EUVC

The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby has been capturing headlines in the VC community lately. We sat down with him at The European VC to dive into his book and shed light on some of the stand-out quotes and stories from the book. If you love VC, you’ll love this book (and hopefully also our interview with Sebastian 🤣)

**Join us to learn the story behind the quotes:**

Vinod Khosla: Most people think improbable ideas are unimportant. The only thing that’s important is something that’s improbable.

Matt Clifford: Silicon Valley is gripped by the cult of the individual. But those individuals represent the triumph of the network.

Michael Moritz, Sequoia: The great challenge at venture partnerships is that the principals must refrain from killing each other.

Paul Graham, Y Combinator: Spend as little as you can, because every dollar of the investor’s money you get will be taken out of your ass.

Andy Grove, Intel: John [Doerr], venture capital, that’s not a real job. It’s like being a real estate
agent.

Today we're talking to Contrarian Ventures’ founding partner Rokas Peciulaitis and GP Tomas Kemtys. Contrarian focuses on Energy tech and smart mobility at the seed-stage and by doubling down on community their reputation and brand has far outgrown Fund 1’s modest 12.5 M€ AUM allowing them to punch far above their weight class and raise for a many times bigger Fund II. We have to say, this episode is an amazing inspiration for any emerging manager thinking about new ways to cement their presence in European VC.

In this episode you'll learn:

- How Rokas & Tomas has built a brand and community that far outweighs their fund size.
- How Contrarian balances investing in the notoriously difficult interface of hardware and software & what they think about solving for frontier VC verticals
- How Contrarian plans and builds the fund narrative to go from a tiny fund I to a many times bigger fund II and how they prepare for the changes it will bring to the firm.

Welcome to the inaugural launch episode of The EUVC Investment Club where we’re bringing everyone in our beautiful ecosystem together around backing emerging managers. We’re honored and hyped to bring back to the show Enis Hulli, General Partner of 500 Istanbul, one of the best performing funds in the 500 Global fund family. Join us as we dive deep on Enis’ fund and explore why we’re so hyped about Enis and his thinking.
We’ve long been wanting to democratize access to invest into European VC and this episode marks the true beginnings of this.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

- The investment thesis and strategy that has led to Fund I’s massive success yielding a 4.7x Gross TVPI & 53% IRR
- What has allowed Enis and his team to execute 40 investments in founders from 11 countries with a cumulative 500M$ annualized revenue (97% from foreign markets) and 3000 people employed.
- What Enis has learned and adapted from Fund I to Fund II & why Enis doubles down on talent arbitrage and tech transfer.
- How Enis thinks about firm building, why he is so wholly dedicated to deal sourcing and what his strategy is to access the best deals in Turkey and Eastern Europe

Daniela is a PhD-trained Biomedical Engineer with more than 10 years of experience in venture capital and building early-stage biotechnology companies, such as Staten Biotech - resulting in a $485 million transaction at the pre-clinical stage. Science has been at the core of Daniela's career and she's now making a true difference at BGV by coupling that with her entrepreneurial experience and eye for judging people as well as investments.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- Daniela’s story transitioning from founder to VC
- The importance of having a strong entrepreneurial & scientific background as a #biotech investor
- The growth story of @BGV from 17M€ AUM in Fund I to 140 M€ AUM in Fund IV
- The amazing outcomes from the companies BGV has invested in

We're joined by the famed Al Ramadan, author of the seminal book “Play bigger: how pirates dreamers and innovators create and dominate markets” which first introduced Category Design to the world. The book has since sold more than one hundred thousand copies and been heralded by people like Marc Benioff of SalesForce and Jim Goetz of Sequoia. We’re diving deep on category design, how it has evolved since inception in 2016 and how it’s being applied by forward thinking VCs throughout Silicon Valley and the world.

In this episode you’ll learn:

– What is Category Design and why it’s so central to creating the major outcomes we’re all chasing in VC

- What Al Ramadan would wish he had done differently when first launching the book and category of “category design”

- How some of the best VCs employ category design in their work with startups

- What’s next for the category of “category design” and what we should be keeping our eyes peeled for.

Today we’re talking to Luis Shemtov and Elad Verbin are two of the three founding partners behind Lunar Ventures - Europe's hands-down most technical early stage VC investing in frontier computer science deep tech. The result was an episode full of learnings packed in great one-liners for emerging managers - from a team that closed 4 Fund of Funds.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- What made Lunar so sexy that they managed to land four European Fund of Funds & bounds of established GPs
- How months of iteration around European deep tech founders’ problems led to the founding of Lunar Ventures
- Why emerging managers need to solve for the question of why LPs should invest in the first close & how Elad thinks about it.
- Why raising SPVs is a poor entry route into deep tech VC & what it means to be trailblazing in the VC Twilight Zone.

Denny Chared is the founder and CEO of The DC Finance Family Office and High Net Worth Community which has more than 2 thousand high net worth individuals, family offices, and investors who collaborate with each other worldwide. In this episode, we’re diving deep on how he has built this network and learnings for VCs fundraising and engaging with family offices and High Net Worth Individuals.

In this episode you'll learn:

- Denny’s journey into the wonderful world of Family Offices
- Understanding Family Offices from a VC perspective and do’s & don’ts in working with them
- The importance of respecting privacy in the Family Office world
- Why VCs need to understand that talks with Family Offices can’t be all about money

Viktor is an entrepreneur turned venture-builder turned venture investor and has hands-on experience from - as he says himself: "making all the classic mistakes" with his own startup to founding a highly successful venture builder (called VNTRS) across 4 countries and now also launching VEQ to fund pre-seed/seed founders in the Nordics and Baltics.

In this episode you'll learn:
- What Magic the Gathering, Kebnekaise, Fasting & VC has in common
- The path from founder to venture builder to Venture Capitalist
- The do’s and don’ts for venture builders
- How VCs should collaborate with Venture builders
- The investment strategy of VEQ & how they’re using their background as venture builders to create a competitive advantage

We're diving deep with Ron Diamond on the future of family offices, their interaction with and impact on VC. Ron is the Founder of Diamond Wealth representing more than 100 Family Offices ranging from $250 million to $30 billion AUM. Center stage for our conversation today, Ron is on the Advisory Board of the Digital Cities and Disruptive Technology Program at Stanford and is helping to launch the Family Office Initiative at Stanford to help bring together the heads of billions of family office assets to charter the future of family office investing.

In this episode you'll learn:
- What’s behind The Stanford Family Office Initiative and how they managed to bring thousands of family offices together
- Why Ron sees an explosion of Multi Family Offices around the corner
- Why Ron believes the venture industry is poised for disruption by family offices
- How VCs should think about family offices, the importance of trust and ways to collaborate in the future

This is the second part of “Grilling & Myth-busting with the EIF” where we’re talking to David Dana, head of ICT investments at the EIF. In this episode we cover more wide-ranging topics and questions that our community and former guests requested.

In this episode you’ll learn:
– Why the EIF is raising their own private funds and how they fit in the market
– Why the EIF serves to stimulate skew the market, how they do so & avoid competition with private actors
– How the EIF picks emerging managers (team size, track record…) when evaluating new GPs. Notice! Herein lies the answer to why the EIF doesn’t invest in solo-GPs!
– EIF’s views on GP compensation & carry distribution when evaluating VC funds
– How the EIF thinks about their response times & recommendations to plan for a raise involving the EIF as an LP
– How investors are chosen for the EIF’s angel program
– What we can expect in the future from the EIF and David Dana