Sparkmind Capital

Today, thinning a forest means sending two 20-ton machines in to remove trees that weigh about 80kg on average. The trails they need clear-cut roughly 20% of the forest, just for access.

Air Forestry does it from the air instead. A six-metre, six-armed drone selects a tree, grabs it from the top, strips the branches using gravity, cuts the trunk with an electric chainsaw, and lifts the whole tree out to the roadside. It’s the same end product the industry already pays for, without a single track through the forest.

Co-founder and CEO Caroline Walerud has spent 15 years in startups and deep tech investing. She sold bread door to door as a teenager, studied natural sciences at Cambridge, and founded Volumental, which has now scanned more than 60 million feet. She then invested in deep tech through her family’s office before jumping back in as an operator.

In this episode, Colin Brown and Caroline cover:

- What selling bread door to door teaches a founder
- Volumental: starting with a technology instead of a problem, and what that cost
- Investor vs operator: the filter of “would I work with this team two days a week for 15 years?”
- Forestry 101: why commercial thinning matters for forest health, carbon and wildfire risk
- The world’s first air harvest
- How two operators supervising 6–12 drones could deliver a huge productivity increase
- Why forestry is a regulatory sweet spot for autonomy
- Building a vertically integrated drone, tool and software stack in Uppsala

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:55 From door-to-door bread to Cambridge
02:13 Lessons from selling door to door
03:25 Volumental and 60 million feet
08:34 From investor to founder
12:01 The first meeting: harvesting a tree from above
15:03 Forestry 101: why thinning matters
19:58 20-ton machines vs 80kg trees
22:11 The world’s first air harvest
26:32 Huge productivity increase
29:04 Inside the drone
32:03 The team
34:49 Customers and pilots
37:16 Funding, grants and the regulatory sweet spot
41:24 Who should lead the round
42:58 Wrap-up

🔗 Air Forestry links:

https://airforestry.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cwalerud/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/airforestry/home/

#AirForestry #Forestry #Drones #Autonomy #ClimateTech #DeepTech #Sweden #Podcast

Marcin Hejka grew up in Gdańsk’s old town and went to a high school across the street from the shipyard where Solidarity was born. During strikes, his school sat inside the police cordon. At 20 he was helping write Poland’s foreign investment strategy. At 24 he sat on the board of a listed Polish bank.

He then spent 18 years at Intel Capital. He joined in 1999 to open Central and Eastern Europe, when Polish internet penetration was around 1-2% and all dial-up, and finished as global IC member responsible for every international market except China. He personally led 36 investments, five of which became unicorns. Central and Eastern Europe turned out to be Intel Capital’s best-performing region in the world.

Then he took UiPath to the investment committee twice, at seed and at Series A, and was turned down both times. That was his signal to leave.

In 2017 he co-founded OTB Ventures as a deep tech fund when everyone else in the region was backing SaaS and marketplaces. OTB focuses on space, physical AI, and AI and novel computing, and ICEYE was its fourth investment.

In this episode, Colin Brown and Marcin Hejka cover:

- Growing up at the epicentre of Poland’s fight against communism
- Intel Capital in its founder-led prime under Andy Grove
- Why corporate VC drifts from strategy to tactics
- The UiPath miss, and what it taught him
- Why OTB picked three deep tech verticals instead of one
- How sovereignty turned deep tech from a niche into the mainstream
- OTB’s model: €1–10M first tickets, 8–15% stakes, a board seat and 50% reserves

Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:19 Growing up in Gdańsk next to the shipyard
04:55 The last student strike and a government job at 20
08:57 A priest, a confessional and Poland’s first passports
11:46 Investment banking, Soros and a bank board at 24
14:31 Joining Intel Capital in 1999
17:19 Intel in its founder-led prime
20:46 CEE becomes Intel Capital’s best region
22:33 36 investments, five unicorns
25:22 Why leave Intel?
33:25 Saying no to UiPath, twice
36:16 Founding OTB in 2017
41:22 Sovereignty makes deep tech mainstream
48:06 OTB today: stage, tickets and ownership
54:42 What Marcin is most proud of
56:55 Wrap-up

🔗 OTB Ventures: https://otb.vc/

#DeepTech #VentureCapital #Poland #SpaceTech #Europe #Sovereignty #Podcast

There are around 4,600 drone companies in Western Europe. Polarion Capital doesn’t plan to back any of them.Instead, Polarion is building a specialist growth fund for the High North. It invests in Nordic defence and dual-use companies that have already won their first contract, and helps them win contracts two, three, four and five across NATO.GP Thomas Falck started his career on a Norwegian submarine. He was a founding partner at Verdane, CFO of Cognite, and chair of Norway’s state-owned VC. Now he’s raising a $120–150M first fund for 15 companies, backed by an advisory board of people who have worked inside the classified rooms of the Alliance.In this episode, Colin Brown and Thomas cover:- Why venture capital fits what armed forces need right now- Why the Arctic is becoming a global security hotspot, and why kit that works there tends to work everywhere- The coming drone consolidation, and why drone countermeasures are the bigger opportunity- Investing after the first contract: no moonshots, but not a buyout either- Fund size, ticket sizes and a focus on Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland- Deep tech meets deep trust: why this sector needs specialists, not tourists- Building an ecosystem through an invitation-only dual-use conferenceChapters00:00 Intro00:47 Why venture capital fits defence05:48 Are procurement cycles really changing?07:09 Why the Nordics and the Arctic are underserved09:51 4,600 drone companies and the coming consolidation12:27 Investing after the first contract14:51 Moonshots vs safe bets18:51 The Arctic thesis24:40 Fund size, tickets and geography28:45 The team33:21 The advisory board and classified innovation36:23 Deep tech meets deep trust38:10 Why specialists win in defence46:23 Sourcing: top-down and bottom-up51:25 The dual-use conference55:18 Wrap-up🔗 Polarion Capital: https://polarion.capital/#DefenceTech #VentureCapital #Arctic #Nordics #NATO #DualUse #Podcast

Darkstar is named after a 1970s science fiction film in which a crew has to talk a bomb out of exploding. Ragnar and his partners took a different lesson from it: Europe needs many small, smart ships to take out the threats it faces.Legally, Darkstar is a €25M pre-seed and seed defence fund that can invest in lethal technology. In practice it works like an ecosystem and a defence agency. It runs bootcamps in Ukraine, signs cooperation agreements with the Estonian Army’s Transformation Command, and its four GPs act as co-founders to the companies they back. Nine investments in, it’s halfway through its first fund.In this episode, Colin Brown and Ragnar talk about:🔹 Why Darkstar invests in lethal technology, not just dual use🔹 Why every defence product needs testing in Ukraine🔹 Farsight Vision: AI on real combat video and the automated kill chain🔹 A team that spent 16 months rebuilding its product when GPS stopped working🔹 Stratis: an Icelandic data platform born on a 30-hour drive to Kyiv🔹 The test every investment has to pass: “Would I join this company as a co-founder?”🔹 Plans for fund two, and why defence needs more capital at every stage🔹 The free Darkstar bootcamp in Ukraine, and who should apply🔹 Why Eric Schmidt deserves a shout-outChapters00:00 Why Darkstar? The 1970s film behind the name02:05 More than a defence fund04:06 Fund size, stage and investing in lethal05:30 Why you have to test in Ukraine08:15 Farsight Vision14:06 Would I join as a co-founder?16:45 Surviving the loss of GPS19:00 Stratis and the 30-hour drive to Kyiv24:40 What’s next for Darkstar30:26 The Ukraine bootcamp35:05 A shout-out to Eric Schmidt38:00 Wrap-up🔗 Darkstar: https://darkstar.ee/dark

The French army asked the same question three times before they would sit down: “Are you certified EAL7+ by BSI in Germany?”

Arbit is one of only two companies in the world holding Common Criteria EAL7+, the highest security certification available. At that level, it isn’t enough to claim your product works. You have to formally prove it, along with your supply chain, your production, your transport and your company culture. The first time took Arbit around 3,000 hours.

Arbit builds data diodes and cross-domain solutions for armed forces, police, intelligence services and governments. It turns data into light and sends it in one direction only, and it can prove that nothing comes back.

Colin Brown and Rik Ferguson sit down with Kasper Gubi of Arbit to talk about:

- What EAL7+ certification actually takes, and why so few companies get there

- Why one-way data transfer is different from encryption

- How the customer base moved from intelligence services to the NATO battlefield

- Insider threats, release portals and getting rid of USB sticks

- Armoured vehicles running up to seven networks of different classifications

- The F-35 integration question every European customer asked

- Twenty years bootstrapped, 10x growth in six years, and a partnership with Leonardo

- NATO data-centric security: prepare to share, but control what you share

Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:40 EAL7+: one of two companies in the world

04:11 What EAL7+ actually takes

07:09 What a data diode does

08:35 Why this isn’t encryption

11:03 From intelligence services to the NATO battlefield

14:50 Civil applications and the cloud

15:31 Physical security: inside a client facility

18:34 Insider threats and release portals

21:18 Perfect vs good enough, and RAM prices

24:07 The elevator pitch

25:47 FedRAMP and the US question

28:05 Arbit’s history: 20 years bootstrapped

31:39 Scaling with open APIs

34:57 The F-35 integration question

38:16 NATO firebreaks: prepare to share, control what you share

40:31 Wrap-up

#Cybersecurity #Defence #NATO #DataDiode #CrossDomain #Denmark #Podcast

On the morning the full-scale invasion began, Roman Sulzhyk put on his best suit and went to a board meeting. Today he backs Ukraine’s defence tech founders from his office in central Kyiv.Roman spent 20 years as a trader at JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank in New York and London. He served on the supervisory board of PrivatBank and is now co-founder of Resist UA, an early-stage fund investing in Ukrainian defence technology. Its first fund backed seven teams at valuations below $5M, several of which are now raising at hundreds of millions. He is raising a second fund of €50M, registered in Estonia.In this conversation, Colin Brown and Roman cover:- How Ukraine built a defence innovation machine, and why Europe’s money made it possible- The e-points system that gets startup tech from the garage to the front line- Why mandatory disclosure of Russia exposure would cost Europe less than more aid- Backing founders on values, not just spreadsheets- How Western capital is changing the rules of Ukraine’s economy- Roman’s definition of victory: $100bn of private capital in the first five years after the war- Resilience, from the London Blitz to Kyiv todayChapters00:00 The painting behind Roman, and putting on a suit on day one03:09 Starting Resist: early bets on Ukrainian defence tech06:16 Europe’s money and Ukraine’s innovation machine11:58 Russia’s war economy and burn rate13:30 Mandatory disclosure of Russia exposure21:44 Who should invest in the fund27:08 Founders, values and Western capital37:42 Defining victory: $100bn of private capital41:25 Resilience, the Blitz and Ukraine’s war for independence46:09 Wrap-upResist: https://resist.ua

There was no garage, no single founder, and definitely no master plan.

BAE Systems is what survived when dozens of British companies went through a century of wars, cancellations, nationalisation, privatisation and near-bankruptcy. Hawker, Vickers, Avro, de Havilland, English Electric, Marconi and Royal Ordnance were all absorbed.

Almost all of their names have disappeared.

One company remains.

In 2025, BAE Systems generated £30.7bn in sales and £3.3bn in underlying EBIT. It ended the year with an £83.6bn order backlog and over 111,000 employees.

It builds nuclear submarines, warships, combat aircraft, armoured vehicles, missiles, radar and electronic warfare systems. Its largest market isn't the UK. It's the United States.

In our longest episode yet, Colin Brown and Martti Wallin tell the story in five acts:

- How the Battle of Britain was won by an industrial system, not just "the few"

- Freddie Page, the chauffeur's son who built the Canberra and the Lightning at Warton

- The cancelled TSR-2, and why Britain had to learn to build aircraft with Germany, Italy and France- Nationalisation in 1977, privatisation in 1981, and the record £1.2bn loss that nearly ended it all

- The Marconi deal that created BAE Systems, and why it chose America over a European merger

- Selective sovereignty: what a nation must own, and what it can share with allies

- What Europe should do next with its defence industry

Chapters

00:00 Intro: what does "BAE Systems" actually mean?

09:44 Act 1: Britain at its zenith, Sopwith, Hawker and the Battle of Britain

01:02:23 Act 2: Peace, Warton and the Canberra, the Lightning and the TSR-2

01:52:56 Act 3: Britain learns to share: Jaguar, Tornado and British Aerospace

02:45:34 Act 4: Saudi Arabia, the end of the Cold War, near-collapse and the Marconi deal

03:25:09 Act 5: BAE Systems is born: Astute, America and selective sovereignty

04:06:22 Analysis: what France, Germany, Italy and Sweden did differently

04:29:34 Quintessence

04:33:20 Thank you and next episode: Red Bull

Category Leaders tells the stories of European companies that are best in the world in their category.

Brought to you by SparkMind Capital.

BAE Systems: https://www.baesystems.com/en

Next month: Red Bull. A Thai energy drink, an Austrian toothpaste salesman, and a category that didn't exist until they created it.

#BAESystems #EuropeanIndustry #CategoryLeaders #Podcast

Europe has capital. It has technology, talent, institutions and a huge market.So why is it still so difficult to finance the companies, infrastructure and industrial capacity Europe needs for the next 20 years?In this first in-person episode of the Protect Europe Podcast, Colin Brown sits down with Saara-Sofia Sirén, Managing Director of the Finnish Pension Alliance TELA, and Marko Kyyrönen, GP at Sparkmind Capital, for a wide-ranging conversation about capital allocation, European growth and the future of the European economy.The discussion starts with a deceptively simple question: does Europe actually lack capital, or does it lack the ambition, structures and long-term perspective to deploy it effectively?We explore:- Finland’s pension reform and what greater flexibility for pension investors could mean for equities and private markets- Why more pension capital does not automatically mean better outcomes - pension institutions still have to balance risk and return and protect future pensioners- The gap between Europe’s strong research and technology base and the capital required to scale companies from promising businesses into global category leaders- Why institutional investors need stronger evidence of European companies scaling, raising larger rounds and building credible paths to global leadership- Regulation, permitting and predictability - including why an investor needs to know whether a project will take six months or six years to get approved- Europe’s dependence on external energy, manufacturing and supply chains, and the implications for economic and strategic resilience- The role of defence and resilience investing in Europe- Why stronger European capital markets and more financing vehicles are needed to support growth companies- What Europe might learn from Finland and from the long-term thinking behind Norway’s sovereign wealth modelA central theme throughout the conversation is that unlocking capital is only half the challenge. Europe also needs attractive investment opportunities, scalable businesses, functioning markets and a stable environment in which investors can commit capital for the long term.This is ultimately a conversation about how Europe allocates capital - and what it chooses to build with it.#ProtectEurope #Europe #Investing #PrivateMarkets #Pensions #GrowthCapital #EuropeanTechnology #DefenceTech #CapitalMarkets

Europe has the technology. The bigger question is whether Europe has the capital to keep it.In this episode of the Protect Europe Podcast, Colin Brown sits down with Martin Davis, co-founder of EDT Ventures, to explore the intersection of venture capital, emerging technology, national security and European strategic autonomy.Martin's journey has taken him from 11 years in the military, through software and financial services, into venture capital and ultimately into defence and national security investing.Today, EDT Ventures is building around a very specific gap in the European market: later-stage capital for technology businesses with both commercial and national security applications.The fund has launched with €300 million and invests exclusively in European businesses, focusing on emerging disruptive technologies and dual-use capabilities.A major theme of the conversation is the idea of the "kill switch".If a technology becomes critical to Europe's national security or infrastructure, where should the ability to control that technology sit? Martin argues that capital ownership and the structure of a company's cap table can ultimately influence where that control resides.The conversation covers:- Why Europe has a Series A/B and later-stage capital gap- Why strategically important European companies can end up being acquired or funded from outside Europe- The role of €20–30m anchor investments in keeping companies headquartered and controlled in Europe- Why EDT focuses on dual-use rather than single-use defence technology- Emerging disruptive technologies across space, cyber, quantum, communications and more- Why defence can act as an urgent first customer for technologies with much larger commercial markets- The importance of "Act One, Act Two, Act Three" for technology companies- How Ukraine has demonstrated the importance of building capability, not simply products- Why national security and technological sovereignty are becoming increasingly intertwined- Martin's broader investment work across Europe and frontier markets in AfricaThis is a conversation about more than defence investing. It is about capital, technology, sovereignty and Europe's ability to build and retain the capabilities it will need for the next decade.

What happens when you combine Finland's world-class icebreaker industry with its decades of nuclear expertise?In this episode, Colin Brown sits down with Apoorva Prasad of SeAtom, a Finnish startup building dual-use nuclear systems for maritime shipping - a NATO DIANA cohort graduate developing small-scale reactors that could power everything from cargo vessels to offshore data centers.Global shipping moves 90% of world trade, emits 3% of global carbon, and burns tens of millions of dollars a year in oil per vessel - with no scalable green alternative in sight. Apoorva explains why ammonia, e-fuels and batteries can't do the job at scale, why nuclear is the only real answer, and why Finland - with no military nuclear program, deep icebreaker-building expertise, and Europe's only permanent nuclear waste facility - has an unfair advantage almost nobody else can copy.We cover:Why SeAtom is combining Finland's two strongest industries: maritime engineering and civilian nuclear powerWhy Europe's oil dependence is a national security problem, not just an economic oneWhy Russia's 30+ nuclear icebreakers show what's possible - and why Europe has fallen behindWhy military ships can't run on ammonia or methanol, and what that means for NATO's future fleetLife inside NATO DIANA: the "DARPA of NATO," graduating from a cohort of just 150 startupsA full walkthrough of SeAtom's roadmap - from test reactor to pilot ship to commercial deploymentWhat kind of investor SeAtom is looking for, and why European VCs need to back European advantages instead of chasing American comparisonsA deep dive into energy security, defense tech, and why the next generation of maritime power might be nuclear.Connect & learn more:https://www.linkedin.com/in/apoorvaprasad/https://www.linkedin.com/company/seatom/home/https://www.seatomtech.com/about#NuclearEnergy #MaritimeIndustry #Shipping #EnergySecurity #DefenseTech #Finland #DeepTech #NATO #Investing #CleanEnergy