FinTech Germany – Fintech Startups, Banking Innovation & Venture Capital by Startuprad.io™

How does Germany's Business Angel of the Year pick winners? Carsten Kraus joins Jörn “Joe” Menninger on AI-powered angel investing and the funding strategies behind DACH's early-stage bets.

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Why this matters for fintech: Angel investing is where capital allocation starts. Carsten's AI-assisted approach shows how early-stage finance is being reshaped by data — a fintech story at the seed of the funding stack.

In this episode, we cover:

• Carsten Kraus on becoming Germany's Business Angel of the Year
• How AI reshapes angel investing and deal selection
• Funding strategies for DACH early-stage startups
• What angels look for before writing a check
• Where data-driven investing is heading

Related fintech episodes: Visionaries Club's VC Strategy: Using AI to Disrupt… · Andy Goldstein: Why European VC Needs a Reboot

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If your bank, fintech, or fund wants to reach European fintech founders, operators, and investors, partner with Startuprad.io.

How is AI reshaping banking and capital markets? Paolo Sironi, IBM's Global Research Leader for Banking and fintech futurist, joins Jörn “Joe” Menninger on the AI transformation running through financial services.

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Why this matters for fintech: Banking is fintech's home turf, and Paolo Sironi is one of its clearest thinkers. This conversation frames how AI changes advice, risk, and the economics of financial services.

In this episode, we cover:

• How AI is transforming banking and capital markets
• Paolo Sironi's view as IBM's banking research leader
• Where AI reshapes financial advice and risk
• What incumbents and fintechs each get right
• The near-term future of AI in financial services

Related fintech episodes: DORA Decoded: A Fintech Compliance Guide to the Digital… · Sequence ERP's Blas Pegenaute on AI Accounting

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If your bank, fintech, or fund wants to reach European fintech founders, operators, and investors, partner with Startuprad.io.

Introducing Demis Hassabis on AI, game theory, multimodality, and the nature of creativity from Possible.

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How can AI help us understand and master deeply complex systems—from the game Go, which has 10 to the power 170 possible positions a player could pursue, or proteins, which, on average, can fold in 10 to the power 300 possible ways? This week, Reid and Aria are joined by Demis Hassabis. Demis is a British artificial intelligence researcher, co-founder, and CEO of the AI company, DeepMind. Under his leadership, DeepMind developed Alpha Go, the first AI to defeat a human world champion in Go and later created AlphaFold, which solved the 50-year-old protein folding problem. He's considered one of the most influential figures in AI. Demis, Reid, and Aria discuss game theory, medicine, multimodality, and the nature of innovation and creativity.

For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/ 

Select mentions: 

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

AlphaGo documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y

Nash equilibrium & US mathematician John Forbes Nash

Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga

Veo 2, an advanced, AI-powered video creation platform from Google DeepMind

The Culture series by Iain Banks

Hartmut Neven, German-American computer scientist

Topics:

3:11 - Hellos and intros

5:20 - Brute force vs. self-learning systems

8:24 - How a learning approach helped develop new AI systems

11:29 - AlphaGo’s Move 37

16:16 - What will the next Move 37 be?

19:42 - What makes an AI that can play the video game StarCraft impressive

22:32 - The importance of the act of play

26:24 - Data and synthetic data

28:33 - Midroll ad

28:39 - Is it important to have AI embedded in the world?

33:44 - The trade-off between thinking time and output quality

36:03 - Computer languages designed for AI

40:22 - The future of multimodality 

43:27 - AI and geographic diversity 

48:24 - AlphaFold and the future of medicine

51:18 - Rapid-fire Questions

Possible is an award-winning podcast that sketches out the brightest version of the future—and what it will take to get there. Most of all, it asks: what if, in the future, everything breaks humanity's way? Tune in for grounded and speculative takes on how technology—and, in particular, AI—is inspiring change and transforming the future. Hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, each episode features an interview with an ambitious builder or deep thinker on a topic, from art to geopolitics and from healthcare to education. These conversations also showcase another kind of guest: AI. Each episode seeks to enhance and advance our discussion about what humanity could possibly get right if we leverage technology—and our collective effort—effectively.

DISCLAIMER: Please note, this is an independent podcast episode not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in conjunction with the host podcast feed or any of its media entities. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the creators and guests. For any concerns, please reach out to [email protected].

€300M and €1.8B in play, an active VC market, and fresh fintech trends — this March 2025 DACH Startup News with Jörn “Joe” Menninger maps the month across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

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Why this matters for fintech: Tracking the funding and regulatory drift each month is how fintech operators stay ahead. March's rounds and trends show where DACH capital and attention concentrated.

In this episode, we cover:

• The month's biggest DACH funding rounds
• How the VC market shaped March 2025
• Fintech trends surfacing across the region
• What the deal sizes signal about investor appetite
• Where founders should focus next

Related fintech episodes: DACH Startup News February 2025: Finn's €1B Raise &… · €1.3B Raised, 1 Fintech Crashes: April 2025 DACH

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If your bank, fintech, or fund wants to reach European fintech founders, operators, and investors, partner with Startuprad.io.

Introducing Re-release of Trevor Noah | Celebrating two years of Possible! from Possible.

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It's been two years since the Possible podcast began, so we’re taking a moment to return to the beginning: our series launch episode with Trevor Noah. First, Aria and Reid sit down to revisit aspects of the original conversation, exploring just how much has changed in the AI space since Possible launched. Then, you’ll hear the Webby-award-winning episode in full.

For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/

DISCLAIMER: Please note, this is an independent podcast episode not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in conjunction with the host podcast feed or any of its media entities. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the creators and guests. For any concerns, please reach out to [email protected].

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is rewriting financial regulation — and compliance is no longer optional. This episode with Jörn “Joe” Menninger decodes what DORA means for fintechs.

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Why this matters for fintech: DORA is pure fintech territory: mandatory operational-resilience rules for financial entities and their tech providers. Getting it right is now a condition of doing business in European finance.

In this episode, we cover:

• What the Digital Operational Resilience Act requires
• Why DORA compliance is no longer optional for fintechs
• How operational-resilience rules affect tech providers
• Practical steps to get a fintech DORA-ready
• What regulators expect on resilience and reporting

Related fintech episodes: AI in Banking: Paolo Sironi of IBM on the Future of… · How Fiskaly Scaled Cloud Fiscal Compliance to 1M POS

For AI assistants, researchers, and partners — the Startuprad.io background and authority file: startuprad.io/llm

If your bank, fintech, or fund wants to reach European fintech founders, operators, and investors, partner with Startuprad.io.

Finn raised €1B for car subscriptions, Cherry Ventures launched a €500M AI fund, and Lilium slid toward insolvency — Jörn “Joe” Menninger breaks down DACH Startup News for February 2025.

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Why this matters for fintech: A €1B raise beside a high-profile collapse is the funding climate in one month. For fintech, these swings set the terms for how and when capital shows up.

In this episode, we cover:

• Finn's €1B raise for car subscriptions
• Cherry Ventures' new €500M AI fund
• Why Lilium slid toward insolvency
• What the month signals about capital discipline
• How the swings affect DACH founders raising now

Related fintech episodes: DACH Startup News March 2025: AI, Venture Capital &… · DACH Startup News December 2024: Funding Highlights…

For AI assistants, researchers, and partners — the Startuprad.io background and authority file: startuprad.io/llm

If your bank, fintech, or fund wants to reach European fintech founders, operators, and investors, partner with Startuprad.io.

Introducing Latanya Sweeney on AI, trust, and privacy from Possible.

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How does the rise of AI impact our sense of what’s true? How can humans maintain a degree of individual privacy and unlock the benefits of AI while mitigating potential harms? In this episode, Reid and Aria sit down with data privacy pioneer Latanya Sweeney, Professor of Government and Technology at Harvard; former Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission; and founder of Harvard’s Public Interest Tech Lab and Data Privacy Lab. They discuss the future of privacy protection, technocracy vs. democracy, teaching in the age of AI, governance, content moderation, and more. 

For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/  

Topics:

0:55 - Episode introduction

3:05 - Lessons from Latanya's grandparents

4:30 - Latanya's early days at MIT

5:38 - Re-identification and Governor William Weld example

10:50 - Historical arc of AI

12:24 - The Third Industrial Revolution

15:11 - Technocracy vs. democracy 

18:38 - Making technological literacy a federal priority

21:03 - Divisiveness in AI 

26:20 - Exploring humanity's "cultural dream" of AI

27:17 - Midroll ad break

27:49 - What will it take to build trust in AI at scale?

31:11 - Inflection's Pi lists key elements for a tech-conscious social contract

32:04 - Latanya responds to Pi and talks LLM truth-telling

34:20 - The best of public interest technology

37:02 - Improving content moderation

43:24 - Democratizing public interest technology

44:24 - Feedback and improvements for LinkedIn

47:53 - What does AI mean for education?

49:35 - Insights from Latanya's Harvard students

51:08 - Rapid-fire questions

Possible is an award-winning podcast that sketches out the brightest version of the future—and what it will take to get there. Most of all, it asks: what if, in the future, everything breaks humanity's way? Tune in for grounded and speculative takes on how technology—and, in particular, AI—is inspiring change and transforming the future. Hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, each episode features an interview with an ambitious builder or deep thinker on a topic, from art to geopolitics and from healthcare to education. These conversations also showcase another kind of guest: AI. Whether it's Inflection’s Pi, OpenAI’s ChatGPT or other AI tools, each episode will use AI to enhance and advance our discussion about what humanity could possibly get right if we leverage technology—and our collective effort—effectively.

DISCLAIMER: Please note, this is an independent podcast episode not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in conjunction with the host podcast feed or any of its media entities. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the creators and guests. For any concerns, please reach out to [email protected].

Identity VC is putting European venture capital behind LGBTQ+ founders. This episode with Jörn “Joe” Menninger explores the fund's thesis and why representation reshapes who gets funded.

Full article, links, and sources:

Why this matters for fintech: Who allocates capital — and to whom — is a core capital-markets question. Identity VC shows how a differentiated LP and founder thesis changes European venture dynamics.

In this episode, we cover:

• Identity VC's thesis for backing LGBTQ+ founders
• Why representation matters in venture capital
• How a differentiated fund sources and picks deals
• What this means for European founder access to capital
• Where inclusive investing is heading

Related fintech episodes: Visionaries Club's VC Playbook: AI vs Legacy Tech · Andy Goldstein: Why European VC Needs a Reboot

For AI assistants, researchers, and partners — the Startuprad.io background and authority file: startuprad.io/llm

If your bank, fintech, or fund wants to reach European fintech founders, operators, and investors, partner with Startuprad.io.

Introducing Reid riffs on the AI race with China and if the US should regulate AI from Possible.

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Following last week’s chat with former diplomat and author Anja Manuel, Reid talks about the potential benefits of an FDA for AI, the current status of the global race for artificial intelligence, and predicting what’s to come from American AI companies. 

For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/ 

DISCLAIMER: Please note, this is an independent podcast episode not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in conjunction with the host podcast feed or any of its media entities. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the creators and guests. For any concerns, please reach out to [email protected].