EUVC

Breaking news: First time Isomer Capital talks openly about their emerging manager cornerstone program. For our in-person interview with Joe Schorge, founding and managing partner of Isomer Capital, at TEDxAthens, Joe Schorge revealed yet undisclosed details about their cornerstone program for emerging managers.

In this episode you'll learn:
- How Joe thinks about being an optimist in the current market
- What advice he gives to managers
- A first-ever lift of the curtain for a sneak peak into Isomer’s extremely selective cornerstone program for emerging managers

We also want to give a huge shout out to Dimitris Kalavros-Gousiou, founding of Velocity Partners for having invited us to host this talk with Joe Schorge at TEDxAthens this weekend.

Today’s episode is a bit different as we’re joined by Catherine Dupere, Partner at Isomer Capital and John Dutton, head of the World Economic Forum’s Uplink to talk about the Forum’s “Innovative Funds for Our Future”-challenge which calls for innovative VC funds who invest in people and planet-focused entrepreneurs that can strengthen innovation ecosystems and strive for the achievement of the 2030 Global Goals. Selected funds will receive the magical recognition and visibility that only highly acclaimed organizations like the WEF can give you. So pay attention to see if this challenge is something for you and apply here 👉 [https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o0000136S2vAAE/innovative-funds-for-our-future](https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o0000136S2vAAE/innovative-funds-for-our-future)

In this episode you’ll learn:
– Why and how the WEF is involved in startup and VC finance
– Exactly what is WEF’s “Innovative Funds for Our Future”-challenge
– How the challenge can give GPs recognition, visibility, access to LPs and deal flow
– A deep dive on the application process and the thinking behind it
- Why Isomer Capital is supporting the project

Today, we're happy to welcome Will Klippgen, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Cocoon Capital, a Singapore-based venture capital firm focusing on early-stage enterprise tech companies across Southeast Asia, specifically focused on B2B enterprise and deep tech. The fund prefers to act as lead investor and normally takes a board seat. Will has also invested in over 35 companies since 2004 after co-founding Zoomit.com which was sold to Yahoo in 2004 through Kelkoo.com in one of Europe’s largest internet transactions to date.

What you’ll learn in this episode

- What made Will double down on Southeast Asia
- What trends and verticals to watch in SEA
- Key learnings from raising a fund in emerging markets
- How Will has adapted his investment thesis and ops to the SEA markets

Today, we're happy to welcome you to Danijel, founding partner at the World Fund. The fund was launched just this October 2021 focusing on funding climate-tech companies and has the ambition to be there largest climate-focused VC fund in Europe at 350M€. In their investment criteria, they have the amazingly ambitious rule of only backing startups that have the potential to save at least 100Mt CO2e per year. The fund focus on the key emitting sectors Energy, Food & Agriculture, Manufacturing, Buildings and Transport aiming to fill two significant investment gaps for climate tech: when it goes from lab to market and when it leaves the pilot stage to scale.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

- Why Danijel and his team believe the time is right for a 350 M€ climate fund in Europe

- The origin story of World Fund and key learnings from their fundraise

- Where the World Fund team sees the biggest climate opportunities in Europe

- What metrics really matter when it comes to climate and sustainability

Today we’re happy to welcome Pedro Ribeiro Santos, Partner at Armilar Venture Partners, a Portuguese VC firm with a history of more than 20 years, a high-performance track record and an international footprint with 300 million under management. Pedro leads Armilar’s sustainability investments and has a strong focus on enterprise software, SaaS and IoT technologies. Pedro has a BSc in Physics Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico and started his career as a Researcher in Physics for the University of Oxford (UK), and holds an MBA and an MSc in Economics from Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

In this episode you’ll learn:
- All about the MBO story of Armilar and how you can think of spinning out of a corporate/captive VC
- How to think about putting together a syndicate for a big secondary transaction and balancing the interests on both sides of the deal
- The journey of Armilar from founding in early 2000 when Portugal could hardly be placed on a map by international VCs to today where Portugal seems to be on the lips of almost everyone.

Today, we're happy to welcome you to Mathias Ockenfels and Julian Blessin, general partner and partner at Speedinvest’s Marketplaces & Consumer team. Speedinvest is one of Europe’s most active early stage investors with more than €600m of assets under management and Mathias’ and Julian’s investment team focuses on backing startups who are shaping the future across B2B and B2C at the intersection of marketplaces, eCommerce 2.0 and consumer subscriptions. Not only are Speedinvest one of Europe's top VC players, they're also experts in building community and network effects which is something we can't get enough of here at The European VC!

What you’ll learn in this episode

- What Mathias & Julian believe is the secret behind Speedinvest’s success in the consumer & marketplaces vertical.
- Where Mathias & Julian believe the next great European marketplace & consumer startups will spawn.
- How Speedinvest evaluates early stage deals and how they think about evaluating and committing to startups prior to traction.
- A deep dive on the cold start problem and how to overcome it.
- How the team thinks about Web 3.0, DAO and the crypto-hype.

Today, we're happy to introduce you to Mads Jensen, managing partner of SuperSeed, a UK-based fund seed fund backing B2B software startups that use software and machine learning to automate the way the world does business 🤖 Mads and his partner Dan Bowyer are doing amazing work and we love them for the fact that they’ve democratized access to their fund by listing it on the stock exchange 😍 So effing awesome!

In this episode, you’ll learn:

- All about SuperSeeds journey listing on the Aquis Stock Exchange
- How SuperSeed thinks about differentiating themselves in one of Europe’s most competitive places and spaces
- How Mads thinks about the adjusting to the market - higher ticket sizes? Lower equity stakes? Early stage investments? 🤷‍♂️
- How Mads thinks about funding hardware startups and overcoming the problems of securing financing for CAPEX heavy business models.
- Why Mads believes in the statement “sales solve all problems for early stage startups” and how it informs their value add strategy.

Today, we're happy to introduce you to Andris Berzins, Managing Partner at Change Ventures, the first and largest truly pan-Baltic pre-seed/seed fund. Change Ventures backs ambitious Baltic founders and are searching for founding teams that have the "grit" to succeed. Andris was also recently awarded the Human Development Award by the President of Latvia for an outstanding contribution to the future of the nation, what a guy 😍.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

- All about the Baltic ecosystem - what’s happening, what to look out for and how to approach the market
- Why Andris sees many commonalities between the Baltics and the Israeli ecosystem and how this informs Change Ventures’ thesis & strategy
- How Andris collaborates with Angels in the region and have brought them into his fund for a close and vested relationship
- Important reflections on building a remote-first VC firm, living on slack and key learnings for anyone looking to grow their firm internationally.

Today, we're happy to introduce you to David Ventzel, formerly a founder and the GP of not one, but TWO VC funds, Accelerace Invest and Overkill Ventures 👏 In this episode, we dive deep on Accelerace Invest, being the pre-seed fund backing Denmark’s leading startup accelerators’ amazing alumni. Accelerace has helped spawn more than 800 Danish and international startups and David’s learnings from being an integral part of the team cannot be overstated.

🚨 Do tune in for one of the best “breaking into venture”-stories on the pod so far 😍 and an amazing walk-through of David’s framework for diligencing founding teams pre-traction.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- How David has transitioned from being a founder to a VC and key learnings from going through this - including how to build a GP team that can complement each other.
- Key learnings from having accelerated >800 startups and all about the “Accelerace Invest Framework” distinguishing between entry criteria and the excellence criteria of Impact, Smartness, Leadership and Crazy.
- The importance of having original insight and the difference between investing in beta and alpha growth.
- All about the “momentum-framework” and how to track progress in startups pre-revenue.

Today we’re joined by Mike Suprovici, Head of Acceleration at VC Lab, the 16 week VC Accelerator spun out of Founders Institute with a vision to help launch no less than 1.000 enduring VC firms by 2025. We’re excited to bring you this interview as Mike and his partner in crime Adeo Ressi have made quite a splash worldwide with their program helping more than 100 firms be launched across 5 cohorts and make important VC conceptual innovations like the Proof of Concept-fund, Fund-in-a-box and LP Love be disseminated in the ecosystem.

Go register your application for the 7th VC Lab cohort on vcl.to/VC