Scaling Europe

DataSnipper has been the #1 fastest-growing company in the Netherlands for the past two years and in 2024, the company achieved unicorn status following a $100m Series B led by Index Ventures, valuing the business at $1bn.

The company has active users in 175 countries, 250 employees worldwide, and offices in Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, and Kuala Lumpur.

European venture firm Backed VC has closed its third fund, Backed 3, at its $100 million cap, alongside making its 100th investment.The firm has a remarkable track record (5 unicorns) and it's first two funds are top performing funds in their vintage. I spoke to Cofounder and Partner Andre to get all the details of the fund.

Milos is the CEO and Co-founder of deepset - the Berlin AI company behind Haystack, a leading open-source framework for building secure, modular, and production-ready AI agents.

Deepset has raised over $30m and empowers organisations like the European Commission and Airbus with trustworthy, adaptable AI solutions.​

We discussed why Sovereign AI means more than just owning models - it’s about control, open standards, and infrastructure flexibility.

Discover how deepset’s journey, Berlin roots, and open-source Haystack help users move from consuming to orchestrating AI on their own terms, making truly sovereign AI a reality for Europe and beyond.

Boaz is a serial fintech operator turned founder. He's spent years building and shipping at some of the UK's leading startups.Then his mother lost 15% of her life savings to a scam. This led him to create Falkin - an AI powered set of tools to stop people getting scammed. The company just raised $2m from leading VCs.

Will is a Partner at Passion Capital, one of the UK’s most recognised early-stage venture capital firms with a long track record of backing European founders in B2B SaaS, AI, fintech, and emerging risk sectors.

Its portfolio includes Monzo, Marshmallow and Attio.

Will joined Passion Capital as a Partner in October 2023 after leading investments at Conviction VC and high-profile roles at Downing Ventures and Oxford Capital, where he built a reputation for identifying high-conviction bets in enterprise software and fintech.

Jonny is a serial founder with one exit under his belt. He's now building YASO - a UK startup enabling global brands to directly sell to consumers in China via social commerce.

The company just raised an $11m Series A to accelerate growth and take the company to the next level.

Callum is the CEO of one of London's most exciting Fintechs - WineFi.

The company is making fine wine a mainstream, data-driven asset class for private investors and institutions.

The company has raised millions from VCs, industry leaders and crowdfunders, and is already doing 7-figures of revenue.

Mark is the CEO Clearbank, one of the UK's leading Fintechs. The company has raised hundreds of millions, achieved profitability and surpassed £100m in annual revenue. The company works behind the scenes powering so many of the consumer focused-fintechs that people are familiar with (e.g. Revolut and Wealthify).

Tom is the co-founder and CEO of Adfin, a London-based fintech platform on a mission to simplify and automate payment collections for small businesses, professional services, accountants, and bookkeepers.The company is FLYING right now. It raised another €12.5m this year from existing investors Index Ventures and Visionaries Club.Tom himself is a serial operator in Fintech. He's had stints at Tink (acquired by Visa) as Worldpay.

Taos is a Partner at DMG Ventures - one of the UK’s most prominent media-backed venture funds - where he leads investments in consumer startups and supports portfolio scale-ups with unique access to mass-market reach.

He is also the co-founder of Onstage (formerly Focal), Europe’s largest and most influential startup demo day platform, which connects top early-stage founders with over a thousand active investors and has spawned companies now backed by Sequoia, Balderton, and LocalGlobe.