What does it take to identify exceptional founders before the numbers exist, and win the right to back them in an increasingly competitive venture market?

In Episode 29, we sit down with Christian Meermann, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures .

Christian shares how scaling Zalando across Europe shaped his view on growth, brand, distribution, and company building. We discuss how Cherry evaluates more than 10,000 startups each year, why team remains one of the most important investment criterion, and what separates genuine resilience from a strong-looking CV.

We also explore Cherry’s operator-led approach and how the fund supports founders with hiring, communications, fundraising, and execution.

The conversation covers Europe’s AI opportunity, sovereign infrastructure, hypergrowth valuations, technical founders, and why business graduates need deeper technical understanding in an AI-native world.

Many thanks to Christian for such an insightful conversation!!

What does it take to outpace a wave of well-funded competitors and build one of the fastest-growing AI startups?

In Episode 28, we sit down with Dennis May, former Associate at Lakestar and now Chief of Staff at Peec AI, one of Germany’s fastest-growing AI startups.

Dennis shares why he left venture capital to join the operator side, what convinced him to bet on Peec, and what the Chief of Staff role looks like inside a company scaling at exceptional speed. We discuss Peec’s journey from zero to €10 million ARR, its expansion into New York, and how the company is helping brands understand and improve their visibility across AI search engines.

We also explore the shift from traditional SEO to Generative Engine Optimization, the defensibility of AI application-layer companies, AI-native workflows, hiring at hypergrowth startups, and the reality behind Peec’s high-intensity culture.

Dennis also reflects on what he learned moving from investor to operator and shares his advice for founders trying to build something truly ambitious.

Many thanks to Dennis for joining us.

Why do nearly half of European household assets still sit in cash while retail investors in the US continue compounding wealth through the markets?

This week we sat down with Maximilian Meyer, Chief Marketing Officer of Scalable Capital, one of Europe’s leading investment platforms with more than one million clients and over €50 billion in assets.

Before joining Scalable, Max founded his own startup in his early twenties and later worked at Fidelity International, giving him a perspective that combines entrepreneurship, institutional finance, and modern fintech growth.

In this conversation, we explore how Scalable is trying to change investing behavior across Europe - not just through products, but through branding, education, and cultural relevance.

We talk about:

• ​Why Europe still struggles with a deeply rooted cash-saving culture
• ​Building trust in financial services and making investing accessible
• ​The psychology behind retail investing and first-time investors
• ​Scalable’s bold billboard campaigns and the strategy behind controversy
• ​Why out-of-home advertising still matters in a digital world
• ​The role of YouTube, finfluencers, and financial education
• ​Expanding a fintech brand across different European markets
• ​AI, personalization, and the future of financial communication

Many thanks to Max for the insightful conversation.

Why is hardware still dramatically harder to build than software?

This week we sat down with David Stålmarck, Co-Founder & CTO of Atech, one of the most exciting early-stage hardware startups coming out of Scandinavia right now.

Backed by Lovable, Nordic Makers, Emblem, and scout-linked capital connected to Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz, Atech is tackling a problem that has existed for decades: while software has gone through massive abstraction waves, hardware development is still constrained by complexity, tooling, and long iteration cycles.

In this conversation, we explore whether hardware could go through a similar transformation to software, and what happens if building physical products suddenly becomes dramatically more accessible.

We talk about:

• Why hardware never experienced the same abstraction wave as software
• The biggest bottlenecks in modern hardware development
• Why "Hackathon Maxxing" and Building in Public is Key
• Building a software-like UX for physical products
• The role of AI in hardware development
• Physical AI, robotics, and the next computing wave
• Working with Lovable and lessons from modern developer tools
• The realities of building a deep-tech startup in Europe

Many thanks to David for the highly technical and thoughtful conversation.

Now available on all major platforms.

Why are organizations still structured around management principles that are thousands of years old?

This week we sat down with Niels Martin Brøchner, Founder of Paradox, a Danish startup building what might become one of the most ambitious infrastructure layers in enterprise software.

Backed by SpeedInvest and already working with leading Danish companies, Paradox is tackling a problem most organizations feel every day but rarely describe clearly: context fragmentation -> the idea that meaning, priorities, and understanding drift as information moves through layers of an organization.

Instead of building another productivity tool, Paradox is trying to fundamentally rethink how companies align, communicate, and make decisions.

In this conversation, we explore what happens when organizations move beyond static workflows and toward continuously connected organizational intelligence.

We talk about:

• Why most companies still operate on outdated organizational structures

• The hidden cost of context fragmentation inside large organizations

• What Paradox and Apppa actually do in practice

• The idea behind the “Organizational World Model”

• Why enterprise alignment is becoming one of the biggest software opportunities

• The overlap between AI, knowledge systems, and leadership

• Trust, security, and handling highly sensitive organizational data

• How AI could fundamentally reshape leadership and decision-making

• Building deep-tech enterprise software in Europe

• Advice for students and young founders entering tech

Many thanks to Niels for the thoughtful and highly ambitious conversation.

Now available on all major platforms.

What happens when universities move beyond teaching entrepreneurship and start shaping it?

This week we sat down with Yerrie Kim, who holds degrees from Harvard and MIT and has worked across finance, consulting, and venture building, before recently taking on the role of Executive Director at the Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship.

At CSE, the ambition is not to replicate a VC fund or accelerator. Instead, it operates at the intersection of research, education and entrepreneurship; supporting founders while staying grounded in academic thinking and long-term impact.

In this conversation, we explore what that actually looks like in practice, and where universities can play a more meaningful role in building companies and ecosystems.

We talk about:

What differentiates university entrepreneurship from VC and accelerators

The role of research in shaping entrepreneurial thinking

Why US universities continue to outperform in producing top innovators

Whether business schools risk losing relevance in the age of AI and deep tech

How to prepare founders for increasingly competitive venture environments

Europe’s ambition to strengthen its innovation ecosystem

Making entrepreneurship accessible beyond the “already entrepreneurial”

Many thanks to Yerrie for the thoughtful and forward-looking conversation.

🎧 Now available on all major platforms.

What does it take to back the most ambitious technology companies before the breakthrough?

This week we sat down with Hendrik Brandis, Co-Founder and General Partner at Earlybird VC and one of Europe’s most experienced venture capitalists. After starting his career as an aerospace engineer and later moving through consulting, Hendrik co-founded Earlybird nearly three decades ago and has since helped finance some of Europe’s most important technology companies.

In this conversation we explore how venture capital actually works behind the scenes - from sourcing founders long before they become visible to the market, to evaluating deep tech opportunities where the biggest uncertainty is technical feasibility rather than market demand. 

We talked about:

• The role of AI and data in sourcing, screening and investment decisions

• Why deep tech investing requires a fundamentally different due diligence mindset

• Europe’s persistent gap between world-class research and global category leaders

• Whether Europe is building the capital stack needed to compete with the US

• The reopening of IPO markets and what it means for venture exits

• Career advice for students interested in technology and venture capital

Many thanks to Hendrik for the thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation.

🎧 Now available on all major platforms!

How should a European business school position itself in a world shaped by AI and geopolitical fragmentation?

This week we sat down with Peter Møllgaard, President (Rektor) at Copenhagen Business School.

From his early career in economic research and public policy to leading one of Europe’s most international business schools, Peter reflects on how universities are evolving in an era of technological acceleration and political uncertainty. We explore whether business schools risk becoming irrelevant in an AI-driven economy, how small open economies like Denmark navigate global power shifts, and what universities must do to remain both competitive and responsible.

We talk about:

• The changing role of university leadership in a politicized and technologized world
• Economic power, tariffs, and fragmentation beyond the headlines
• CBS’s positioning as a European alternative to US-style MBA models
• The growing dominance of AI and STEM and what that means for business education
• Redesigning education in the age of generative AI
• Supporting international students in an increasingly complex global job market
• The responsibility of universities in climate and long-term policy debates

Many thanks to Peter for the thoughtful and forward-looking conversation.

🎧 Now available on all major platforms
PS: Here is Peter’s Podcast Recommendation: https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/boss-class

How do you invest in founders before there’s a company, a product - or even an idea?

In this episode of Campus To Capital, we sit down with Michael Wiatr Aagaard, General Partner at @ Antler, one of the world’s most active early-stage investors with more than 1,300 portfolio companies across 27 global locations.

Michael shares his journey from real estate finance and consulting into entrepreneurship - and eventually into backing founders at the very beginning of their journey. We explore how Antler identifies outliers before the market does, how risk is managed on the left side of the J-curve, and why the Nordics are becoming a critical hub for Europe’s next generation of founders.

We talk about:

• From operator to investor: how founder experience shapes investment judgment
• Identifying high-potential founders at the idea stage
• Antler’s €4.5m commitment to Danish startups and the role of Copenhagen in Europe
• Investing at scale without sacrificing quality
• AI as both a startup enabler and an investor tool
• Climate tech, AI, and building companies with real-world impact
• Why founders are getting younger — and how Antler helps them scale faster
• Exit thinking in an era of longer private market cycles
• Differences (and similarities) between Danish and Swedish startup ecosystems
• Leveraging Antler’s global network to accelerate growth

Many thanks to Michael for joining the conversation.

🎧 Now available on all major platforms.

How do you turn millions of financial data points into faster, more objective investment decisions?

In this episode of Campus To Capital, we sit down with Deniz Schütz, CEO & Co-Founder of StrategyBridgeAI, a fintech startup automating data-driven business analysis for private equity funds, M&A advisors, and consultants. Before founding StrategyBridgeAI, Deniz worked at institutions like UniCredit and Amundi - exactly the environments where he experienced first-hand how slow, manual, and subjective financial analysis can become at scale.

In our conversation, we explore how StrategyBridgeAI uses AI to benchmark companies against peers, validate management forecasts, and support buy-side decisions across M&A and private credit, all while operating in an increasingly regulated environment.

We talk about:

• Deniz’s journey from large financial institutions to founding an AI-native fintech startup

• How StrategyBridgeAI processes millions of financial data points into objective analytical reports

• Real-world use cases in M&A and private credit, including identifying undervalued mid-market opportunities

• How AI is reshaping workflows in M&A — between efficiency gains and headcount implications

• The rebound in global M&A activity and the rise of private credit as a key growth engine

• What the EU AI Act means for financial AI tools, especially in deal screening and credit assessment

• Scaling StrategyBridgeAI after an oversubscribed seven-figure pre-seed round

• Building a high-performance team in Munich as an emerging European finance hub

• Key AI trends young professionals in finance should be paying attention to

A deep dive into the intersection of AI, M&A, private markets, and regulation.

Many thanks to Deniz for joining the conversation.

Now available on all major platforms.