Ventures

Ankit is the founding partner at Riceberg Ventures a truly global early-stage deep tech fund that backs high-R&D breakthroughs across space tech, life sciences, energy, and AI robotics.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction to Ankit and the global deep tech thesis at Riceberg Ventures

1:29 - Sector-agnostic breakthroughs: Why focusing on one industry limits portfolio potentia

l2:42 - Deep dive into EtherealX: Building the world’s first fully reusable rocket

4:35 - The upper-stage problem: Innovations in heat redirection vs. traditional ceramic tiles

6:36 - The "Secret Sauce": Why Indian founders and the diaspora are outperforming the mean

9:15 - Breaking down the stats: Indian unicorns in the US and UK ecosystems

10:40 - The "Hustler Filter": Why leaving India for higher education creates a unique founder archetype

13:19 - Cultural Underwriting: Evaluating soft skills through the lens of shared context

16:30 - The "Knowledge Revolution": What happens when AI commoditises PhD-level intelligence?

18:54 - Intelligence vs. Resources: The coming shift in how civilisations succeed

21:15 - Tapping into the unexplored: Space energy, deep oceans, and the 70% of Earth we don't use

23:43 - Backing $40 cancer tests and hospital-grade home monitoring

Noel Hurley spent 30 years at the top of the semiconductor industry, joining Arm when it was a team of just 40 people. Now, he’s launching a direct challenge to the modern "brute force" AI model, arguing that we don’t need bigger chips—we need smarter logic.

Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction

01:53 – The early days of Arm with only 40 people

03:22 – Why team sizes have exploded from 30 to hundreds of engineers

04:18 – The partnership model vs. the single-minded company

05:30 – Oil and Water: Why hardware and software skill sets rarely mix well

08:29 – The "Stability Paradox": Moving from multiplication arrays to logic-based circuits

10:40 – Use cases: Detecting subtle failure patterns in solar farm inverters

15:37 – Training 70,000 models a day

20:00 – Why it’s an incredibly hard time for AI chip startups

23:42 – CPU vs GPU

Quantum Crypto Timelines

It's Tuesday, 31st March and today on VENTURES we have an outstanding line up.

Show Op-ed: Quantum Crypto Timelines

On the show today:

11:30 Noel Hurley: Co-Founder and CEO, Literal Labs

12:00 Ankit Anand: Founding Partner, Riceberg Ventures

12:25 Franziska Walde: Co-Founder and Co-CEO, refinq

12:35 Matt Francis: Co-Founder and CEO, Rama

13:00 Luke Pappas: Partner, New Enterprise Associates (NEA)

13:30 Sam Brunt: Co-Founder and COO, Overmind

Tom Powell is the co-founder and CEO of Bondaval, a London-based fintech redefining credit insurance through proprietary technology. A former professional rugby player for Harlequins and EnglandRugby, he transitioned into venture capital with PassionCapital before launching Bondaval to bring consumer-grade tech to complex B2B financial systems.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction: From professional rugby to Fintech CEO

1:12 - The Bondaval origin story: Applying tech to B2B credit management

2:47 - 2026 as the inflection point: Breaking out of the "graduate scheme"

4:12 - Sustaining 9x growth with AI and the right people

6:07 - Why founding a tech business is harder than professional sports

8:01 - The 5-year vision: Augmentation vs. agentic replacement solutions

10:02 - The hidden world of credit

11:46 - Removing the "obligations" of complex insurance policies with code

14:44 - Breaking the business model of 6,000-person incumbents

17:32 - The Swiss Re deal: Surviving an 18-month underwriting cycle

19:18 - Where the name "Bondaval" really comes from

21:24 - Building resilience: The "Match Day" concept for monthly milestones

23:46 - The Messy Middle: Avoiding the "highest highs and lowest lows" of leadership

27:18 - Looking ahead: Agentic credit management and 100% growth in Q4

Mirko Novakovic thought he was finished with startups after selling Instana to IBM, but a three-month break was all it took for boredom to set in.

Now, the 26-year observability veteran is well and truly back with Dash0, with a $110M Series B at a $1B valuation to build the "AI nervous system" of production.

We dive into the shift from big fat application servers to 1,000-microservice clusters, the death of proprietary standards, and why his CTO hasn't written a single line of code since December.

Timestamps:

• 0:00 - Breaking down the $110M Series B and the $1B valuation

• 1:26 - Why Dash0 is built natively for the OpenTelemetry standard

• 3:52 - Life after the IBM sale and the 3-month retirement in Mallorca

• 5:28 - How software architecture has exploded in complexity since 1999

• 7:51 - Dealing with petabytes: The Intelligent Edge and data reduction

• 9:40 - Scaling the "AI nervous system" of global production

• 10:45 - The future of agentic workflows and auto-optimizing systems

• 12:04 - Mirko's experience with Claude Cloud Desktop and HubSpot MCPs

• 13:01 - Running an AI-native company: Why the CTO has stopped manual coding

He joins the show fresh off announcing he's going founder mode on Schematik.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro: The "Crazy Scientist" energy of 2026

1:53 - Why now? Leaving the Veed journey after 5 years

3:45 - The physical problem: Why hardware is the next major frontier

5:20 - From Zero to One: Buying robots and gear to learn tinkering

7:15 - The "Magical Moment" when code finally moved a physical object

8:45 - What is Schematik? Creating a gateway for hardware builders

10:30 - Going viral on X and the decision to go all-in

12:15 - The "Meta-Distribution" engine: Why distribution is the only true moat

13:50 - The 2026 Roadmap: A new hardware project every single week

15:20 - Raspberry Pi’s secret: How hobbyist tools dominate the enterprise

16:30 - Fundraising strategy: Bootstrapping vs. the VC route

Today's Oped on the recent granola series c

On the show today:

Tom Powell: Co-Founder and CEO, Bondaval

Sander Sebastian Agur Sebastian: Co-Founder and CEO, Rollo Robotics

Cory Johnson: Growth Marketer, Synthesia

Orla Browne: Head of Insights, Dealroom.co

Samuel Beek: Founder, Schematik

Gemma Bloemen: Venture Partner, Systemiq Capital

Matt Larson: Head of Growth, Velocity

Mirko Novakovic, CEO, Dash0

Lena Stocker: Growth Equity, DTCP

00:06:43 Granola’s recent $125 million Series at a $1.5 billion valuation.

00:13:37 Tom Powell, Co-founder and CEO of Bondaval, discusses modernising the $2 trillion B2B credit market through technology-first insurance solutions. He highlights Bondaval’s recent 5-year partnership with Swiss Re and the company’s 2026 inflection point, emphasising how they are disrupting a legacy industry by removing manual credit obligations.

00:43:33 Sander Sebastian Agur, CEO of Rollo Robotics, introduces the "monopod," a breakthrough monowheel autonomous robot designed for security and intelligence. He discusses how the single-wheel form factor reduces production costs by 4x compared to traditional four-wheeled autonomous vehicles, enabling high-speed deployment in harsh 4-season environments.

01:13:35 Cory Johnson, Growth Marketer at Synthesia, shares insights into the company's recent $4 billion valuation and the "professionalisation" of synthetic media. He argues that while AI often "reverts to the mean," the human element remains the primary differentiator in building a global brand and experimental growth engine.

01:28:56 Orla Browne, Head of Insights at Dealroom, presents the 2026 European Deep Tech Report, noting that the sector has reached a combined $690 billion valuation. While Europe leads in quantum and university spinouts, Browne identifies a massive funding gap in late-stage growth, where 70% of $100M+ rounds are still led by U.S. investors.

01:45:30 Samuel Beek, Founder of Schematik, discusses his journey from being an early hire at Veed.io to building the "Cursor for hardware." Schematik aims to lower the barrier for building physical devices by providing an AI-driven interface that bridges the gap between software design and physical manufacturing.

02:15:20 Gemma Bloemen, Venture Partner at Systemiq Capital, discusses the firm’s mission to fund the "systemic transition" required for global climate goals. She highlights Systemiq’s focus on regenerative economics and circular supply chains, emphasising that the next generation of decacorns will be built by solving hard physical problems in energy and food systems.

02:35:45 Matt Larson, Head of Growth at Velocity, shares his blueprint for scaling early-stage ventures in a high-interest-rate environment. He elaborates on Velocity's data-driven approach to customer acquisition and the importance of building "distribution first" roadmaps over "growth at all costs."

03:02:13 Mirko Novakovic, Founder and CEO of Dash0, "crashes" the show to announce the company’s $110 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation. A veteran of the observability space (Instana, IBM), Novakovic discusses building an OpenTelemetry-native platform that reduces data volume by 95% to help engineers find critical insights without prohibitive costs.

03:17:55 Lena Stocker, Growth Equity at DTCP, discusses the competitive nature of the Dash0 round and the firm's focus on Digital Transformation. She provides a comparison of the San Francisco and European tech ecosystems, highlighting SF’s talent density while expressing optimism for Europe’s ability to scale enterprise SaaS and infrastructure.

Luana is an investor at Supernode Global, backing early-stage companies that empower daily life through well-being and productivity. Previously an early operator at SeedLegals (growing from 10 to 80+ people), she founded her own interior design marketplace in Paris, then joined InreachVentures to learn from GP Roberto before going all-in on consumer at Supernode and investing in hormona.