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Zoe Peden, partner, Ananda Impact Ventures, an impact VC fund and Eleanor Kaye, managing director, Newton Venture Progam, an education scheme for overlooked and under-represented VCs, discussed the VC diversity issue in this week's Tech.eu podcast.
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Doctor Peter Garraghan, co-founder and CEO, Mindgard and Kevin Berghoff, co-founder of Quantum Diamonds, discuss the virtues and challenges of university spinouts.
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An interview with Agate Freimane, general partner, Norrsken VC and Pablo Pederjon, partner at Madrid-based impact VC fund Seaya about impact investing.
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A podcast interview with the president of Robinhood UK. In the podcast, we discuss how the UK app is performing, the growth of the UK team, and future plans.
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Interview with Maria Rotilu, founder and general partner, Openseed, a fund which is raising $10m to invest in startups at the earliest stages in Europe and Africa.
Rotilu discusses-The the birth of Openseed, The benefits of being a solo general partner, What type of investments Openseed is interested in, Why startups should partner up with Openseed, and The investment landscape in Europe and Africa.
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Enline is the winner of the EIT Venture Award for their vegetation and landslide predictive forecast programme. The company develops tech such as dynamic line rating and digital twins to help utilities get more out of their existing infrastructure.
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Altris AB is the winner of the EIT Innovation Team Award for their sodium-ion batteries. The batteries enable high performance batteries to accelerate the energy transition, without increasing the cost to the environment or to customers. https://www.altris.se/
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We talked with Mohamed Elamir and Dr. Andreas Bittner.
Mohammad is the winner of the EIT Changemaker Award and co-founder of Woamy, which develops biodegradable plastic-free biofoam for protective packaging to replace harmful plastic foams. https://www.woamy.com/
Dr. Andreas Bittner is the winner of the Public Award winner from HiQ-CARB, a team that produces sustainable and resource-efficient nanomaterials for high-performance batteries. These materials enable faster-charging electric vehicles, extended battery life spans for mobile phones, and enhanced safety and longevity for battery-powered devices. https://www.greener-carbons.eu/
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Around 25 per cent of fintechs pitching a top VC for funding are AI-first startups, according to a top VC.
“I guess in fintech, it. Is still pretty low.“I mean you have AI involved but it’s mostly for workflow automation. It's not the heart of the product.“I think that is the opportunity for the next years. In fintech, AI-first companies, they are, from what I see, maybe 25 per cent of the companies have AI-first.”
Asked what per cent of fintechs pitching Breega, a European VC which backs UK savings and investment app Moneybox and UK card-consolidator Curve, are AI-first startups, Breega partner Benjamin Deplus said:Deplus was speaking on the Tech.eu fintech podcast with Florian Reichert, partner and managing director at Picus Capital, the early-stage tech investment firm, which backs Dutch payment processing tech firm Silverflow and French BNPL firm Alma.
The pair discussed an array of subjects focused on fintech and VC trends in 2024.
On hot investment fintech sectors in 2024, two of those cited by the pair were CFO stack fintechs and payment infrastructure fintechs.Reichert said:
“We have seen a lot of promising early-stage funding for infrastructure plays when it comes to fintech and especially payments.“All of these have a bit longer time to market because you have much more product to build.“A lot of them will now this year and next year move into very interesting stages of scale to make them very attractive for growth capital.”Deplus said:
“There is still a lot to do in the CFO stack, from enterprise to SMB. Actually, with this AI wave, there is a lot to be done in the financial planning space.” -
“It’s never too late and it’s never too early” to launch a startup, according to the co-founder and co-CEO of Enfuce, the payment startup and one of Finland’s biggest fintech.
Monika Liikamaa, co-CEO & co-founder of Enfuce, was speaking along with Michaela Berglund, CEO and founder of Feminvest, an events and education platform for women which has also launched an €8.8 million fund to invest in Nordic startups which are majority owned by women.
The pair discussed the dearth of female founders, female CEOs and females working in VCs- and its impact on the industry.
Asked her thoughts on seeing headlines in the media denoting gender such as “female founder raises .... ” and “…… appoints first female CEO”, Liikamaa says she found the headlines “empowering”-as it shows women were achieving feats.
“Is it something that I would like it to be? No, it kind of alludes to a founder is a male. But that is the world we are living in and we need to change it. I hope, a couple of generations later, that would be seen as ridiculous."
That said, Liikamaa added:Liikamaa pointed to data showing companies with female directors outperforming those with male directors.
She said women were partially to blame for the lack of female founders, as they hadn’t explained well enough that women can be founders and have families as well.
In the UK, Anne Boden, founder, Starling Bank; PensionBee founder and CEO Romi Savova; and Lisa Jacobs, CEO of Funding Circle, are examples of high-profile female leaders.
“What we need to teach the younger generation is that it’s ok to want to achieve, it’s ok to work your ass off. And it’s never too late and it’s never too early to found something and be passionate about it.”
Liikamaa added:Talking about Feminvest’s VC fund, Berglund said:
“The response has been incredible. The interest has been super high.“I have been approached by women and men across Europe saying ‘wow finally, thank you for taking the bet'." -
The CEO of a European neobroker startup recently acquired by Dutch financial services giant ABN AMRO says it’s his job to keep BUX protected from “too much influence from the larger organisation”.
In the Tech.eu podcast, Yorick Naeff, BUX CEO, gives us the background to ABN AMRO’s purchase of BUX, announced in December last year.
The Dutch giant was an early stage investor in BUX- most famous for offering commission-free trading to European investors- and the pair are also tech partners.
“We started discussing opportunities around the summer last year and at some point these things become more concrete,” says Naeff.“I am very much aware of the pitfalls of becoming part of a larger corporate beast. I think it is up to me to make sure obviously that we keep our innovative power and agility.”
He added it was his job as CEO to “protect” BUX from “too much influence from the larger organisation”.
For example, he wants to ensure that BUX doesn't become too subsumed within ABN AMRO, losing its ability to launch products quickly and also that BUX maintains its tech stack.
On the flip side, he points to the benefits of the tie-up, pointing to ABN AMRO’s global reputation, knowledge and experience across financial services.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Naeff talks about other recent changes to BUX, including 40 per cent job cuts, amid a tough economic environment and why it is shifting out of crypto.
Finally, he talks about the importance for him of work-life balance and says meditation works for him. -
“There is no entrepreneurial gene, I don’t think,” says James Wise, partner at VC firm Balderton Capital and author of Start-Up-Century.
He adds:
“I don’t think it is in your DNA. But certainly, your upbringing and the role models you have around you do make a big difference.”Wise gives us the full skinny on his new book, Start-Up Nation, which offers a fresh look at the rise in entrepreneurship and startups and how they are changing the world of work as well as what the changing economy means for the future.
He talks about fintech luminaries, such as GoCardless founder Hiroki Takeuchi who was “integral” to some of the thinking behind the book.
On Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield and Revolut co-founder Nikolay Storonsky, Wise said:
“If you look at the backgrounds of Tom and Nikolay, they are both incredibly competitive, entrepreneurial people.”Wise also offers his view on some of the latest fintech trends.
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The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is “horrible” and will “continue to create concerns” across the world, including the investment community, according to Jaidev Janardana, CEO of UK fintech lender Zopa.
The CEO pointed out that the Middle East was where the world gets a lot of its oil from.
Janardana said:
“What happens in the Middle East? It’s hard to predict. I am assuming there will be concerns about the conflict spreading and thus putting pressure on oil prices again, driving a new potential inflation scare.
“There is, of course, the tremendous humanitarian cost of what is happening there and what does that do to the West’s ability to support the war in Ukraine? And it’s still a very rapidly developing situation.
“There are many potential scenarios where this can go, where this can get worse. And when that happens, then investors tend to be careful with their money and they like to put that in cash, rather than in stocks.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Janardana talks about some of the high points for Zopa this year, including topping one million customers and crossing £3 billion in deposits.
In 2023, Zopa underwent two fundraising rounds, amid a challenging funding landscape.
But Janardana said the two £75m funding rounds “were not that hard”, owing he said to Zopa’s growth and customer demand for its products.
The fintech boss also touched on whether market conditions had improved to the extent that Zopa would likely soon IPO; the potential launch of new products; and its relationship with investor SoftBank. -
Last month, Singapore-based Nium announced that it had chosen London as its European HQ while US fintech Plaid has dual European headquarters in London and Amsterdam.
The two executives discuss the virtues of their international fintechs having European headquarters and why they chose the cities they are located in.
Sandhofer says:
“London is proving to be one of the best ecosystems for fintechs overall.”Lambert says:
“The two top priorities for us are, one, being very, very close to our customers and the people we think should be our customers and then, two, being very, very close to hiring pools of super talented people that want to work directly with those customers in both markets.“And London and Amsterdam were pretty obvious choices for us.”Lambert adds that London and Amsterdam stand out for their “fintech presence”, adding that London is “a kind of a behemoth”.
Sandhofer says that in European cities outside of London and Amsterdam, where Nium also has a hub in, it is “harder to find talent which is willing to work only in English”.
On having dual headquarters, Lambert says:
“The challenge of a dual headquartered set up is obviously when teams are physically disparate it might be difficult to foster conversation.“I think that has been very untrue for us, particularly because we are aware of the risk.”The pair also discuss their current working practices, the benefits of hybrid working and whether they plan to open further European offices.
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Lucas Timberlake, general partner at Fintech Ventures Fund, the US VC that has a focus on fintech and insurtech, and Ricardo Schäfer,
early-stage investor and partner at Revolut backer Target Global, discuss the differences between European VC and US VC funds while also offering insights into the European fintech market.Timberlake, though, says the most prominent difference is between US West Coast VCs and US East Coast VCs, which are more aligned to European VCs.
Timberlake says, generally speaking, US West Coast VCs are looking for binary outcomes, while US East Coast and European VCs are more focused on revenue and loss aversion.
Schäfer said it was difficult to generalise about the differences between US and European VC funds, given fund-to-fund differences.
That said, he said European VC funds tend to be a little smaller in size.
The pair also discuss the trend of US VCs, such as Sequoia and General Catalyst, opening London offices,
Schäfer said:
“When I first went to the US ten years ago, I remember talking to funds on Silicon Valley's Sand Hill Road and they wouldn’t even fly to Los Angeles. Europe was really kind of far away.“Of course, if you are on the ground and you can play at seed, and if you hit the winners you will obviously be a lot better at deploying capital because you have to build relationships.”
He said this strategy of US VCs ploughing more resources into Europe was seeming to work.Timberlake says:
“I think it makes sense specifically for the multi-stage funds to have a presence in Europe from seed onwards.”
“Obviously what you have seen over the last couple of years is big fintechs emerge out of Europe. If you look at Wise, if you know look at Revolut, obviously Klarna and a bunch of others. That has definitely created a lot of attention.”
On whether the trend of US VCs investing heavily in Europe would continue, Schäfer said: -
Scandinavia is home to some of the most celebrated tech companies in recent years: Skype, Spotify, and Klarna. Cities like Stockholm and Copenhagen are also home to a new generation of startups creating waves across Europe.
In this podcast, we talk to Henrik Rosvall, chief operating officer of Stockholm-based climate fintech Doconomy and Emil Stigsgaard Fuglsang, co-founder and chief operating officer at Matter, the Copenhagen-based sustainability insights fintech.
We discuss the fintech scene in Scandinavia and why it is the envy of other nations across Europe; the factors that make cities like Stockholm and Copenhagen attractive fintech ecosystems; how receptive Scandinavians are to startups and fintechs; and whether the desire to tackle the climate crisis is particularly acute in the Nordics.
Commenting on Scandinavian success stories like Klarna and Spotify, Rosvall said: “The big giants have fostered a new generation of entrepreneurs.”
Fuglsang says that those fintechs that are successful in the region are usually successful globally too.
Those that make it in the region “typically make it because we go global quite quick and that is because [Scandinavia] has fairly small markets,” he says
The pair also discuss that the relatively high standards of living in the Nordics mean there is generally a higher motivation to care about climate change and try and tackle it.
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