Venture Europe: Entrepreneurship | Technology | Venture Capital | Eu/Acc

Alexandre Momeni - Partner at General Catalyst.

Alex specialises in healthcare and AI and has been instrumental in bringing some of Europe’s biggest AI deals to General Catlayst’s door.

For background General Catalyst, has $28bn assets under management and is one of the world’s best known VC firms.

They backed some of greatest businesses that you probably are familiar with including Airbnb, Stripe, Discord and Snap and in Europe they have made more than 20 investments in companies like the AI superstar - Mistral, the defense company - Helsing and the new company co-founded by Daniel Ek - Neko health.

During this episode we discuss about the opportunities in healthcare in Europe, what Alex looks for when meeting teams to invest in and the future of brain machine interface.

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Robert Jäkle is a Partner at Visionaries Club.

Visionaries is a leading European early-stage VC fund with offices in London and Berlin. The fund is backed by over 30 unicorn founders - such as the founders of UiPath, Flixbus, Miro and Skype - as well as leading European family business entrepreneurs.

Bobby joined the fund on day one and has helped build it over the past five years. He now co-leads the firm's seed fund and has made several investments in Fintech, Compliance, HR, and Automation in the past years in the likes of Apron Pay, Leapsome, Workflex, Adfin, Pledge and Accountable to name a few.

During this episode we discuss about about why European founders and investors should take more risk, the rarity of a unicorn founder and how to find it and the importance to surround yourself with ambitious and driven people.

Enjoy!

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Aleksander Larsen is the Co-Founder, Chairman, and COO of Sky Mavis, the company behind the popular crypto game Axie Infinity and the Ronin Network.

SkyMavis is the breakout company at the intersection of gaming and blockchain, they’ve raised around 300 million dollars according to Dealroom and Crunchbase from top investors like a16z, Accel and Paradigm.

During this episode we discuss about Aleksnaders’s move to Vietnam to pursue the opportunity at the intersection of gaming and blockchain, the North Korean hack, that compromised $600m of players and companies tokens and the vision of financial inclusion through gaming and crypto and competing longterm with Visa

Enjoy!

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Annie Duke is a Special Partner focused on Decision Science at First Round Capital Partners, a seed stage venture fund.

Annie is a prolific author in the decision making space having written "Thinking in Bets" - a national bestseller, "How to decide: Simple tools for making better choices” and the latest book “Quit - the power of knowing when to walk away”.

As a former professional poker player, she has won more than 4 million dollars, won a World Series of Poker bracelet and is the only woman to have won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the NBC National Poker Heads-Up Championship.

During this episode we discuss about the difference between decision quality and outcome quality, some frameworks she advises entrepreneurs to use when making decisions and the power of mental time travel.

Enjoy!

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Oliver Holle - co-founder, CEO and Managing Partner at SpeedInvest, a leading European early-stage VC.

Starting in 2011 as an angel fund, today Speedinvest became a 1B Eur European powerhouse investing in startups at the earliest phases. With their sector focused teams across Deeptech, Fintech, Marketplace and Consumer among others and operational teams, they deeply support founders in their journey.

During this episode we discuss about the similarities between the AI wave with the iPhone moment, how quitting sometimes is the best decision and the need to have a chip on the shoulder and intrinsically motivation to succeeded as a founder.

Enjoy!

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Carmen Alfonso Rico - founder and GP of Cocoa VC.

Cocoa is a VC fund investing between $250k-$500k angel checks at pre-seed/seed and how they like to say it “they don’t give a damn about ownership stake”.

In less than 3 years she invested in some of the most talented founders from Arcane, Twirl and Plumery just to name a few, co-investing with some of the best investors in Europe and globally.

During this episode we talk about why they can win competitive deals and be on the same side of the table with founders, her preferred questions to ask founders and the challenges that women face when focusing on career.

Enjoy!

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Bernt Øivind Børnich - co-founder and CEO of 1X, an AI and robotics company producing androids to benefit society and meet the world’s labor demand.

One of the most exciting companies in Europe that stands at the forefront of AI robotics. Their mission is to create androids that work among people and have a new approach to embodied learning for data collection.

They recently raised over 100 million euros from EQT Ventures, Sam Altmans' Open AI fund and other notable global investors to bring to market its second generation android called, NEO.

During this episode we discuss about the importance of building softness in order for androids to work and live among humans, the infinite demand curve for a useful droid and his advice for founders to go and build stuff that matters more specifically filling the gap for a future with energy abundance.

Enjoy!

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Our guest today is Kaushik Subramanian, partner at EQT Ventures, investing primarily in product-led technology businesses.

From offices in Stockholm, London, Berlin, Paris and New York, EQT invests in and supports entrepreneurs building the next-generation of global winners from a 1.1B Euro fund.

Prior to joining EQT, Kaushik was at Stripe and Meta where he built and scaled several products to global reach and generating billions.

During this episode we discuss how to choose your design partners when building the early version of the product, why he decided to join EQT ventures and how he asses founders if they have a product first mindset.

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Julius is a certified coach and has coached over 150 entrepreneurs backed by Atomico, a16z and Creandum among others, has trained over 100 venture investors and just recently released his first single on Spotify.

During this episode we discuss about the moment he decided to become a coach, the learnings along the coaching journey and what are the most common challenges founders and investors have, when they reach out to him.

Wanna join a peer-support community for founders? Join us at uTopic. :)

Dr. Nicole Paulk is the CEO and founder of the viral gene therapy startup Siren Biotechnology.

Prior to being a founder she was a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF in San Francisco, California where her lab worked at the forefront of developing and engineering enabling technologies to make viruses better medicines.

During this episode we discuss the evolution of modern medicine from ingesting medicinal leaves to gene therapy, we also discuss how she plans to use viruses to treat cancer and therapies for sleeping only 4h are closer than you think.

Enjoy!