Scaling Europe

Enrico is an ex-operator turned amazing VC.

He's a partner a Lakestar, one of Europe’s most prominent venture capital firms, where he leads early-stage investments from Berlin, backing founders in deep tech, AI, fintech, and digital health across the continent.

We chatted to him about investing in Fyxer AI, how the VC model is going to change, European Space Tech and much more.

We also had a guest appearance from Daniel Metzler - the founder and CEO is Isar Aerospace, Europe's leading space company.

Jan is the CEO & Co-Founder @ Conduct, a London based AI startup that just raised $12m from Creandum.

The company was founded in 2024 by ex-Palantirians and has been in stealth for the past 18 months.

The company will be focused on modernising legacy ERP systems, which the trio saw as causing a massive burden for enterprise organisations.

Balderton Capital is one of Europe's oldest and most successful VC firms.

It's raised 12 funds and billions of dollars, and has invested in over 250 companies. 30 of which are unicorns.

I spoke to Managing Partner Bernard Liautaud and General Partner Suranga Chandratillake about the firm turning 25, its their biggest winners (Revolut), its biggest misses (Spotify) and where the firm is looking to invest next.

Both Partners are entrepreneurs and have built their own billion dollar companies so it made for a GREAT conversation.

George is a Partner within the Phoenix Court investment house, recently ranked as the best VC in Europe.

I sat down with him at Open Court - LocalGlobe's monthly event with London's top builders.

Ivan is one of London's most CRACKED young builders:

🚀 The UK's youngest chartered engineer

🚀 Founded his first company, an electronics startup, while still at school

🚀 Forbes 30U30 and occasional voice actor at cartoon network

And now he is building robots for restaurants.

Malte is the CEO & Co-Founder at Parloa, the AI voice startup that became a unicorn earlier this year.

We chatted to him at Bits & Pretzels in Munich where we discussed:

• The future of Parloa
• Building and raising for AI before the hype
• Achieving unicorn status

Sélim Benayat is a Sequioa-backed, twice exited founder who is now building at the intersection of hardware and AI.He is working at  @NothingTechnology  - the recent UK unicorn taking on Apple.Last week LocalGlobe hosted their monthly Open Court session where they bring the top builders in London to meet, present and talk all things Tech. At the event I sat down with Selim to discuss:- The future of AI and Hardware - How Nothing is thinking about AI in its products - The difficulty of turning a hardware company into a software one and much much more

Thomas Wolf is one of Europe's most impressive founders having scaled Hugging Face to over $4bn valuation building one of the largest open source communities in the world. We discussed:

• Open vc closed source
• Open vs closed LLMs and the advantages of both
• Building your own personal LLM
• Why Hugging Face is getting into robotics and much much more

Sandeep Bakshi is the Head of Investments, Europe at Prosus Ventures, a leading global technology investor focusing on transformative startups from early stage to growth across marketplace, fintech, AI, and consumer internet sectors.

Based in London, he leads the European investment strategy and portfolio for Prosus Ventures, part of Naspers Group.

Sam Tidswell-Norrish is Founder & Chair of Opus, a London-based global leadership network and highly vetted club for early-stage entrepreneurs, executives, and investors.

Opus is focused on supercharging founder journeys, facilitating connections with investors and experts, and elevating diverse talent in the tech and innovation ecosystem.