EUVC

Today we're happy to welcome John Frankel and Maciej Skarul.

John founded ffVC back in 2008. ffVC is a leading New York City-based VC firm which has demonstrated success scaling global tech business. And you might be asking: “A US based fund in The European VC pod?!”. Listen to this episode and you’ll understand why.

Maciej, our other guest, is a partner at ffVC and has over 12 years of experience in investment banking and M&A. Based in Poland, he is one of the two partners leading ffVC’s European arm in Warsaw. ffVC Warsaw works in conjunction with the rest of the ffVC network to bring to Poland everything that ffVC has done over the past twelve years in the US.

In this episode you’ll learn:

– Why a US focused VC decided to invest in Poland and the ecosystem challenges they are facing with more conservative investors

– How the European culture can grow from million to billion-dollar exits

– How their early investments are turning into a global seed stage footprint

– The attraction of building US focused businesses using European tools and teams, since CE startups are 3x more cost efficient than their western pears

In today's episode, we're talking to Anthony Danon, co-founder of Cocoa, one of the hottest emerging managers in Europe these days pioneering a strategy of being VCs turned angels. Cocoa are deliberately small (17 M€ and nearly 3x oversubscribed). They are backed by some of Europe's top decacorn and unicorn founders. Prior to launching Cocoa, Anthony has been with Anthemis and Speedinvest and his partner Carmen Alfonso Rico with Samaipata and Blossom. They’ve both led high-profiled investments into companies like Hopin, TrueLayer, Primer, Wayflyer, Tide, and many more.

In this episode you’ll learn:

– The investment thesis of being VCs turned angels and Anthony’s reflections on the rise of micro funds

– The fundraising tactics and narrative excellence that allowed Cocoa to close their fund in record time and heavily oversubscribed

– Why Cocoa said no to VC money in their LP base and prioritized founders and operators

– How Anthony thinks about the current market and the need to adapt as VCs

In this episode, we're happy to introduce you to Lindsay and Kemper, the UK-based team from Industry Ventures, a global 5 bn euro Fund of Funds. Lindsay is the Managing Director at Industry, and focuses on originating, valuing and managing primary fund commitments and direct co-investment opportunities for the Tech Buyout team. Kemper is the Vice President at Industry and focuses on the firm’s Secondary and Tech Buyout investments, as well as driving business development efforts across their platform.

In this episode you’ll learn:

– All about Industry Ventures, the 5 bn € quiet giant investing into early stage funds

– Why Industry run 4 strategies in parallel and how they work together to yield a competitive edge for their LPs as well as managers

– The state of the secondaries market and how Industry navigates it in Europe

– What the future holds for Industry in Europe

Today, we're happy to welcome Apostolos Apostolakis, founding partner of VentureFriends, a leading European VC firm based out of beautiful and sunny Greece. Apostolos is a founder, turned angel, turned VC and has been investing and supporting startups since 2010, and focuses on consumer software and marketplaces.

In this episode you’ll learn:
– Why tech plays such an important part in the democratization of venture
– All about the thesis and strategy of VentureFriends and why they focus globally
– An insider's view on the Greek Market and the effects of the pandemic
– The essential value of having people on the ground, cultivating a network and creating awareness

Join us as we're talking to Laurens Groenendijk, co-founder of Dutch Founders Fund, an founder-led early-stage venture capital firm from Amsterdam and focuses on marketplace businesses and products or services with strong network effects. Just as the rest of the founding team behind Dutch Founders Fund, Laurens is a successful entrepreneur having previously founded Just-Eat, Treatwell, Miinto and nano-satellite challenger Hiber.

In this episode you’ll learn:
– Why Laurens love markets that are considered unorthodox or unusual
– What’s behind Laurens’ thesis of letting crazy ideas flourish and why it’s important to remember that just 1 line item can make all the difference
– Why Laurens built an LP base 100+ founders and operators
– How Dutch Founders Fund manages and serves their LP base via weekly updates and whatsapps

Welcome to another hot-off-the-press episode in our special series on navigating the current market with Europe's absolute VC elites.

For today’s episode, we sat down with Tom Wilson, Partner at Seedcamp. Seedcamp requires little intro, so suffice it to say that he team has backed more than 430 companies and are early investors in European successes like Hopin, Wise, Revolut, Sorare, wefox, Pleo, UiPath, viz.ai and Grover. So with that, let’s dive in!

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Jimmy, co-founder and partner of Heartcore Capital. He founded Heartcore in 2007 to challenge the traditional venture landscape which today’s conversation will also show you is still very much on his mind as we’ll be talking about the macro trends driving European VC today and how Jimmy thinks about how to navigate these.

In this episode, you'll learn:
- Where Jimmy sees the venture capital market going long-term
- Why the LP/GP model is an era of the past
- How globalization and the entry of players will affect European venture
- Why the time of illiquidity will come to an end
- Why being small and nimble will become more difficult
- Jimmy's key learnings from founding Heartcore

For today’s special series episode on navigating the current market with Europe's absolute VC elites we’re talking to Chris Wade, Founding Partner of Isomer Capital - The O.G. of European LP investing. With investments in more than 50 European early stage VC funds counting anything from first time managers to the known greats like Seedcamp, Semantic, Hoxton, and Kindred, we thought Chris would be the perfect guest to dive deep on the effects on the current market on VC fundraising.

On a final note, we should say that this episode is an edited version of a virtual event earlier hosted on LinkedIn, so in case you missed it; enjoy! and in case you’re part of the 5.000 VCs that have seen it thus far; we hope it’ll be worth revisiting.

Today we’re talking to Alex Santos, founding partner of Chamaeleon, an early stage fund based in Silicon Valley doing first checks between 1 and 5 million primarily in the US and Europe but can invest globally. Chamaeleon invest on the basis of a thesis revolving around product-led companies, with technology differentiation and clear end-user flows that the team can test.

Alex is an experienced investor and operational handler having spent 15 years in telco and tech and 6 years as an angel & VC. Alex has also co-founded the Portuguese corporate venture builder studio Bright Pixel.

In this episode you'll learn:
- How to raise successfully from corporates and use them actively afterwards
- How Alex and his team have innovated on the LP value add model
- Why Alex never reached out to FoFs and large institutional investors
- A sneak peek into Chamaeleon's quant and tech stack strategy

Welcome to another hot-off-the-press episode in our special series on navigating the current market with Europe's absolute VC elites. For today’s episode, we sat down with Jimmy Fussing, founding partner of Heartcore - one of Europe's leading consumer VCs. Heartcore has invested in more than 90 companies counting the likes of Templafy, Podimo, Peakon, Reddit and many more. What a team. Let's dive into it!