Startup Europe is back for our new-look podcast, where we'll be focussing exclusively on longer form interviews with some of the biggest names in European tech.

Last year we brought you conversations with  founders, operators and investors behind companies like Wise, Monzo, Figma, Delivery Hero and Kry and we have a whole load more for you in 2024.

This week it's Roxanne Varza, director of Parisian startup mega campus Station F. 

In the years since Station F opened in 2017, France has seen startup funding more than triple and the number of unicorns more than quadruple. 

And now Paris is at the centre of the Gen AI boom too. Mistral, PhotoRoom and Poolside are just a handful of the buzzy AI startups based there raising huge amounts of funding.

As an angel investor (and one of Sequoia’s most active scouts in Europe) with more than 60 deals under her belt now, Varza is also getting to place some bets in the sector. 

In the first episode of the Sifted podcast this year, editor Amy Lewin speaks to Varza about what’s on founders’ minds right now, Station F’s expansion plans and what she’s learnt so far as an angel investor. 

What do Lidl, Auchan, Sephora and Flink have in common? They’re all customers of RELEX Solutions, one of Finland’s four private tech companies.

RELEX makes supply-chain and retail-planning software — which might sound boring, but it's extremely important when you consider how much inventory, especially food, is wasted due to poor planning.

Sifted sat down with cofounder Johanna Småros to talk about the company’s decades-long journey from academia to commercialisation, just how many millions of kilos of waste annually the company is helping to avoid and why RELEX’s engineers are tired of hearing about AI. 

This week we discuss:

01:51 Hyme raises €8m for technology that could halve cost of storing energy
05:12 Xlinks raises $25m from TotalEnergies for 3,800km cable from the Sahara to the UK
07:46 Thought Web3 was over? This VC just raised €15m to back startups in the sector
19:27 Why Stability AI is launching a subscription fee 

This week we discuss:

01:05 Micromobility giant Tier lays off 22% of its workforce in push for profitability, Unicorn edtech Multiverse to lay off nearly a third of US employees
05:34 GenAI biotech Cradle raises $24m Series A led by Index Ventures
08:55 The top takeaways from Atomico’s State of European Tech report
20:13 Why hasn't EIF announced a single investment from its €3.75bn fund of funds yet?

Sonya Iovieno knows European tech’s secrets. As head of venture and growth at HSBC Innovation Banking, where she works with thousands of VCs, startups and scaleups in the UK and Nordics, she has a view on who’s done an undisclosed down round, who’s been trimming headcount and who’s set up a “hunting line” for future acquisitions.

And she also knows what it’s like to go through a merger, after her organisation, formerly Silicon Valley Bank UK, was acquired by HSBC for a mere £1 after the dramatic collapse of its US parent company in March.

Iovieno joined us this week for a long-form interview on Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast to share her predictions for 2024 and her experience of the tumultuous weeks of this spring.

This week we discuss:

• Nordic merger between online grocers Oda and Mathem
• It ain’t Easee: How Norway’s EV rising star fell foul of regulators
• How Sequoia-backed e-bike refurbisher Upway raised $30m in a micromobility slowdown
• Grocery delivery is back as Crisp raises €35m to scale next-day delivery
• $400k graduate salaries and gun-for-hire ‘SWAT teams’ — inside the wild AI talent market of 2023
• Why top AI talent is leaving Google’s DeepMind

This week we discuss:

00:53 Aleph Alpha raises $500m Series B in one of Europe’s largest AI rounds ever
03:56 What the pitch deck from Adaptive, a new AI startup raising at a $100m valuation, tells us
07:15 French startup Quandela raises €50m to manufacture commercial quantum computers
11:03 Swedish startup wants to ‘stream energy like music’ on electric roads to charge cars as they drive
18:21 10x more money goes to VC funds owned by all-male vs all-female teams

This week we discuss:

02:26 Web Summit announces former Wikimedia boss as new CEO
04:16 More unions sign up to Klarna strike on Nov 7
06:36 Benetton scion moves into tech investing with new €30m fund
09:40 How a “miracle” weight-loss drug created Europe’s most valuable company, and a startup investment machine
17:23 UK gears up to major AI summit under the shadow of its own lack of regulation

This week we discuss:

02:05 French early-stage startups get a €500m funding boost in 2024 budget
04:33 Northvolt’s $20bn listing in Stockholm — a win for European stock exchanges
07:20 Solar energy storage breakthrough could make European households self-sufficient
12:30 Quantum computing is not a threat to national security. So why can't Europe work together?
20:35 Founder to reality TV star — a shortcut to startup success?

This podcast is brought to you by Harper James, a national full-service law firm designed to support ambitious businesses. Having supported over 3,500 businesses, Harper James isn’t a run-of-the-mill law firm. It has transformed the traditional law firm model through unique price plans, smart technology and teams of almost exclusively senior lawyers — giving you affordable, commercial and high quality legal advice.

If this sounds too good to be true, then head over to harperjames.co.uk and see for yourself. While you’re there, you’ll find 100s of resources to help your journey from startup to scaleup and beyond.

This week we discuss:

00:59 Germany is about to legalise cannabis. What does it mean for startups?
03:49 Payments fintech Modulr agrees with regulator to stop onboarding new customers
05:32 German fund La Famiglia merges with General Catalyst
09:29 Northvolt founder’s heat pump startup secures €87m
17:24 The rise — and fall — of Babylon

Link to subscribe to the Sifted Fintech newsletter: https://sifted.eu/newsletters

This podcast is brought to you by Harper James, a national full-service law firm designed to support ambitious businesses. Having supported over 3,500 businesses, Harper James isn’t a run-of-the-mill law firm. It has transformed the traditional law firm model through unique price plans, smart technology and teams of almost exclusively senior lawyers — giving you affordable, commercial and high quality legal advice.

If this sounds too good to be true, then head over to harperjames.co.uk and see for yourself. While you’re there, you’ll find 100s of resources to help your journey from startup to scaleup and beyond.