EUVC

In this episode, Andreas Munk Holm sits down with Ole Lehmann to explore the rise of the solopreneur movement, what AI unlocks for solo founders, and how blockchain may finally have its moment as the infrastructure layer for AI. Ole also unpacks his new initiative, Built in Europe, and why he’s betting on a future where ambitious company builders thrive without moving to the U.S.

Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:52 Ole’s Journey: From Music Production to Crypto to AI Education

• 03:57 Crypto Disillusionment & the Promise of Blockchain Infrastructure

• 10:08 Inside the Solopreneur Mindset: Freedom, Curiosity & Leverage

• 16:32 Content Market Fit > Product Market Fit: A New Way to Build

• 21:18 Why Interest Graphs Beat Follower Counts in 2025

• 28:43 A New Class of Founders—and the Portfolio Play to Back Them

• 39:10 How AI Tools Empower a One-Person Media Company

• 43:31 Building in Europe: More Than a Narrative Play

• 47:05 The Cultural and Regulatory Hurdles Still Holding Europe Back

• 50:08 Why European Tech Founders Need to Enter the Political Arena

Andreas Munk Holm opens the episode by introducing Charles Dunn, Principal at SV Health Investors, and Ruth McKernan, CBE and Operating Partner at SV Health, former CEO of Innovate UK. SV Health is a transatlantic healthcare specialist with a focus on company creation and full-spectrum biotech investing. Notable wins include the exit of SV-created EyeBio to Merck & Co for up to $3bn including $1.3bn upfront, and the recent launch of SV’s newest company creation Driag Therapeutics, a UK-based neuropsychiatry company, which recently announced its $140m Series A financing.

SV Health’s approach blends early-stage company creation with later-stage venture investment. Charles emphasizes that this structure allows:

• Diversified risk for LPs: Early-stage opportunities carry higher risk but higher upside; later-stage investments provide more stability.

• Learning across stages: Experience in late-stage investing informs early-stage decision-making, and vice versa.

• Flexible company formation: SV Health creates companies across different development stages, sometimes even after Phase 1 data exists, as with Draig Therapeutics.

Welcome back to another episode of Upside at the EUVC Podcast, where ⁠Dan Bowyer⁠,⁠ Mads Jensen⁠ of ⁠SuperSeed⁠, ⁠Lomax Ward⁠ of ⁠Outsized Ventures⁠⁠⁠, and Andrew Scott of 7percent Ventures to break down the real stories behind the headlines shaping European tech and venture.

From Bending Spoons’ audacious European rollup strategy, to Brexit’s economic hangover, to the existential challenges facing Volkswagen, to Google vs. OpenAI’s new “Code Red”, and finally whether Europe has had its long-overdue shock moment — this episode goes wide, fast, and deep.

This is Upside, where the takes are sharp, the macro is messy, and the optimism is… conditional.

What’s covered:

• 02:00 The valuation reset, debt-fuelled M&A, and the Italian PE–VC hybrid model

• 04:00 Arbitrage: firing US teams, rehiring elite Italian engineers

• 06:00 Do rollups really work? Tech debt, distribution, and execution risk

• 07:00 Brexit revisited: GDP losses, trade collapse, and political reality

• 08:00 The myth of “you can’t know the counterfactual” — and why you actually can

• 10:00 Will the UK rejoin the customs union? And would Europe even take us back?

• 12:00 Europe’s manufacturing crisis: Porsche, Volkswagen, BYD and the end of German exceptionalism

• 15:00 China’s shift: stop importing, start replicating

• 17:00 Welfare-state complacency and the European stagnation problem

• 20:00 The bitter truth about Europe’s carbon “success story”

• 22:00 How to actually fix European tech: R&D, immigration, procurement, capital markets

• 24:00 Why 0.02% pension allocation to VC is Europe’s biggest structural handicap

• 26:00 Should we “Farage-pill” Europe into a tech-first agenda?

• 33:00 Distribution vs. loyalty: why consumers don’t care about brand

• 36:00 Who wins the cost base war: Google, Amazon, Meta, or OpenAI?

• 38:00 Anthropic’s IPO plans and what they signal about the private capital cycle

• 42:00 Deals of the Week: Black Forest Labs, ICEYE, Expedition Growth Capital

• 44:00 Robotics is the next AI wave — and the picks-and-shovels startups emerging now

This week on the EUVC Podcast, Andreas Munk Holm sits down with Mikael Johnsson, Co-founder & General Partner at Oxx, one of Europe’s leading specialist B2B software investors.

Mikael has a very clear-eyed view on the current AI wave: he’s seeing valuation discipline slip, fundamentals being stretched, and a real risk that the market mistakes pilot-driven excitement for lasting enterprise value.

In this episode, they explore how to distinguish hype from substance, what “real” AI adoption looks like within a business process, and how both founders and investors can remain level-headed when everyone else is losing theirs.

Welcome back to another episode of the EUVC Podcast. Today, we’re thrilled to feature Leyla Holterud, partner at Vintage Investment Partners. Many know Leyla from her years at StepStone, where she led venture growth across EMEA. Now, at Vintage, she’s helping deploy $4.3 billion from their global platform to double down on Europe, anchored by the firm’s new London office. With a strategy spanning fund-of-funds, growth, and secondaries, Leyla offers a rare vantage point on the European VC landscape.

Welcome back to the EUVC Podcast, your inside track on the people, models, and math reshaping European venture.

This week, Andreas talks with Damian Cristian and Guy Conway, co-founders of Rule 30 - an AI research lab building what they claim is the world’s first fully systematic venture strategy. We go deep on the difference between “data-driven” (hygiene) and decision-driven (engine), why labels matter, and how portfolio math crushes intuition.

They unpack founder-trajectory signals, graph-based network evolution, market topology (yes, biology-inspired stats), and a portfolio design targeting 3x+ minimum returns with 97.5% confidence. We also debate the “access myth,” party rounds, and why they won’t sell their alpha.

Whether you’re an LP testing managers, a GP rethinking reserves, or a founder curious how algorithms “see” you - this one’s for the nerds and the pragmatists.

Here’s what’s covered:

• 01:46 | What is “Quant VC” and how it differs from traditional venture

• 06:39 | Why pre-seed isn’t an access problem — it’s a triage problem

• 09:55 | Can AI really make investment decisions at pre-seed?

• 14:13 | Training the model on 15 years of startup data to find top-decile winners

• 20:55 | The “Outlier Trajectory” of founders — decoding team evolution through data

• 26:42 | Why Rule 30 calls itself an AI Research Lab, not a VC fund

• 35:36 | Portfolio construction math: the danger of the “middle” strategy

• 55:57 | Follow-ons vs upfront bets — why they avoid reserves entirely

• 61:40 | Access myth-busting — why 99 % of pre-seed deals are open to smart capital

This week, Andreas Munk Holm sits down with Jack Leeney, co-founder of 7GC, the transatlantic growth fund bridging Silicon Valley and Europe and a backer of AI giants like Anthropic, alongside European rising stars Poolside and Fluidstack.

From IPOs at Morgan Stanley to running Telefónica’s US venture arm and now operating a dual-continental fund, Jack shares how 7GC reads the AI supercycle, why infrastructure and platforms win first, and what Europe must fix to unlock the next wave of venture liquidity.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 02:00 7GC’s transatlantic model: investing where liquidity lives

• 05:00 AI’s stack order: infra → platforms → horizontal → vertical

• 10:40 Hype vs. compute cycles: why this time is different

• 11:30 OpenAI vs. Anthropic vs. Mistral: the new map of winners

• 17:40 Llama, open source, and Meta’s defensive play

• 19:00 European AI bets: Poolside, Fluidstack, and dual-market strategies

• 22:40 The EU AI Act: noise, nuance, and why customers still decide

• 26:30 IPOs are back: US windows, European silence

• 33:00 Liquidity, secondaries, and when 7GC hands stock to LPs

• 37:40 Europe’s missing link: scaled M&A

• 43:00 What policymakers and corporates must do next

Welcome back to another episode of Upside at the EUVC Podcast, where ⁠Dan Bowyer⁠,⁠ Mads Jensen⁠ of ⁠SuperSeed⁠, ⁠Lomax Ward⁠ of ⁠Outsized Ventures⁠⁠⁠, and this week’s special guest Robin Haak break down the real stories behind the headlines shaping European tech and venture.

Robin joins us as the founder of Robin Capital, an early employee at SmartRecruiters, angel in 100+ companies, including eight unicorns, and one of the most active emerging GPs in Europe. He brings deep operator insight, especially into the German ecosystem, politics, and economy, which this episode leans heavily into.

We cover everything from UK policy signals to German recession warnings, AI dominance to Europe’s bureaucratic drag, the rise of solo GPs, and why the next decade of tech will be won or lost on energy availability more than anything else.

What’s covered:

• 04:00 EU wants to restrict social media for minors
  The team debates the proposals to ban or limit social media for children under 16, the mental health case, and the tension between safety and overreach.

• 06:00 Surveillance creep & messaging regulation
  Robin explains concerning drafts that would’ve allowed governments to read private messages. The group breaks down the slippery slope of “protect the children” legislation.

• 10:00 UK Budget: surprisingly startup-friendly
  Dan and Lomax unpack EMI reforms, EIS/VCT clarity, and why the market reacted calmly. Signals of a more innovation-forward UK emerge.

• 12:45 Lovable.ai’s VAT scandal & Europe’s compliance maze
  A Swedish engineer’s viral post on LinkedIn sparks a discussion on Europe’s inconsistent VAT rules, compliance complexity, and whether hypergrowth and European regulation can co-exist.

• 17:00 N26’s long struggle with German regulators
  Robin, an early angel, offers an insider's view on the fintech’s challenges—BaFin restrictions, governance issues, and the counterfactual: “Would N26 be worth €20B if it were French?”

• 20:00 Germany’s big macro problem: stagnation + overload
  A brutally honest breakdown of the German economy: energy scarcity, migration overload, rising welfare costs, labor shortages, and political paralysis.

• 28:00 Education, welfare, pensions & the cost structure crisis
  Robin explains why Germany’s systems are buckling: the collapse of PISA scores, overloaded municipalities, and an economic model no longer supported by productivity.

• 33:00 Nuclear shutdowns & Europe’s AI energy deficit
  Why Germany shut down its safest reactors, how it backfired, and why France and the Nordics will become the new AI infrastructure hubs.

• 40:00 Startup ecosystem: the good, the bad, the bureaucratic
  From Munich’s deep tech boom to notary nightmares, ESOP fixes, GmbH limitations, and how founders are learning to hack the system.

• 55:00 The rise of Solo GPs
  The team discusses the American roots, European trajectory, operator funds, fund-of-funds appetite, and why founders increasingly prefer solo GPs.

• 01:00:00 AI Corner
  OpenAI’s trillion-dollar capex future, Google’s TPU resurgence, Anthropic momentum, Michael Burry shorting AI (and why it’s misguided), and the geopolitics of compute.

Welcome back to another episode of the EUVC Podcast, your trusted inside track on the people, deals, and dynamics shaping European venture.

This week, Andreas Munk Holm is joined by Max Kufner, Co-Founder and CEO of again, and Jan Miczaika, Partner at HV Capital.

again is one of those rare European deep-tech stories that blends academic brilliance, industrial execution, and venture pace. Born out of DTU, with roots at Stanford and MIT, again uses gas-eating microbes to turn CO₂ emissions into valuable chemicals and materials. In plain English: they take carbon that’s already in the air (not the ground) and repurpose it into things we use every day, from plastics to fertilizers.

Backed by HV Capital, GV, and a handful of top European and US investors, again is on a mission to decouple industrial growth from fossil carbon. But the conversation goes far beyond climate tech.

Max and Jan unpack what it takes to build deep tech at venture speed, the reality of talent scarcity in Europe, the cultural differences between US and EU deep-tech ecosystems, and how to navigate board dynamics, milestone-based investing, and the journey to a Series B in a capital-intensive world.

Whether you’re a founder, investor, or LP curious about deep tech’s reindustrialisation wave — this one’s for you.

Here what’s covered:

• 01:24 | again in one line — gas-eating microbes → chemicals (no oil out of the ground)

• 02:53 | Why HV Capital backed again — climate upside and a chance to redefine European chemicals

• 04:31 | Investor → founder pendulum — why Max went from Atlantic Labs partner back to operator

• 06:20 | The serial founder advantage (and its hidden trap)

• 10:17 | Building deep tech in Europe — talent constraints, optimism gaps, and moving early to the US

• 15:30 | Multipolarity — global operations, risk appetite, and where to spend your time

• 23:38 | Boardcraft — how to use your board (and avoid being over-managed)

• 28:39 | On-air sparring — asset-heavy vs. platform-heavy business models

• 33:17 | Prepping for Series B — risk, IRR, and the difference between validation and scale

• 36:59 | Milestone-based investing in deep tech — bridges, binaries, and how to keep momentum

• 43:12 | LPs and VCs — why deep tech is high-risk and high-alpha

• 46:08 | Founder lessons — customer co-creation, speed, and building fast with scientists

• 48:06 | Final reflections — Europe’s industrial renewal through deep tech

Corporate venture capital isn’t just having “a bit of VC on the side.”
Done well, it’s a strategic lens on the future. Done badly, it’s a short-lived pet project with a half-life of 3.7 years and a trail of confused founders and annoyed co-investors.

In this episode, we sit down with Martin Scherrer, Partner & Head of Managed Funds at Redstone, alongside our own CVC lead Jeppe Høier, to unpack what really happens when corporates leave venture — and how to do it without destroying value or reputation.

Redstone runs a dual model: classic VC funds + “VC-as-a-Service” for corporates and family offices. Martin himself has lived three lives:

• Inside Swiss Re’s CVC (later shut down)

• As a founder of an insurtech in Switzerland

• Now as VC & fund manager at Redstone across multiple corporate mandates.
  

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 01:37 Why Martin? Why now? — Jeppe on Redstone’s VC-as-a-service role, his history with them, and why Martin is the go-to voice on CVC secondaries.

• 02:50 Redstone in both worlds — Martin explains Redstone as a VC + CVC-as-a-service platform with deep corporate, VC, and founder roots.

• 06:12 Portfolio thinking 101 — Why corporates underestimate startup investing, ignore the J-curve, and must commit to true portfolio construction + financial KPIs.

• 09:37 Runoff vs. selling the bag — Score case: options to sell the whole portfolio at a 50–80% NAV discount vs. patient value-maximising runoff.

• 13:54 Spin-outs & resilience — How CVCs can evolve into mixed-LP or fully independent VC funds (Swisscom Ventures, Berliner Volksbank → Redstone Fintech III).

• 18:27 Follow-ons in “shutdown mode” — Why corporates sometimes should still fund follow-ons in runoff to unlock new investors and protect upside.

• 20:25 Designing the partnership — Governance, IC design, reporting (e.g. IFRS 9), and performance-based structures that align Redstone and corporates.

• 31:41 Managing vs. buying portfolios — How Redstone runs CVC runoff as an external manager with fees + carry, versus secondary buyers who acquire the assets outright.

• 44:02 How to avoid a wind-down — The “gold standard”: bring in third-party LPs, avoid annual-budget setups, ringfence capital in a dedicated entity, and keep exec sponsors close.