EUVC

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

At the EUVC Summit 2025, Kerry Baldwin (IQ Capital) and Chris Elphick led one of the most urgent conversations of the year:

Can Europe mobilize its pension capital to fund innovation—or will it stay stuck on the sidelines?

With £1 trillion expected to be funneled into innovation, growth, and venture by 2030, the opportunity is massive. But unlocking it will take more than speeches and slogans. It will take structures, translation, and a whole lot of education.

Chris opened by setting the context:

• In July 2023, 10 of the UK’s largest pension funds agreed to invest 5% of assets into unlisted equities—representing £5 billion of fresh capital.

• That capital is (unsurprisingly) biased toward private equity. But the real win?

Getting a meaningful slice of it into venture.

We now have the technical tools to do it:

• The introduction of Long-Term Asset Funds (LTAFs)—with 27 launched to date—means the legal infrastructure is in place.

• Regulatory shifts have opened the door. Now it’s time to walk through it.

“The pipes are built. Now we need to make the case.”

As Kerry pointed out, it’s not just about access—it’s about alignment.

“The pension world doesn’t speak venture. It speaks in valuations, risk ratings, board approvals, and actuarial models.”

To bridge the gap:

• Ditch the pitch decks. Instead, build relationships.

• Use case studies. Show, don’t just tell.

• Speak their language. Get founders in the room. Educate through stories and real-world examples.

• And yes, explain your fees—transparently.
  → “We charge fees because we hunt. We engage with professors. We run deep knowledge sessions. That’s where the value lives.”

Kerry closed with a critical reminder from someone who’s seen the cycles before—2001, 2009, and now:

“Just play nicely.”

→ That means fair terms.
→ Respecting early-stage angels.
→ Not forcing founder-unfriendly clauses when capital is tight.

Venture doesn’t work when trust is broken at the seed layer.

The prize is on the table. The pipes are laid. The policymakers are listening.

Now it’s up to us—as GPs, founders, LPs, and ecosystem builders—to:

• Make venture legible

• Build long-term trust

• And design financial vehicles that serve founders, fuel returns, and unlock national innovation agendas

“Let’s stop waiting for the future to finance itself. Let’s build the financial architecture to fund it now.”

The Landscape: Shifting Regulations, Real PotentialThe Real Bottleneck? Language & UnderstandingA Word of Warning: Don’t Harm the EcosystemA Trillion-Pound Opportunity—If We Get This Right

At this year’s EUVC Summit Awards, the “Exit of the Year” category drew intense debate—and for good reason.
Europe is finally entering its outcome era, and this year brought no shortage of competitive contenders.

But one exit stood out.

Winner: SV Health Investors, for the exit of EyeBio

As the host reminded us, this award isn’t just about a number on a term sheet:

“With exits, we’re celebrating outcomes. Outcomes that validate years of work, conviction, and follow-through.”

For SV Health, this exit marked a textbook example of deep science meets disciplined execution.
It wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan. It was a story of patient capital, strategic support, and a global-scale outcome born in Europe.

• A breakthrough healthtech company delivering real-world impact

• An outcome that unlocked returns and credibility

• A case study in what’s possible when bio meets business in the right way

In a space where timelines are long and conviction is everything, SV Health and EyeBio proved what Europe is capable of when the pieces align.

“Hopefully, we’ll be seeing more and more exits like this in the years ahead.”

We agree. Because one great exit isn’t just a win for the team—it’s a signal to the ecosystem.
It tells LPs, policymakers, founders, and future fund managers: we can build here, and we can win here.

Congratulations to SV Health Investors and the entire EyeBio team.

Let’s keep building toward the next one.

Celebrating More Than Just ReturnsWhy It MatteredThe Bar Has Been Raised

At EUVC Summit 2025, Joe Schorge of Isomer Capital didn’t come with slides—he came with a metaphor. And it stuck.

He asked the room to imagine orchards of fruit. Not just apples or oranges, but a whole harvest cultivated over 12 to 14 years. Venture-backed companies. GPs. Fund positions. GP stakes. A record crop, grown with care across the UK and Europe.

“We’ve never had this much high-quality fruit in European venture. The question now is—how do we get it to market?”

For years, Europe has been laser-focused on planting:
→ Backing great founders
→ Building great firms
→ Cultivating portfolios patiently

But as Joe reminded the audience:

“People expected the fruit to somehow sell itself. But we’ve learned: exits aren’t automatic. Distribution isn’t easy. And not everyone has the truck to move a watermelon.”

Secondaries aren’t just a workaround. They’re a solution. Partial or full sales, done right, serve founders, GPs, and LPs alike.

The market is waking up:

• There’s more to buy than ever before: mature companies, vintage funds, GP stakes

• There’s more to sell than ever before: GPs needing liquidity, LPs rebalancing

• There’s more need than ever before: LPs want DPI, not just IRR

“We’re all running 10-year funds. Buy-and-hold sounds noble, but LPs want cash back. And founders want momentum.”

Joe’s message to LPs?
→ Loosen your restrictions on secondary transactions
→ Back the capital that makes liquidity possible
→ Recognize that secondaries are a tool for progress, not shortcuts

Joe kept it simple:

1. Educate yourself – There’s a wealth of info online. Learn the mechanics and the nuance.

2. Look at your own portfolio – Where’s the fruit starting to ripen?

3. Talk to players in the space – From Isomer to a new wave of specialized secondary platforms, this market is growing fast.

“Let’s harvest, replant, and build the future together.”

Secondaries aren’t just about exits. They’re about creating circulation, maturity, and movement in a market that’s ready for it.

European venture has planted well. Now it’s time to harvest with discipline—and get ready to sow the next cycle with even more conviction.

Planting Was Easy. Harvesting Is Hard.The European Secondary Market: Why Now?Where to Begin?A New Era of Venture Hygiene

At the EUVC Summit 2025, Stephen Lowery of HSBC Innovation Banking laid out a vision that wasn’t just about capital—it was about building the infrastructure to unlock the next wave of innovation.

“The future is not going to finance itself.”

And the tools we need? Most of them don’t exist yet.

We’re entering a new era—one where emerging categories like robotics, deeptech, AI hardware, and compute-intensive models demand new forms of financial support.

But most of our current instruments were built for a different generation of tech.

Stephen reminded us of the pre-SaaS era, when software businesses lived and died by upfront license fees. It wasn’t until financing models evolved that subscription software (and eventually SaaS) could flourish.

“Just like we innovated in software 20 years ago, we need to do the same now—in hardware, robotics, and beyond.”

Stephen called for three key building blocks:

1. Blended Capital
   → Mix long-term venture equity with creative debt structures
   → Pair revenue-based financing with contract support
   → Add credit insurance into the mix

2. Category-Specific Models
   → Think robot-as-a-service, compute-as-a-service
   → Let hardware businesses monetize more like software ones

3. Collaboration
   → VCs, banks, LPs, and operators need to co-build
   → “Let’s do more than finance innovation—let’s finance the infrastructure that enables it.”

Stephen’s message wasn’t just for investors. It was for architects—those willing to help engineer the future of capital itself.

“We need to work together in partnership to build the tools that will finance the industries of tomorrow.”

Finance is no longer a back-office utility. It’s a frontline enabler of innovation.
And if we want European ventures to lead the next wave—we need to start building the financial rails today.

The Problem: Our Financial Stack Is OutdatedWhat We Need: Purpose-Based Financing for a New AgeA Call to Builders (Not Just Founders)

At this year’s EUVC Summit, Shmuel Chafets (Target Global) stood on stage and chose honesty.
Despite knowing the cameras were rolling, he didn’t dodge complexity—he met it head-on.

His message?
Venture doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
And leadership is most real when things go off script.

Referencing the now well-known video intro, Shmuel didn’t shy away from acknowledging the past:

“It wasn’t that long ago that everything changed. Our relationship to Russia, to the global landscape—it was a full reset.”

Unlike the U.S., Europe had no longstanding sanction regime in place. So when the invasion of Ukraine happened, the rules changed overnight. Target Global had to adapt in real time.

That meant:

• Bringing in strong advisors

• Making painful but necessary decisions, including founders and partners stepping back

• Restructuring the entire business to fit a new geopolitical reality

All while navigating intense public scrutiny.

“We acted with transparency. We made difficult choices. Not everyone appreciated it—but we understood the responsibility.”

Beyond the immediate crisis response, Shmuel shared hard-earned insights about fund design:

• Stay diversified: Across LPs, geographies, and investments

• Avoid political exposure: Don’t work with anyone with overt state affiliations

• Build clean from the start: It’s not about reacting—it’s about preparing for unknown unknowns

These aren’t just risk management tactics. They’re survival strategies in a world that changes faster than most LP memos do.

Shmuel also opened up about the human cost of recent conflicts—this time, in Israel.

“Some of our portfolio companies had 40% of their teams in active duty in 2024.”

Even today, many Israeli startups are operating with ~15% of their teams deployed in reserve duty. That changes how you lead. How you build. And how you show up as an investor.

“In tech, we’re incredibly impacted by this. And we have to start talking about it more openly.”

This wasn’t a celebration speech. It was a reflection, a reckoning, and a request:

“If you’ve gone through something like this, talk about it. We need to learn from each other. We’re living in a new era—and we need new tools to navigate it.”

Thank you, Schmo, for showing what leadership looks like when the stakes are real.

A New Reality: From Russia to RestructuringLessons in LP Strategy & ResilienceTech Under Fire: When Founders Go to the FrontlinesThe Call to the Community: Talk. Share. Learn.

At the EUVC Summit 2025, Nirmesh Patel from Amino Collective took the stage with a message that felt less like a pitch and more like a call to arms. His focus? The intersection of AI, health, and bio—and why Europe is uniquely positioned to lead this next era.

We’re still waiting for the first blockbuster drug developed using large AI models. But don’t mistake that for inaction. As Nirmesh put it:

“It’s fundamentally changed how everyone does research in this space.”

So much so that the Nobel Prize committee had no choice but to take notice.

That shift is already reshaping how scientists think, experiment, and build companies—and it’s opening the door for a new generation of outlier founders at the earliest stages.

Amino Collective invests pre-seed and seed into health and bio, and Nirmesh was unequivocal:

“Europe has all the ingredients required to make the next healthcare giants.”

Here’s what he sees:

• Technical founders now thinking commercially from Day 1.

• Citizens more willing to contribute data to studies, even if they don’t cancel that January gym membership.

• Stable grant funding across Europe—especially in contrast to recent volatility at U.S. institutions like the NIH.

• On-continent innovation in manufacturing mRNA at scale—key to pandemic preparedness.

These aren’t future predictions. They’re current capabilities, and they’re maturing fast.

Venture is about betting on outliers.
In AI x Bio, the next outliers are likely being formed right now.

“We’re at the very early stages of the collision between AI, health, and bio. The companies that will define the future are just starting.”

If you want to back the next transformative firm in medicine, don’t just look to the coasts.
Look to Europe. The science is here. The funding is here. The talent is ready.

“I truly believe the future of medicine is European.”

So do we.

AI Has Already Transformed Research. The Market Impact Comes Next.Why Europe? The Ingredients Are Already Here.From Outliers to Giants

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

This week: Are we doomed to lag the US in wealth creation or is Europe finally closing the gap? Why a record $100B of M&A matters for exits and recycling capital, and how founders should think about selling vs going for gold. Plus: Porsche & Deutsche Telekom anchoring a €500M defence fund as Germany drops its taboos, the scramble for cheap energy and battery breakthroughs, and what GPT-5, Perplexity, and Nvidia tariffs tell us about Europe’s place in the AI race.

Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:48 US vs Europe in Wealth Creation: Compounders, unicorns, and Europe’s capital efficiency.

• 09:07 Late-Stage Funding Gap: Why pensions and IPO markets hold Europe back.

• 17:36 M&A is Back: Google’s $32B Wiz deal, Windsurf drama, and Europe’s “second tier” opportunity.

• 25:52 Why Exits Matter: Recycling capital and the venture flywheel.

• 27:09 Defence Tech Goes Mainstream: Porsche, DT, EIF and Germany’s cultural shift.

• 36:18 The Ethics Question: Dual use, deterrence, and uncomfortable truths.

• 41:22 Energy Corner: Lithium recycling, sodium-ion batteries, and Europe’s 4x US energy costs.

• 46:44 AI Needs Power: Grid bottlenecks, red tape, and planning reform urgency.

• 51:10 GPT-5 Launch: Unified model, user backlash, and coding benchmarks.

• 54:37 Perplexity vs Chrome: PR stunt or regulatory opening?

• 58:32 Chip Wars: Nvidia tariffs, Huawei delays, and why Europe needs Chips Act 2.0.

• 1:05:59 Shoutout to Italy: Record €655M H1 startup funding.

At this year’s EUVC Summit, the “Newcomer of the Year” award didn’t go to someone just making noise—it went to a team making real moves.

A team built for the long game. A team proving that even when entering late, you can lead early.

Shapers VC took home the honor. And in the words of Phil himself:

“Being new is not easy. But this team makes it look easy.”

What makes a great newcomer?

At EUVC, we looked for three things:

1. Performance — Are they picking winners or building platforms?

2. Perspective — Are they differentiated, or derivative?

3. Community & Conviction — Are they lifting the ecosystem around them?

Shapers VC showed up on all three.

Backed by over 60 FinTech founders and operators, they’re building the kind of platform that’s more than capital. It’s signal. It’s support. It’s sweat equity from people who’ve been in the trenches.

“Community is core to us. Most of our LPs are strategic—it’s what makes our model work.”
– Greg Brown, Shapers VC

Greg put it simply:

“When everyone else left the party, that’s when we showed up.”

Shapers wasn’t chasing a trend. They were responding to a gap—stepping in when others were stepping back. In FinTech, timing is everything. And they timed it with intent.

“It probably feels weird to receive an award just as we’re getting started. But shining a light on emerging managers matters—and we’re honored to be in that spotlight.”

Phil’s closing message was one we believe in deeply:

“There are so many strong emerging managers striking out on their own right now. Some are in this room. Recognizing them isn’t just nice—it’s necessary.”

At EUVC, we don’t just celebrate the legends. We champion the next ones.
And if this year’s award is any sign—Shapers VC is one to watch.

Why It Matters: Community, Conviction & TimingThe Power of Showing Up Late (and Ready)