EUVC

Today we are happy to welcome Jean Bourcereau, President and Managing Partner at Ventech. He has joined the company in 2000, acting as a facilitator of the Partners Committee defining Ventech’s global development strategy and is a veteran driving investments notably in hardware and communications.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- The founding story of Ventech and how it grew out of a large bank

- Why Jean and Ventech said no to 150M€ from a single LP but rather built a diversified LP base

- The importance of having a solid shareholder agreement in place when there’s a cornerstone LP with big impact on the fund

- Jean’s thoughts around the concept of CLPs vs CVCs

- Why Ventech grew to China rather than the US & the centrality of being an active and relevant dealmaker in the region

- How and why Ventech has expanded via a distributed partnership model

Welcome to a very special episode of EUVC where we dive deep with Oliver Holle, founding and managing partner of Speedinvest, for a one-of-a-kind (and super nerdy) discussion on Speedinvest’s newly launched fund 4 of 500M€! Speedinvest is one of Europe’s hands-down best seed stage investors and a household name in the industry that takes a perfectly oiled and scaled investing machine to be able to achieve. So stay tuned for some unique insights from the man who’s built it and who continues to pioneer innovation in our ecosystem.

In this episode, you will learn:
- Why Oliver believes a new model is needed to deliver on the promise of Seed at Scale
- A rare look under the hood of Speedinvest talking everything from carry, remuneration, decision-making structures and much more
- Why and how Oliver has built Speedinvest around five core beliefs: 1) VC is a team sport, 2) Expertise is essential, 3) Being pan-European has a lot of perks, 4) VC is more than picking, 5) Large portfolios managed well offer better diversification and top performance.

Today we are happy to welcome David Peterson and Gil Dibner, from Angular Ventures.

Gil is the General Partner and Founder of Angular. He has been an active venture investor focused on enterprise technology companies born in Europe and Israel since 2005. As a venture investor and angel, he has backed over 30 companies. Prior to founding Angular, Gil was a Partner at DFJ Esprit and a Principal at Index Ventures in London, where he helped manage their pan-European seed portfolio.

David is a partner who, prior to joining Angular, was employee #16 at Airtable, where he led growth and partnerships, developing full-stack GTM strategies and scaling the company to over 500 employees, grew from zero to 200,000 customers, and reached a $5.77B valuation.

In this episode you’ll learn:

– The founding story of Angular Ventures and how Gil & David think about complementarity in their partnership

– How Gil & David think about navigating the current market climate & why they leaned into their biggest bet ever this July

– Why Gil advises that alignment is kept front and center for emerging managers raising their fund

Today we are happy to welcome Guillaume Fournier, partner at Credo Ventures, a venture capital company focused on early stage investments in Central Europe. His mission is to identify and back the most interesting early stage companies in the region, support them in their growth plans (including expansion to the U.S. and global markets) and help them to achieve their objectives.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- The founding story of Credo, what’s behind the name and what took Guillaume from London to Prague - and what’s made him so happy about that move

- Why Guillaume would rather spare on a deal that he ends up competing with than forego the honest conversations with fellow VCs

- How Guillaume thinks about building strategic VC relationships and the role of strategic LP investments

- All about how Guillaume thinks about succession planning in VC

Today we are happy to welcome Alan Poensgen, Partner at Antler, a global early-stage VC active in the major startup ecosystems across six continents. Alan has an extensive experience in building and scaling technology businesses. He was previously MD and Co-Founder at Westwing, a home & living e-commerce company, and one of Europe’s few e-commerce IPOs of the past years. Before Westwing, he built the software development hub at Rocket Internet, and was CEO of a SEA e-commerce company, along with working for a VC and starting his own company in Spain.

What you will learn in this episode:
- The story behind Antler Berlin & how they institutionalize the friends and family round
- How Alan found his way into venture and how he thinks about building founding teams
- Why Antler isn't a hypothesis-driven investor and what this mean for their strategy & operations
- How Alan navigates the thin line between helping and meddling
- A deep dive on the multiplier effect and flywheel of serial entrepreneurs

Today we are happy welcome Charlie Graham-Brown, CIO & Co-Founder of Seedstars, a platform that educates thousands of tech founders each year and facilitates the scale-up of high growth companies. Charlie is an investment professional and entrepreneur focused on emerging and developing markets, responsible for global seed stage VC investments.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- Exactly what Seedstars is and how it’s grown to become one of the dominant global players in creating and funding entrepreneurs in emerging markets
- How Charlie has put together an investment strategy to double down on the emerging markets and how that differs from developed marked investing
- How Charlie thinks about geo-political and currency risks as a VC
- How Charlie has thought about putting together his LP base to serve his goals

Today we are happy to welcome a real legend to the show; Reshma Sohoni, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Seedcamp. With Seedcamp, Reshma has not only pioneered seed stage investing in Europe, but also built what’s become one of Europe’s consistently highest performing funds. Consequently, we thought we had no choice but to dive deep with Reshma on firm building to tease out some learnings from one of the greats.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- Origin story, where the name SeedCamp came from

- The importance of staying true to your north star and building an ever stronger flywheel around your firm

- How to think about brand building, recruiting & onboarding new talent and keeping the brand lived by all team members

- How Reshma thinks about their LP base, why they’ve doubled down on small ticket LPs and requiring value-add and not just money

- How Reshma thinks about follow-on investments and raising opportunity funds vs single-opportunity vehicles


With a special guest on the Quick Fire Round: Jeroen van Doornik from Pacenotes

Today we are happy to welcome Romain Diaz, Founder and CEO of Satgana, a Climate Tech Venture Capital firm, investing in early-stage pre-seed with follow-on reserves for the seed round up to €500k. Romain is a passionate entrepreneur, a pragmatic idealist, and genuinely a nice guy!

In this episode you’ll learn:

- How Romain’s journey into VC took him from Rocket Internet in Germany, to a venture studio in South Africa and finally now to finally land in Lisbon
- How Romain thinks about the venture studio model for an emerging VC and how his own path has made him smarter
- How Romain thinks about their value add to founders and ability to pick and win the best in a time with increasing competition in Climate Tech
- How Romain has thought about building Satgana from scratch to now announcing it to the world

Today we are happy to welcome Frederik Groenewegen, Co-Founder and General Partner of 415 CAPITAL. He has been an investor in more than a dozen of innovative medical technology companies and currently serves as a Board Director at Cardiac Success and R3 Vascular.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- How Frederik and his family’s experience and position in MedTech led them to building 415 Capital
- How 415 Capital is leveraging a proprietary commercialization and distribution platform to win the best deals
- What Frederik has learnt from Fund I and how the team is adapting for Fund II
- How Frederik thinks about COVID as well as the current market’s impact on the MedTech space

Today we are happy to welcome Bogdan Iordache, General Partner at Underline VC. Bogdan is also the founder of HowToWeb, the go-to conference for startups and investors in CEE. This year’s event in Bucharest Romania was amazing, we were able to do a shit load of live interviews and host some of the craziest EUVC dinners. Will we be seeing you in the next ones?

In this episode you’ll learn:

– How sticking to the vision of a fund for 5 years can lead you to become one of the best emerging funds in Europe

– How asking friends “Who would invest in my fund?” can pop the “well I would!” answer if your timing is right

– How fundraising is an exercise of building trust and identifying & expanding circles

– How Bogdan’s fund is tailored specifically to access the best deals in Underline’s target geo and verticals

– Why the most important element of selection is the team and what that means in reality