EUVC

Today, we're happy to welcome you to Manolis Manassakis, CEO of Qogita, a leading global wholesale supplier revolutionizing the market through technology. He was formerly the Director of Operations for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Uber. Earlier in his career, he worked at Google as an Industry Manager, helping European businesses boost their online sales and make the most out of the web.
Parallel to his work, Manolis co-founded Lawspot, providing openness and transparency to the law, to all citizens. Lawspot is now Greece's no1 open online hub for all things legal, trusted by 1M monthly users. Through Cloud Nine Ventures, Manolis is also an active angel investor, passionate about the European tech ecosystem, and loves helping startups and mentoring founders on operations, scaling and international expansion.

Today we have Omar Hassan with us. Omar is a General Partner at MENA Tech Fund (MTF), a $25m, Pre-seed/Seed stage venture fund in Dubai to back Middle Eastern & North African AgriTech, FinTech & B2B SAAS businesses in Egypt, Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia or UK tech with market fit into the MENA region.

MTF are investing out of Fund One with a total 25 AUM and an established portfolio of 9 companies including Soos Lenkie Wuilt Selectika. At MTF, Omar focuses on SAAS and AgriTech in MENA and have led the investments into Wuilt, SwftBox, Selectika, Lenkie.
As warm-up for eu.vc delegation going to Dubai for the Expand North Star Conference, we sat down with Omar for a dedicated episode on raising capital in the region.

Today we're happy to welcome Anna Brandt and Noor van Boven, two amazing angel investors, co-founders of Invested. They accelerate growth through consulting and investing, being focused on the Future of Work, specifically when Fintech meets HR Tech.

In this episode you’ll learn:
- How to think about joining forces as angels, what it takes and the superpowers it can give you

- Why Anna & Noor pick their investments based on the problem the startups target, the disruption they can bring about and the connection, belief and match they have with the founding team

- How Anna & Noor think about scaling their investment activity and what it takes from them as a team and individuals

- Reflections on having invested through the boom and the bust cycle

- How the team think about working with the European Venture ecosystem and to optimize their role in it

Today we are happy to welcome Kushal Shah, Managing Director of e&, a global technology and investment group. Previously, he was the Senior Partner at Roland Berger's Dubai office and a Managing Partner for the Middle East. Prior to joining Roland Berger, he spent 12 years with a leading consultancy in London and Dubai.

This episode is co-hosted by our good friend Omar Hassan from MENA Tech Fund.

Today, we're happy to welcome you to Michael Wax, Co-Founder and CEO of Forto, Europe's digital freight forwarding pioneer.

Forto drives the vision to deliver a highly transparent, frictionless, and sustainable digital supply chain. With more than 600m USD in funding, they are Europe's largest log-tech company.

Michael is a true entrepreneur with a strong passion for innovation in global trade and e-commerce. He was part of the founding team at KONUX, an early pioneer in industrial IoT.


This episode is sponsored by Vauban. Vauban makes it easy to launch your angel syndicate or VC Fund, check them out at www.vauban.io/euvc

Today we are happy to welcome Daniel, founding partner at Speedinvest. one of Europe’s most active early-stage investors with more than €1 billion AuM and 40+ investors based in Berlin, London, Munich, Paris, and Vienna. At Speedinvest, Daniel covers limited partner relations and fundraising both on the fund and portfolio levels.

Daniel started his professional career as a stockbroker and private banker with ErsteBank in Vienna and Credit Suisse in Zurich. In 2000, he teamed up with Oliver Holle and Werner Zahnt in their Fintech startup, offering mobile payments to the media, entertainment and information industries. In 2006, they sold their startup NASDAQ listed VeriSign in a €55 million exit.

This episode is co-hosted by our good friend Omar Hassan from Mena Tech Fund.

Today, we're happy to welcome you to Julia Morrongiello, an ex VC, turned operator, turned angel investor. She is the Head of Growth Europe for Zero Hash, a crypto-as-a-service provider who's clients include the likes of Stripe, Moonpay, Curve and Interactive Brokers. Julia spent most of her career working as a VC investor at Point Nine and GFC and now continues to invest in fintech and crypto as an angel and scout for Accel. Since starting her career as an angel investor a little over a year ago, she's invested in 10 companies and 1 fund.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- Julia’s journey from VC to Operator to Angel & the value it brings to her both professionally and personally

- How investing in women can be a better investment on both the hard and soft metrics

- Why angel investing is the most giving hobby in the world!

- Reflections on power law investing, upside maximization and why you can only get as much as you give

- The importance of paying attention to unconscious biases and how to create processes that protect you

Today, we're happy to welcome Sara Rywe, partner at byFounders, a Nordic and Baltic's early stage tech investor with a difference.

They stand toe to toe with founders and have a community driven approach to investing. Founders know exactly what they're getting into when they engage with byFounders from the metrics they're looking for to ticket size, investment terms, and the fund standard term sheet. It's all published on their website.

Portfolio founders also have access to the wisdom of the byFounders collective, a group of experienced founders, tech experts, and more who can help them through the company building journey. The firm has two funds under its belt and invests across tech sectors. Sara joined in 2019 as an associate with a focus on finding funding and having the back of founders across the new Nordics.

But for someone who's had a meteoric rise through VC, Sara describes herself as someone completely ordinary. In many ways, Sara's prior experience at McKinsey, her MBA and the fact she's a Kauffman Fellow gloss over the fact she did not originally pursue a conventional path. She'll talk more about her journey starting work in her teen years at McDonald's through to her entrepreneurial journey, starting up a dance school, and how this led her to catch the founder bug and lead to opportunities in tech.

Sara's deep interest is in impact aware startups. She's mentored and invested in startups in sectors that combine profit with purpose and has a particular focus not just on responsible companies, but responsible founders. In this episode, we'll hear more about Sara's journey into VC, her path to partner, and how she's turned her interest and impact into a core pillar of the investment strategy and decision making process at byFounders.

Today we’re excited to introduce you to Stefan Walter, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Cavalry Ventures, one of Europe’s leading early stage funds or as they say themselves:

"Rather than focusing on a particular vertical, we focus on a specific stage, which is the “as early as it makes sense for the company” stage. We invest early, often pre-product and pre-revenue."

And the Cavalry stable is full of champions, counting the likes of Afilio, Aleph Alpha, AMPECO, Anyone, BRYTER, Charm, Clarisights, Flip, Forto, Kinnu, Lhotse, Loctax, McMakler, Nory, Oblivious, Origin, Patronus, PlanRadar, Plantura, Planetly (acq. by OneTrust), REKKI, Rouvia, SERA Intelligence, ShowHeroes, Sofía, SPREAD, Upper, Usercentrics, WhenThen (acq. by Mangopay), and many more incredible companies. Check out their Crunchbase profile for a full overview.

Dive in for an episode covering:

• Stefan’s Journey into Venture
• The Birth of Cavalry: A New Kind of Fund
• Taking a stance on "VC is a people's business, and it's not scalable"
• The Deep Dive
  • The Origins of the Cavalry name & how to turn your LP base into a Cavalry
  • The Cavalry System
• Stefan’s shout-out to some special people in the ecosystem 💌
• Stefan’s Three Biggest Learnings
  • Team Beats Idea.
  • Conviction Over Hype.
  • If It Seems Too Good to Be True, It Probably Is
• The Quickfire Round 🔫
  • Think about the difference between urgent and important
  • Embark on your fundraise with eyes open and realistic expectations
  • VC can be a surprisingly tough balancing act
• Vertical consumer software is super exciting.

Today, we're happy to welcome Ellen Moller, Watershed’s Head of Europe. Watershed helps companies measure, report, and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Some of its clients include organizations like Walmart, Klarna, and Spotify.

Prior to joining Watershed, Ellen spent a decade scaling technology businesses, including more than six years leading EMEA Partnerships and Operations at Stripe out of London. Prior to joining Stripe in 2015, Ellen worked in business development at Marqeta and at Visa.


This episode is sponsored by Vauban. Vauban makes it easy to launch your angel syndicate or VC Fund, check them out at www.vauban.io/euvc