EUVC

Welcome to At The Cap Table podcast, a new series that shines the spotlight on the investors who are changing the vc industry in Europe. Today your host Savs Tan welcomes Deepali Nangia, Partner at Speedinvest. Speedinvest is a hands-on, pan-European early stage tech investor, partnering with founders from their early stages and helping them to grow game changing businesses. The Speedinvest team is one of the most active investors in Europe and last year announced 500m€ of fresh capital to invest in new ventures, and to continue to back their existing portfolio. The firm manages more than €1 billion in AuM and although it started in Austria, counts a team of over 40 investors based in Berlin, London, Munich, and Paris.Deepali joined Speedinvest as a Partner with a focus on finding, funding, and supporting investment in underrepresented founders but the majority of her time in venture capital has been as an angel investor, supporting startups from day 1.In this episode you’ll learn:– About how Deepali’s thesis in investing in female founders came through her own experiences of being underestimated in the workplace – How cleaning up the cap table is a myth: angels can continue to add value beyond capital and are a vital support for founders in a way that VCs cannot be, particularly in the early stages– Demystifying investment for operators could create a better angel ecosystem and is just as important as access to deal flow– Deepali’s move from independent Angel to Partner at Speedinvest was not planned - she got to know the team and look at deals together before they developed a Venture Partner role for her, and she gradually became more and more involved with the firm before joining full time

Today we are happy to have Tobias Schirmer with us, Founding Partner of Join Capital, a 150m€ early stage venture capital investor in European technology startups providing access to industrial companies.Join Capital has an established portfolio of 20 companies and notable investments including Flexciton, Valispace, Opteran Technologies, Digital Spine, Frenetic.Joining Tobias as a guest on this episode we have someone who'll need little introduction to all of you: Joe Schorge, founding and managing partner of Isomer Capital, one of Europe’s absolute strongest Fund of Funds.

Today, we're happy to welcome Joe Cross, early stage angel investor, with a portfolio of around 25 companies so far, and LP in Cocoa. He focusses on companies with the potential to make a positive impact at scale, and helps founders on growth & marketing challenges across a whole mix of sectors. Previously, he was employee #12 at (Transfer)Wise, where he wore various marketing & growth leadership hats from 2012-2020. In this episode you’ll learn:- How Joe thinks about applying his ex-operator skill set to add value to founders & why it’s often operations and tactics over strategy!- Why Joe’s investment thesis is centered around Good, Big & Fast and how he thinks about impact investing.- Why Joe is changing strategy from having done 25 investments in just 2 years to doing fewer more concentrated bets in the time to come- How Joe thinks about building valuable networks to access and win the best deals

Today we are happy to welcome Sabina Wizander, partner at Creandum, one of Europe’s leading early-stage venture funds with offices in Stockholm, Berlin, London and San Francisco. Creandum backs European Enterprise and Consumer Companies and are currently investing out of a 500m€ Fund. Creandum have made more than 100 investments including notable companies like Spotify, Pleo, Kry, Depop, iZettle, Kahoot!, Vivino, and Klarna. At Creandum, Sabina focuses on Climate & Health in the Nordics and DACH region, and has invested in the likes of Passionfroot, Scapin' and Prewave.In this episode you'll learn:- Europe & late-stage capital- Startup funding — a marathon, not a sprint- VC & Founder relationship misconceptions

Today we are happy to welcome Keith Grose, Head of International for Plaid, an open finance platform and data network that powers over 3,000 digital financial apps and more than 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Keith leads the strategy and operations for Plaid’s international products. In this episode you’ll learn:- How Keith thinks about solo founders and why he believes having angels & VCs around you is even more important for these- Why Keith thinks grit is the number one thing to look for and how he tests for it- Why establishing trust and psychological safety is so important to angel investing- Why Keith prefers Whatsapp and email to regular reporting and how that can save communications from going bad

Welcome to "At The Cap Table" podcast, a new series that shines the spotlight on the investors who are changing the VC industry in Europe.Our second guest is Judith Dada, General Partner at La Famiglia. La Famiglia is a Berlin based European seed stage venture capital fund that invests in B2B technology companies disrupting or enabling large industries.Earlier this year, La Famiglia raised €250 million for its combined third seed fund (which is €165 million) and its first growth co-investment fund (€90 million).Judith's focus areas include the future of work, data-driven business models, and machine learning. In addition to this, she serves as an advisor to the German government on technology, diversity, and migration matters.Before joining La Famiglia VC, Judith was at Facebook where she managed Amazon Europe's marketing strategy and worked on Facebook's VC Initiative.In this episode of "At The Cap Table," Judith will be sharing her insights and experiences in a dynamic and wide-reaching discussion.The topics covered will include:- Judith’s background and personal journey into investing, including her route into VC- The current state of entrepreneurship into the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) and Europe given the abundance of talent moving into the space solving big problems and wanting to have a bigger impact in the region- Building and strengthening a strong ecosystem in Europe- La Famiglia's investment focus- A quick fire round of final and probing questionsStay tuned for an engaging and informative conversation!

Today we are happy to welcome Seda Ambartsumian and Peter Roos, from Target Global.Target is one of the largest and most successful technology investment firms in Europe with more than €3bn AuM and a portfolio of well-known industry champions including Revolut, Wefox, Delivery Hero, Auto1 and many others. Seda is the Head of Marketing & Comms. She joined in Jan 2022 (while 2 months pregnant) and is responsible for ensuring that Target and its portfolios shine at every opportunity. Prior to Target she spent 12 years advising private equity firms and hedge funds like Apollo and Pershing Square on their brand, positioning, and corporate reputation.Peter is the COO of Target, joined the firm 3 years ago to build out its Middle East activity. Since then Target has made several investments in the region including Fresha & Tarabut Gateway + helped their portfolio expand to the region with companies like Rapyd opening up local offices and most recently, Target opening an official office in Abu Dhabi. Peter is an experienced operator, having held senior role at Johnson & Johnson as well as having led diversified industrials businesses in both Germany and Austria. He also had brief stints in Hong Kong, London and Switzerland and is a truly cosmopolitan individual holding down the forts in the Middle East while ensuring teams across London, Berlin, Tel Aviv and Barcelona are happy and thriving!In this episode you'll learn:- Why parental leave policy is so important in VC- How you can learn from Target’s process and findings- The importance of building a culture to back up the policy- Why being small shouldn’t be an excuse for not having thought things through

Today, we're happy to welcome you to the second episode diving deep on the story of a Super Angel on EUVC! Say hi to Charley Ma, the man responsible for building and scaling multiple enterprise software startups and leading their marketing, sales, and customer success teams from $0 to $200m dollars as the first revenue hire for companies such as Plaid, Ramp, and Alloy. But Charley's career as an operator is definitely matched by his career as an angel having been an early investor in breakout companies such as Stytch, Unit, Codat, Moov, Finch, and many more which have gone to raise from giants like A16Z, Bain, Benchmark, Coatue, First Round Capital, Founder’s Fund, Index and Sequoia.In this episode you'll learn:Charley's journey from JP Morgan to Plaid and into angel investing despite "not having that much money" at the time - in fact he decided to invest his B-school savings on building his angel career instead of academic rap sheet!How Charley thinks about building relationships in angel investing and the importance of being opinionated and selective at the same time as maintaining a broad networkHow Charley employs his experience from his angel investing to make him a better operator and how that allows him to navigate the current market betterHow Charley thinks about portfolio construction, ownership and how he has gone from being purely founder centric to now being more thematically focusedThis episode is sponsored by Vauban. Vauban makes it easy to launch your angel syndicate or VC Fund, check them out at www.vauban.io/euvc

Today we are happy to welcome Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, Partner at Speedinvest, one of Europe’s most active early-stage investors with more than €1 billion AuM and 40+ investors based in Berlin, London, Munich, Paris, and Vienna. Andy found his way into Venture via politics - and is always up for a debate. This gave him an exceptionally good eye for promising ideas and trends.In this episode you’ll learn:- Andy’s journey from politics to VC and the edge having a different background gives him today- What 6000+ VCs say about how they make decisions- A discussion of how the European results differ from the US results- Where funds choose to domicile, why and the implications of this on a policy level- A discussion of why IRR and MOIC requirements are the same for US and EU VCs and why that surprises Andreas- Why 90% of EU VCs say Europe is fragmented and what the causes of this is

Today we have a special episode, because it’s the very first Super Angel episode launched on EUVC. We’ve got so much great feedback from people hearing this pod and many of them are regular EUVC listeners so we realized we had to bring it on to the EUVC main playlist. We are trilled to welcome you to Roxanne, Director of Station F, the world's biggest startup campus located in Paris, where she is recognized as one of the most influential figures in the French startup ecosystem. French media have called her the "young empress of startups", the "queen of tech", and "the new pope of high-tech and startups in France." Roxanne is an Iranian-American who grew up in Silicon Valley, was formerly a journalist and startup ambassador before being personally selected by Free founder to spearhead the development of Station F. In this episode you’ll learn:- All about Roxanne's angel journey- What's been Roxanne's most memorable moments investing- What angel investing has given Roxanne professionally and personally- How Roxanne thinks about investing cross borders and being a "baby LP" in VC funds