Ventures

Ben Kaluza, co-founder of ninesixteen Studios, critiques AI editing hype while advocating for immediate adoption, arguing that style and taste remain key differentiators as most agentic editing demos are "over-exaggerated" marketing. He views Google's NanoBanana as incrementally better than existing models rather than revolutionary, emphasising that creative value comes from making hundreds of micro-decisions rather than one-shot generation, and predicts AI will transform society within 5-15 years, urging early experimentation to avoid obsolescence.

Aengus Boyle, Vice President at VaynerMedia EMEA, he advocates for VaynerMedia's organic-first approach, where brands test content organically before investing paid media dollars, leveraging algorithm-driven feeds that now reach 95% non-followers. Aengus positions brands for AI-powered search through optimised video content and immediate-answer website formats, predicting that advertising integration into LLMs will create hyper-targeted campaigns based on detailed user prompts. He challenges CMOs to abandon outdated paradigms focused on follower counts and linear TV advertising, arguing that those embracing algorithmic validation over boardroom creative decisions find modern marketing more effective than ever, while those stuck in old measurement frameworks face increasing difficulty as consumer behaviour shifts toward AI-driven discovery and personalised content feeds.

Rowan Aldean, pivoted from Casa Platforms' AI rental agent after recognising he skipped steps on Nathan Barry's "ladders of wealth creation," moving from agency work directly to consumer products without building the foundational SaaS experience that creates sustainable value rather than merely capturing it. Born in Iraq and formerly at Checkout, he's now developing software-as-a-service targeting the 70% of global business still conducted offline, focusing on real-world operators rather than tech professionals through multi-agent AI systems that optimise existing business operations. His critique of Europe centres on aristocratic legacy systems where success often depends on family connections and backdoor relationships, contrasting with America's meritocratic ideology that encourages betting on underdogs, despite both regions having class structures. After experiencing Silicon Valley's superior cadence where failure happens faster, ideas churn quicker, and comparison-driven motivation accelerates growth. Rowan advocates for European capital allocators to spend months observing US ecosystems without building personal brands, arguing that Europe's risk-averse culture stems from historical service-oriented economies that didn't reward cross-class collaboration. His Middle Eastern background reinforces tribal-over-individual values, prioritising team alignment and ethical behaviour over purely wealth-driven decisions, while building his US-focused company from the UK to leverage untapped European talent without Silicon Valley's inflated costs.

Matt Clarke, Co-Founder of Leapfrog, raised £3.15 million in angel funding to build the "AI layer for the cloud," positioning LeapFrog as "Devon for DevOps" that automates infrastructure management across any cloud provider through natural language Terraform generation, seamless multi-cloud migrations, and autonomous incident resolution. Operating across three pillars—build, migrate, and manage—the platform addresses the reality that 90% of cloud work involves post-deployment maintenance, offering one-click fixes for alerts and drift detection while reducing Mean Time to Recovery from the typical 4-8 hours that costs enterprises £5,500 per minute of downtime. Clarke's conviction that AI writes better software than humans led him to focus on Terraform automation after recognising developers' hatred for the "long and lethargic" infrastructure code, while incorporating conversational cloud intelligence that allows teams to query their infrastructure directly rather than crawling through dashboards. Founded as a US company despite the London-based team, LeapFrog targets the massive American cloud market with plans to relocate to either San Francisco or New York, with Clarke describing Silicon Valley's innovation atmosphere as something you can "smell in the air" that moves at unmatched speed, contrasting Europe's attempts to replicate that ecosystem.

Jannes Klaas, Principal at QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, authored a machine learning book during undergraduate studies while teaching courses on neural networks and gradient descent—fundamentals that remain largely unchanged despite rapid AI evolution, though LSTMs have been superseded by transformer architectures that enable today's scaling laws through bigger models and datasets. Specialising in FinTech code modernisation, he advocates for frontier reasoning models like Claude Opus and GPT-4 over smaller alternatives for complex agentic tasks, noting that cloud provider partnerships dictate enterprise model selection due to security requirements, with Google offering the only on-premises frontier deployment through truck-delivered data centre installations. Challenging neobank disruption narratives, Jannes cites FT analysis showing legacy banks retain dominance through mortgage businesses while successfully investing in technology organisations that dwarf challenger banks, demonstrating that established players have effectively responded to digital threats without losing core market share.

Oliver Quie, Tom Ryan & Oscar Hayek Co-Founders of Innerworks, raised $4 million to build "synthetic threat intelligence" that answers three fundamental questions: is a user human, which device are they using, and where are they located, as AI's ability to mimic authentic human behaviour renders traditional behavioural biometrics obsolete. Operating as an "immune system for the internet," they use decentralised training through their Red Team platform, where ethical hackers constantly attack their systems, allowing them to reverse-engineer detection techniques that stay 3-6 months ahead of market threats. Their approach focuses on data genesis rather than behavioural modeling, identifying whether user data was generated by humans or automation tools, while partnering with top-5 crypto platforms, where they discovered over 80% of users authenticated by leading bot detection providers were actually bots. Targeting high-stakes environments including banks, crypto exchanges, and nation-state defense scenarios, they're addressing credential stuffing attacks and North Korean state actors who infiltrate platforms like Upwork and LinkedIn either to steal intellectual property or funnel freelance earnings to the government, with their device fingerprinting technology helping detect threats from billion-dollar crypto heists like the Bybit hack.

David Gelberg, Fastest Exited Founder Ever at the20hr.co (acquired by Revel), achieved Europe's fastest hackathon exit by selling a company built in 20 hours during Project Lovable, leveraging London's competitive hackathon community where he consistently wins through strategic team formation and hunger-driven talent selection. Building secondary market disruption tools for family offices and VCs, David argues public markets are "finished" due to institutional dominance, positioning Europe to control pre-IPO private company trading through SPV crowdfunding models that bypass traditional VC gatekeepers. His bullish Europe thesis centres on adversity-driven innovation, citing Europe's recent unicorn surge and superior GitHub contributions compared to the US, while co-founding Unicorn Mafia as an "internal Y Combinator" providing compute, office space, and investor connections to accelerate European talent beyond traditional 6pm constraints.

Josh Tulloch, co-founder of Plugged, operates a curated founder community with 34 paying members who undergo rigorous vetting for tenacity, wicked ambition, and cultural fit, maintaining a 30% acceptance rate through application processes that dig deep into candidates' "why" to identify founders who exhibit spiritual-level commitment to building regardless of pivots or obstacles. Drawing inspiration from stories like a founder who faked a Swedish accent to pass language requirements for World Economic Forum fellowship, Josh seeks "pirate energy" individuals who demonstrate unruly confidence and bias toward action, believing tenacity can be triggered in some people through exposure to possibility while others naturally possess it. Monetising through strategic partnerships with companies like Notion and Fiverr rather than membership fees, Plugged requires partners to solve genuine founder problems before gaining room access, positioning itself as a problem-solving ecosystem where brands build early-stage trust with founders who tend to purchase through community recommendations rather than traditional advertising. Josh's long-term vision transforms Plugged into a university-style founder oasis, creating an environment where founders can access capital, talent, and workspace while focusing exclusively on building world-changing companies, with plans for eventual syndicate formation and fellowship programs as the membership pipeline scales.

HERE WE GO: Today on VENTURES 🚀: 9 Guests, 5 hours, 1 don't miss streamIt's more bang for buck than 39 SpaceX Raptor engines at max thrust 💥 5 hours of streaming, bringing you the latest on what is happening in the landscape of Technology & Business.From the fastest ever exit 🏃‍♂️ To European Defence 🇪🇺THE BLOK IS ABLAZE 🔥Where else are you going to find this 🤷‍♂️12:00: Josh Tulloch 🔌 (JT) - Co-Founder/ Curated, PLUGGED 12:30: David Gelberg - Fastest Exited Founder Ever, the20hr.co (acq. Revel)13:00: Rowan Aldean - Founder, "Building in Stealth" 13:30 Jannes Klaas, Principal, QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey14:00: Aengus Boyle - VP, VaynerMedia EMEA14:30: Ben Kaluza - Co-Founder, NineSixteen Studios15:00: Benjamin Wolba - Co-Founder, European Defense Tech15:30: Paul Aldea & Matt Clarke - Co-Founders, Leapfrog16:00: Oliver Quie, Tom Ryan - Co-Founders, InnerworksJump in the chat, feed us your thoughts & questions - It's LIVE 👀 Send us pics of where you're watching VENTURES 🚀Follow us on YouTube & LinkedIn to watch.DM - if you want to appear on the show, sponsor or partner.

Johannes Korpela - VC, Wave Ventures