Welcome back to another episode of Upside at the EUVC Podcast, where Dan Bowyer, Mads Jensen of SuperSeed, and this week’s guest Andreas from EUVC unpack what’s happening in European venture capital.

This week: Nvidia’s meteoric rise (and first signs of slowdown), Apple’s clash with UK regulators, and why regulators may be fighting yesterday’s battles. Plus: Trump’s Intel equity grab, whether governments should hold stakes in strategic industries, and what Europe can learn from Airbus and Ørsted. Finally, what digital sovereignty really means for Europe in an age of AI, energy bottlenecks, and geopolitical dependency.

Here’s what’s covered:

00:01 Nvidia’s Reality Check: From 20% of Nasdaq to slowing 5% quarterly growth.

00:06 Apple vs UK Regulators: The 30% “Apple tax” and post-Brexit CMA ambitions.

00:13 Competition vs Regulation: Why IBM and Microsoft fell by creative destruction, not regulators.

00:21 Trump’s Intel Shakedown: Retroactive equity grabs and should states take stakes?

00:29 Europe’s State Aid Constraints: Airbus, Ørsted, and why Europe can’t do national champions like the US or China.

00:36 The UK Buying AI: £573M in H1 government contracts, Microsoft & Palantir dominance.

00:49 Defining Sovereignty: Europe’s dependency on US tech and Chinese production.

00:57 Europe’s Luxury Beliefs: Outsourcing energy, defense, and manufacturing — and why pension reform is key.

01:02 Closing Takeaways: Sovereignty is more than regulation — it’s about competing, investing, and not being naïve.

Europe has just gained its first unapologetically defense-first venture fund. Archangel Ventures, led by Nicholas Nelson and Daniel Carew, is not here to hedge, not here to play dual-use semantics, but to put defense front and center.

Nic brings the lived experience of government, strategy, and deployments, with the policy networks to match. Daniel comes from a deep tech/DARPA-inspired investing background, obsessed with the frontier of what technology can achieve. Together, they’re building a fund that rejects the hype cycle and instead anchors itself in Europe’s sovereignty, resilience, and the urgent reality of our geopolitical moment.

Why Estonia? Why now? Because the frontier matters. From Tallinn to Vilnius to Warsaw, the tyranny of geography makes defense personal. Partnering with Superangel, Archangel is embedding itself in the heart of the Baltics—a region that already knows what it means to digitize, mobilize, and defend.

Archangel Ventures is a platform, a coalition of the willing, a bet that Europe can and must build its own defense ecosystem. As they put it, defense is not a bubble, not a passing Ukraine-driven hype cycle. It’s the crucible where the next generation of European technology—and deterrence—will be forged.

We’re proud to have launched this journey with them on the pod. Tune in:

At the EUVC Summit 2025, Cherry Ventures’ Christian and Elsa Deseilligny from Cambridge Associates offered a behind-the-scenes view of what it takes to stay true to your mission while building a firm that lasts. At the center of it all? The founder.

For Cherry, “Founders First” isn’t just a slogan. It’s a system.

“Putting the founder at the center—doing everything to make them thrive—that’s the foundation of how we build.”
– Elsa

That principle doesn’t stop at deal selection or portfolio support. It shapes how Cherry builds its own team, firm, and platform. Every strategic decision—from hiring to productizing services—is filtered through one lens: Will this help our founders thrive?

And when it comes to fundraising?

“Your right to win with LPs ultimately ties back to that clarity of mission.”

Christian addressed a tension many top-tier funds face: how big is too big?

He acknowledged the importance of honest, iterative conversations with LPs—but also highlighted a view shared by allocators like Cambridge Associates:

“There’s a sweet spot—where a strategy is still repeatable, but hasn’t lost its edge.”

In VC, scaling up can mean professionalization—but it can also lead to dilution of edge. The best funds find the institutional footing they need without drifting into sameness.

“You want to reach a size where you're clearly outperforming with discipline… but then stop there. That’s where true long-term relationships are built.”

The insight many LPs quietly share?

They’re often betting on managers before they peak.

“Ideally, we find the manager early. We scale with them to that sweet spot—and then, no one else can get in.”

It’s not just about performance. It’s about conviction. The best LP–GP relationships are forged when the firm still feels like a startup—when the ambition is high, but the capacity is still intimate.

Cherry’s message was clear:
If you want to build a lasting firm, don’t chase scale for the sake of it. Build around your mission. Build with intentionality. And stay small enough to stay sharp.

The founders will notice. And so will the LPs.

A Platform Built Around “Founders First”Scaling with Intention (and Limits)The Emerging Manager Advantage

Welcome to a new episode of the EUVC podcast, where Andreas Munk Holm explores the cutting edge of European venture capital. Today’s guest is Louis Dussart, Partner at RTP Global.

Louis entered venture at just 20 years old with White Star Capital, built a startup bridging Europe and China, and now helps lead RTP Global’s European strategy. In this conversation, he shares why Europe faces a political wake-up call on tech, what we need to fix in talent, growth capital, and IPO markets, and why founders are not just entrepreneurs—they’re geopolitical assets.

From emerging managers to sovereign LPs, from tech transfer to liquidity, Louis lays out the hard truths and actionable priorities for Europe to compete globally.

Here's what's covered:

• 02:12 Louis’s Path: From White Star Intern to RTP Partner

• 06:01 What Makes RTP Global Different: A Truly Global, Debate-Driven DNA

• 10:14 The Political Wake-Up Call: Why Tech Must Sit at the Top of Europe’s Agenda

• 12:48 Talent, Visas & Education: The Dual Strategy for Closing the Skills Gap

• 15:32 Sovereign LPs, Emerging Managers & The Role of Fund-of-Funds

• 19:20 Tech Transfer in Europe: Why Our Universities Still Struggle

• 25:40 US Growth Funds in Europe: Selling to America vs. Selling Out of Europe

• 29:12 The Liquidity Problem: Why Capital Markets Union Is an Elephant in the Room

• 34:45 Founders as Geopolitical Assets: Lessons for Europe’s Leaders

• 38:55 The VC Role: Echo Chambers Between Founders, LPs & Policymakers

• 44:20 Why Europe Needs Risk-Taking Politicians as Much as Risk-Taking Founders

Welcome back to the Impact Highlight Series, powered by EUVC, Impact VC, and Impact Supporters.

Over the past months, we’ve hosted ten conversations with some of the most thoughtful GPs, LPs, and unicorn founders shaping the impact investing landscape. In this special capstone episode, August Solliv (Impact Supporters) and Dougie Sloan (Impact VC & Better Society Capital) sit down to unpack what we’ve heard and distil the lessons into four big themes.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 01:00 Impact driving returns: from the founder lens to the “lockstep” model where impact and profits reinforce each other.

• 04:00 Shared value in practice: how impact-native companies scale impact and profit — and why this creates resilience and de-risks venture.

• 07:00 Proving performance: what LPs at EIF, Isomer, and BSC are seeing in their data, and why DPI still matters.

• 09:00 Great vs. good funds: LP perspectives on partner skills, GP thesis fit, and “edge” in impact venture.

• 12:00 Specialist vs. generalist: why even generalist impact funds must go deep in certain verticals.

• 14:00 Overlooked opportunities: adaptation, circularity, first-of-a-kind plants, and where impact capital is most needed.

• 17:00 Innovating the VC model: evergreen structures, impact-linked carry, and the tension between GP innovation and LP appetite.

• 20:00 Democratizing LP capital: why both institutional and retail channels are needed to scale impact VC.

• 23:00 It all comes back to people: values, motivation, and the dual lens of commercial and impact acumen that defines the unicorn founders of tomorrow.

• 26:00 Closing reflections: what we’ve learned from 10 conversations, and what’s next for the Impact Highlight Series.

Welcome back to another episode of the EUVC Podcast, where we gather Europe’s venture family to share the stories, insights, and lessons that drive our ecosystem forward.

Today we welcome David Vlerick, Founding Partner at Bluegrass Ventures, to discuss how LP capital can be mobilised with meaning, why a platform approach makes venture more accessible, and what it takes to shift mindsets in a conservative market like Belgium.

Bluegrass Ventures backs top-decile, small-to-mid-sized VC funds globally, while giving investors flexibility and transparency through a platform model. In this conversation, David shares his journey from law and private equity into venture, the philosophy behind Bluegrass, and why he believes primary capital is one of the most powerful forces for shaping a brighter future.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 01:00 David’s Path: From law and private equity to launching Bluegrass Ventures.

• 05:00 Building Bluegrass: Why a platform, why small-to-mid-size funds, and why top-decile track records matter.

• 08:00 Fund Selection: Unfair advantages, avoiding hype cycles, and sector-focused funds.

• 15:00 The Person Behind Bluegrass: Travel, poetry, and how fatherhood shapes perspective.

• 22:00 Risk in VC: Why startups ≠ diversified funds, and what the data says.

• 27:00 Primary Capital: Fueling the future vs. parking money in secondary markets.

• 31:00 Belgium’s Culture: From conservatism and PE comfort to embracing venture.

• 36:00 Platform Model: How Bluegrass balances investor choice with portfolio discipline.

• 42:00 Venture as Community: High-calibre people, collaborative networks, and optimism.

• 43:00 Bluegrass’s Mission: Delivering Belgium’s best financial product and moving more money with meaning.

Welcome back to another episode of the EUVC Podcast, where we bring together Europe’s venture family to share the stories, insights, and lessons that drive our ecosystem forward.

This week, we sit down with Will Wells, founder-turned-VC, and now Partner at Speedinvest, where he leads deep tech and supports the firm’s growth strategy.

Will’s journey spans building Hummingbird Technologies, an AI-powered agtech company exited to Agreena in 2022, to leading frontier tech at Firstminute Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Now at Speedinvest, he’s focused on backing European founders working on sovereign compute, defense, energy resilience, biosecurity, and the “picks and shovels” of the next decades.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 01:00 From founder to investor: lessons from building Hummingbird Technologies and the empathy it gave Will as a VC.

• 05:00 Learning venture at Firstminute and Lightspeed: what “good” looks like in deep tech investing.

• 07:00 Beyond buckets: why the biggest opportunities lie in combining AI, hardware, defense, and science into multi-sector platforms.

• 10:00 Big bets in deep tech: Europe’s challenge at pre-seed and why bold consortium funding matters early.

• 12:00 Defense tech & geopolitics: reconciling economic opportunity with moral responsibility.

• 15:00 Strategic sovereignty: compute, semiconductors, energy resilience, and why Europe needs its own infrastructure.

• 17:00 Thesis-building: inevitable truths, technical stacks, and where customers will actually buy.

• 20:00 Agtech, climate, and humility: what Will learned from being early in robotics and regen agriculture.

• 24:00 Leveraging Speedinvest’s platform model: why deep vertical teams and operational scale matter in frontier tech.

• 29:00 Looking ahead: biosecurity, autonomy, energy resilience — and why Europe must back multi-generational deep tech companies.

Welcome to the Impact Highlight series, powered by EUVC, where we bring you the people and perspectives shaping European venture.

Today, we sit down with Chloe Dagnell from Isomer Capital, one of Europe’s most active LPs, to unpack what institutional investors are looking for, how impact sits alongside returns, and what makes a GP truly stand out.

With more than six years at Isomer Capital and a background that started in international development before moving into venture, Chloe brings a unique perspective on building portfolios that balance financial performance with sustainability, diversity, and long-term alignment.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 01:34 Chloe’s Journey: From international development to venture and why local context matters.

• 06:12 Isomer’s Strategy: Building a diversified portfolio across pre-seed and seed in Europe.

• 11:08 Impact in the Portfolio: Why ~30% of Isomer-backed companies are SDG-aligned — and how impact sits alongside returns.

• 17:55 Returns vs. Impact: Revolut, scale, and why the biggest value drivers aren’t always in impact funds.

• 23:41 Good vs. Great GPs: Evidence over slides, specialist edge, and values alignment.

• 31:26 Diversification & LP Interests: Corporate LPs and the green transition — why Isomer doesn’t get pushed into one theme.

• 37:14 DEI as the Next Frontier: Ownership, accountability, and why female-led teams in Isomer’s portfolio are top performers.

• 44:58 Advice to Emerging Managers: How to prove differentiated access and cut through generic pitch decks.

• 51:02 Closing Takeaways: Evidence, access, values — what LPs really want in Europe’s next generation of funds.

Welcome back to another episode of the EUVC Podcast, where we gather Europe’s venture family to share the stories, insights, and lessons that drive our ecosystem forward.

Today’s guest is Omri Benayoun, General Partner at Partech, one of Europe’s premier investment platforms. Since 2014, Omri has co-led Partech’s growth equity strategy, raising more than €1B across two funds and backing some of Europe’s most capital-efficient champions. With a career spanning government, corporate strategy, e-commerce, M&A, and growth investing, Omri brings a rare lens on what it takes to build resilient global tech leaders from Europe.

From rock climbing as a metaphor for measured risk-taking to the structural advantage of Europe’s “do more with less” DNA, this conversation covers Partech’s contrarian bet on bootstrapped scale-ups, the role of elite LPs, and why Europe’s complexity might be its greatest strength.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 01:34 Rock Climbing & Investing: Risk, fear, and why falling is part of the journey.

• 04:00 Omri’s Background: From government to e-commerce (Cdiscount), retail (Casino), and software (Dassault Systèmes).

• 10:00 Lessons from Dassault: Product roadmaps, customer listening, and why big M&A requires years of courtship.

• 14:00 Government Experience: Why investors and founders can’t afford to ignore policy anymore.

• 20:00 Launching Partech Growth: Filling the gap for European growth capital in 2014.

• 22:00 Fund II Strategy: Betting on bootstrapped, capital-efficient companies during the 2020 frenzy.

• 25:00 Defining Capital Efficiency: Rule of 40, ARPU per employee, and Europe’s structural advantage.

• 29:00 Case Study – EcoVadis: From bootstrapped ESG ratings leader to global scale.

• 33:00 Inside Partech: The “Greek city-states” model of seed, venture, growth, Africa, and impact strategies.

• 39:00 Efficiency vs. Profitability: Why founders must avoid the “dead zone” of low growth + breakeven.

• 41:00 Elite LPs Enter the Game: How Cambridge Associates, StepStone, and sovereigns now back European growth.

• 46:00 Europe on the Map: From founders settling early to chasing world-class scale.

• 50:00 Complexity as a Feature: Why regulatory fragmentation creates stronger survivors.

• 52:00 Partech’s Cohesion: A culture of numbers, engineers, and price sensitivity across geographies.

At the EUVC Summit 2025, Mehmet Atici from Bek Ventures aimed a popular narrative—that Europe is underperforming as a tech region. Not because it’s untrue, but because it’s incomplete.

“Yes, there’s catching up to do. But you can’t argue there’s no dynamism in Europe—it’s just not evenly distributed.”

And once you look closer, the picture changes fast.

Much of the “Europe must act” discourse comes from the continent’s largest economies—France, Germany, and the UK. But productivity data tells a different story:

• Poland and Bulgaria are growing steadily.

• Ecosystems in Tallinn, Lisbon, and Barcelona are booming—fueled in part by digital nomad visas.

• Eastern European founders are making waves well beyond their borders—with names behind global giants like Databricks and Snowflake.

“Building a business isn’t a lifestyle choice for them. It’s a global ambition from day one.”

These founders bring international exposure, capital efficiency, and hunger—without the insular networks that often define more mature markets.

Sure, improving regulation—around stock options, company formation, or funding incentives—helps. But as Mehmet put it:

“That’s medicine without a proper diagnosis.”

The bigger issue isn’t operational—it’s strategic positioning.

• The U.S. remains the most attractive market: a single language, deeper capital markets, and cultural cohesion.

• Europe’s software market is just 23% of global share, compared to 43% in North America.

So even if we fix the mechanics, the gravitational pull of the U.S. won’t go away. And in some cases, a European identity may actually slow access to that market—not speed it up.

What if fragmentation wasn’t our weakness—but our untapped advantage?

“The most thriving tech ecosystems are the most politically cohesive—because they serve founders, not flags.”

Europe doesn’t need to copy the U.S. to succeed. It needs to recognize excellence wherever it emerges, connect the dots, and support founders wherever they’re starting from.

In Mehmet’s words:

“Our opportunity is to transcend borders—not erase them.”

“Let’s not forget: the original EU model was ‘United in Diversity.’”

It wasn’t a flaw. It was a feature.

Europe’s next wave of global founders may not come from the centers you expect—but they’re already building. Our job is to back them, bridge them, and help them win on a global stage.

Let’s get to it.

Not Just Paris, London, BerlinEurope’s Problem Isn’t Just PolicyFrom Fragmentation to SuperpowerThe Original European Model Still Applies