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

Paul Murphy - Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.For over twenty years Lightspeed has been the first investor and an early backer of some of the most innovative companies in the world like: Stripe, Anthropic, Neko Health and Mistral among many others.They invest in bold founders with big ideas, from Seed to Series F and beyond.Prior to Lightspeed, Paul was an investor with Northzone, a product lead at Microsoft and a co-founder of the gaming studio Dots - best known for developing popular puzzle games like Dots and Two Dots, which achieved over 100 million downloads worldwide.During this episode we discuss how Europe has woken up and it was never a problem of talent but one of confidence and mindset of dreaming big, we discuss about the differences of building at the plaform layer vs application layer and his learnings from Microsoft looking at the similarities with whats happening right now in the market.At the end we end up by getting slightly philosophical and agree that for founders building nowadays: "The obstacle is the way”!

Bryan Kim is a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz which is arguably the most influential venture firm in the world right now, and they are practically defining the 'Application Layer' of AI.Based in San Francisco, Bryan invests invest in Consumer and AI where he led the pivotal rounds in category-defining companies like ElevenLabs, Function Health, and Slinghot AI among others.Bryan is known for his 'Momentum is the Moat' philosophy—the idea that in the age of AI, speed and product velocity is the most important defensibilityDuring this episode we discuss the legendary story of how he boarded a flight to London in under 90 minutes to sign ElevenLabs, the importance of storytelling for founders and the form factor for AI in the near future.Enjoy!

In this essay, Dario Amodei characterizes the current state of artificial intelligence as a "technological adolescence," representing a pivotal rite of passage that will determine humanity's future survival. He outlines a "country of geniuses" scenario to illustrate how autonomous, superintelligent systems could emerge by 2027, bringing both immense benefits and existential threats. The text categorizes these risks into five critical areas: AI autonomy and misalignment, the democratization of destructive tools like bioweapons, the potential for high-tech totalitarianism, massive labor market displacement, and unpredictable indirect societal shifts. Amodei argues that while the path forward is daunting, a combination of rigorous technical safety, legislative transparency, and international cooperation can steer society toward a positive outcome. He emphasizes that the sheer speed of progress makes immediate global preparation essential to ensure that unimaginable power is wielded with maturity and compassion. Despite the gravity of these dangers, the author maintains a realistic optimism, believing that humanity's noble spirit can overcome this civilizational test.

Sara Rywe is a General Partner at byFounders. byFounders is one of Europe's best performing venture funds and focused on early-stage across the Nordics and Baltics.Based in Stockholm, she's in the heart of "Silicon Valhalla" and she lead the first round in companies like Lovable, Corti, Digitail, Skye and many more.Sara is known for her human and "all-in" approach to venture capital which is making founders rave about her.During this episode we discuss the first days of GPT Engineer which is today Lovable and how they convinced the team to partner up, we also discuss how she asses founders at the before there is proof, and how byFounders leads through transparency on the term-sheet and full based meritocracy internally, that i think more European VC funds should learn from.Enjoy!

Today, we step into the quantum frontier with Jan Goetz — co-founder and CEO of IQM Quantum Computers.From quantum physicist to deep-tech founder, Jan has built one of Europe’s most ambitious hardware companies — raising nearly $600 million to turn quantum theory into reality.We talk about what it takes to scale science into business, how IQM is the leading company selling quantum computers, and the first use probable uses case to be deploy first in only a couple of years.Enjoy!

Maximilian Kufner - co-founder and CEO of Again.Bio.At Again they are using a millennia-old bacteria to turn CO2 emissions into clean sustainable products.Last year they’ve raised ~ Eur 40m led by HV Capital and Google Ventures bringing the total raise to ~Eur 100m. They are building bioreactors that capture harmful CO2 emissions at the point source, thus producing carbon negative chemicals in an energetically efficient process.During this episode we discuss about his journey from being a venture capitalist investing in Again to joining as a co-founder, The differences between chemocatalysis and biocatalysys and why optimism and attitude is sometimes more important than skills.Enjoy!

Mati Staniszewski, is the co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs. He shares how a pre-seed idea turned into a $6.6B AI company powering the future of voice. We talk about how they cracked adding emotion to speech, real-time dubbing, watermarking for trust, and building one of the most influential startups in AI. He also gives some info on behind the scenes of Lex Fridman’s interview with India’s PM and how ElevenLabs is giving thousands their voices back.We recorded this exceptional episode at the Italian Tech Week in Torino. Sponsored by ⁠ValueAdd⁠ - AI enrichment and search on your professional network.

Tom Wilson is a Partner at Seedcamp - the legendary seed fund, started in 2007 in Europe that has backed companies like Revolut, UiPath, Wise and wefox to name a few.During this episode we discuss about the common traits of founders that have created multibillion eur in value, his learnings as he matured as an investor over the last 10 years, and the value proposition of Seedcamp to early stage founders.Enjoy!

Dan Ariely is the bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and one of the world’s leading behavioral economists. We explore why humans consistently make irrational choices, the hidden forces that shape our decisions, and what entrepreneurs can learn about pricing, perception, and context.From his personal story of resilience after a life-changing accident to powerful experiments like the decoy effect and anchoring, Dan reveals why we’re “prisoners of our past choices” — and how to escape them.If you’ve ever wondered why smart people make irrational decisions, or how psychology can transform business strategy, this conversation is for you.Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe for more inspiring conversations!

Des Traynor, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Intercom, one of the most iconic SaaS companies to come out of Europe.If you've ever messaged a company through a chat widget that actually worked, chances are you've used Intercom.Des co-founded Intercom in 2011 in Dublin, and since then, the company has helped redefine how businesses talk to customers.Today he leads Intercom's R&D team based in Dublin and London, but he's led many teams within the company including Product, Marketing, Customer Support, and Content. He is also a prolific investor in companies like Stripe, Miro, Notion and Hopin.In this conversation, we dive into the moment when they realised the impact of AI on their business, the decision to build a new AI product even in the face of product Cannibalization and the importance of honest communication to the organization in face of high productivity gains, automations and potential job displacements.Enjoy!