAMD up to £2bn: https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1288/amd-commits-up-to-2-billion-to-accelerate-ai-innovation-and-research-in-the-united-kingdomWWDC / Sirihttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/apple-unveils-next-generation-of-apple-intelligence-siri-ai-and-more/EU rejects exemption: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/318136/20260610/eu-rejects-apple-siri-ai-exemption-commission-says-dma-never-blocked-launch.htmDeals of the weekICEYE €450m: https://tech.eu/2026/06/09/iceye-raises-eur450m-at-eur10b-valuation-as-demand-for-sovereign-space-intelligence-accelerates/Neura Robotics: https://www.ft.com/content/237f10c2-b2b2-490b-bec1-8864e0a22772
Transcribe →Time To Rip Out Palantir? - Where Is The AI ROI? - And Florida Sues OpenAI?!
Jun 600:55:06Tap to summarizePlus it's EU Sovereignty Week, more on the EU's Palantir Problem & who's now in the the $80bn club?This week Dan and Mads are joined by Matt Russell, Head of Secondaries at VenCap, the 40-year-old firm with a look-through portfolio of ~500 funds and ~17,000 companies, and seemingly exposure to every name that's ever mattered. We get into why secondaries aren't the bargain-bin everyone thinks, why Brussels keeps reaching for the statute book instead of the chequebook, whether the NHS can actually rip out Palantir (spoiler: with what?), and the three biggest IPOs in history queuing up at once. Plus: Florida sues Sam Altman, Europe's two-tier AI future, and a baby that won't sleep.00:52 — Meet Matt Russell: a secondaries 101, and why the best deals are the ones you pay up for.04:23 — EU Sovereignty Week — CADA, the four tiers of "sovereign," and the great Azure/Bleu/Delos licensing fudge. Mads's verdict: stop tinkering, complete the single market, unlock the pension capital.19:00 — Europe's Palantir Problem — MPs want the £330m NHS contract torn up and handed to a British supplier that doesn't exist. Featuring the ghost of the National Programme for IT. 24:45 — The Enterprise vs the AI Bill — Uber caps staff at £1,500/month, Pizza Hut delivers cold, and nobody can forecast token spend. So how do you measure ROI? (Answer, eventually: cashflow.) Andreessen's "sand into intelligence". 31:25 — The $80 Billion Club — SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic all crowding the exit. Why buybacks mean the market can absorb it — and why SpaceX needs to 100x revenue by 2030 to justify the price. 39:30 — America Sues Its Own — Florida takes OpenAI (and Sam Altman, personally) to court as Trump waters down his own AI order. Limitation of liability, load-bearing. 43:05 — Dan's prediction: a two-tier European AI stack (sovereign Mistral/Aleph Alpha vs "tamed" US models) — plus Matt's "models are airlines, not utilities" framing. 48:33 — Deal of the Week: Stark (€300m at €2.5bn defence drones the Pope wouldn't approve of) and Dan's pick, Gigaton (née Carbon Re, £26m).50:18 — The Week Ahead: WWDC and the eternal wait for a real Siri, an ECB rate hike, and Friday's main event — the biggest IPO of all time.Upside: looking behind the headlines that move European venture. New episode every week.
Transcribe →AI Winners Beyond NVIDIA - Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 Is Out! - A Zero Employee Startup Raises $30m!
May 3000:52:13Tap to summarizeThis week, Dan and Mads dig into the AI infrastructure boom spreading beyond GPUs, Europe's sovereignty contradictions, the era of the zero-employee unicorn, and a Pope weighing in on AI.00:00 — The week's headlines and some chit chat.01:15 — Ferrari's Luce, SpaceX Starship postponement, Gary Lineker's VC firm, Kirkland & Ellis builds its own AI stack. 07:00 — The new Dealroom report: London reclaims top spot from Paris. 08:30 — AI infrastructure beyond GPUs. Micron and SK Hynix cross $1T as the 40-year DRAM cycle breaks. 13:40 — How much AI capex is enough? Pascal's wager and the hyperscaler bet. 16:00 — Snowflake's CoCo pops 37%, Salesforce stumbles on the seat-based model. The applications-layer thesis in action. 19:30 — S&P 500 rule changes: SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic's IPO clock accelerates.24:20 — Claude Opus 4.8 lands. Anthropic eclipses OpenAI as the most valuable frontier lab. 27:00 — European sovereignty in action. Dutch state blocks Kyndryl on CLOUD Act risk; ASML can't expand Eindhoven over nitrogen rules; €1.1T of European industry pushes back. 34:00 — The AI-only company era. Polsia raises $30m at $250m with zero employees and a 2.1 Trustpilot. Spell it backwards. 36:30 — AI-washing. Standard Chartered's "lower-value human capital", 7,800 cuts, and the real story behind the UK NEET crisis. 42:00 — The Pope's AI encyclical. 135 years after Rerum Novarum, Anthropic's Chris Olah stands at the Vatican. 47:00 — Predictions: which AI unicorn collapses first? 48:45 — Deal of the Week: Cognition's $1bn raise (Mads) and Eddy Grid's profitable Dutch energytech.51:30 — Week ahead: CrowdStrike and Quantinuum earnings. 53:00 — Mads turns 21 (again)
Transcribe →IPOs Unfreeze - 3 Sovereign Euro Deals Land - Do You Hate AI?
May 2200:40:38Tap to summarizeThis week on Upside: Nvidia is so rich it's literally throwing money at shareholders, three megacaps queue up to IPO, and Americans discover they hate AI almost as much as politicians.(00:47) Mads at the BBCA / UKPC. Same name, same problem, same answers nobody's implementing. Plus a quick spin through Ben Evans' latest, ASML's revenue upgrade, and Meta canning 8,000 engineers. Cool, cool, cool.(02:30) Nvidia returns $80B to shareholders - roughly the GDP of Tunisia, give or take. Free cash flow of $49B a quarter. Stock down on earnings - maybe we've collectively lost our minds.(07:00) The Great IPO Unfreeze. SpaceX at $2T (an AI company wearing a rocket suit wearing a telecoms business), OpenAI at $1T (the most consequential S-1 of the decade, Dan bets it ain't pretty), and Anthropic's "final-final" pre-IPO round, number four. Sure.(13:24) Unitree IPOs in Shanghai at $67B. The dancing robot company actually shipping units. The Android of humanoids? Europe, please build the layer on top.(20:00) Europe writes its own future. Mistral grabs Vienna's EMMIE for neural physics simulation, EQT wins the €5B Scale-Up Europe mandate (sorry Atomico), and HMRC picks Quantexa over Palantir for £175M. Buying British: hopefully not the B-player.(27:30) American AI rebellion. AI now polls worse than ICE. Molotovs at Sam Altman's house. Europe, take note.(33:30) Prediction: France will cave on ESOP rules by end of '26. Mads disagrees.(36:30) Deal of the week: Isomorphic Labs, $2.1B Series B. Demis's side hustle is going great.(38:50) Week ahead: Salesforce earnings (where art thou, Agentforce?), AI-stack reports, and the S&P 500 rule change that could let SpaceX/OpenAI/Anthropic into the index faster than feels reasonable.
Transcribe →Upside Special - What Would European Investors Back With Their Last Euro?
May 1600:44:27Tap to summarizeUpside Live from Montenegro: Five GPs, Five BetsRecorded live from a Montenegrin port at a European LP/GP gathering of 80 investors, Dan asked 5 European investors the same question: If you had to put every penny of your fund and personal capital into one bet in Europe, where would it go?(01:21) Jens Lapinski — German super angel Jens would back the full AI stack, money transfer infrastructure, training environments, enterprise deployment. On sovereign AI, he argues the US-Europe relationship is one investment continuum rather than two competing blocs: chips, foundation models, hyperscalers, operating systems and the application layer are predominantly US-built, and pretending otherwise isn't productive. He acknowledges defence and security carve-outs make sense, but the broader play is co-investing with American capital, not against it. The one structural fix: unlock European pension fund and insurance capital flows into venture, and fix the public market exit path so companies don't default to US listings.(07:24) Andra Bagdonaite — First Pick, Lithuania First-check pre-seed investor for Baltic founders since 2022. Andra's bet: AI applied to traditional SMBs; logistics, manufacturing, businesses still running on legacy ERPs and Excel. Lithuania functions as a fast sandbox for founders to pilot with one or two customers before going global. She frames this as a long compounding opportunity rather than a rocket ship, the scale of legacy process digitisation across European SMBs is the prize.(12:21) Ella Goldner — Zinc Ella would concentrate on transformative deep tech climate. Her view: incremental solutions won't shift the trajectory, so a portfolio approach to moonshot bets, fusion and energy provision featured explicitly, is the rational play. She cites Kate Bingham's COVID Vaccine Taskforce as the model: urgency strips out bureaucracy and accelerates the research-to-commercialisation path. Insurance pricing is already starting to reflect climate risk, which she sees as an early commercial signal. Her one change for Europe: cultural rather than structural, building a problem-solving, business-building mindset from school age. She contrasts this with Israel and the US, where building and discussing ventures is embedded in everyday conversation.(23:58) Mike Reiner — 432 Legacy, Netherlands Mike's bet: the software and safety layer around physical AI. Roughly 11% of revenue is currently lost to safety-driven slowdowns and caging where robots and humans share environments. His firm has already backed a Swiss company using ultra-wideband to detect people through walls for multi-sensor safety platforms. The thesis comes from a proprietary value-chain analysis system: the same tool surfaced transformer and specialist hardware supply as the binding constraint on data centre buildout (not just energy), and identified firmware security (portfolio company Binary) as a durable cyber gap less likely to be absorbed by the foundation model providers. On founders, he looks for trauma-driven ambition paired with active self-development work, the combination he sees correlating with mission-driven, durable companies. His one change: more funds willing to take on tough problems with longer fund cycles, which he argues is also where the largest demand-supply gaps, and returns sit.(34:39) Dave Haynes — FOV Ventures Dave's bet: robotics and physical AI. He separates the two cleanly; robotics is the embodiment, physical AI (or world models) is the intelligence layer that understands real-world physics rather than text and images. Sizing: digital economy roughly $15T, physical economy in the hundreds of trillions, and software has only meaningfully disrupted the former. FOV maps the space across four layers: hardware and infrastructure (sensors, hyperspectral imaging, wireless power, portfolio company Willow), software and operating systems, the intelligence layer (world models, where Yann LeCun's Amy sits as a European entrant), and vertical applications. Europe's edge, in his view, is in vertical deployment; labour shortages, real industrial pull, and strong robotics talent from TUM, ETH and Imperial. He frames the shift as "Robotics 2.0": where Robotics 1.0 needed £5m of CapEx, founders can now build serious automation businesses on a £500k cheque, mirroring the Web 1.0 to 2.0 transition. He estimates the ChatGPT-equivalent moment for robotics is roughly five years out.
Transcribe →