This week on the podcast we are joined by Cherry Ventures general partner Sophia Bendz — formerly global marketing director at Spotify — who talks us through what she's seeing across the European early-stage startup ecosystem in a challenging market. She tells us about the AI effect on young companies launching today, how founders can look after their mental health in today's tough market and about how the startup ecosystem has changed since her days at Spotify ..read more

Andreessen Horowitz is one of the world’s best known — and biggest — VC firms, with over $35bn in assets under management, over 500 employees and a portfolio including Airbnb, GitHub, Instacart, Instagram, Lyft, Slack and Wise. But for a long time it merely dabbled in investing in Europe.So it was big news last year when the firm announced it was opening a London office — its first non-US office — and that general partner Sriram Krishnan was moving to the UK to run it. His first job in tech was at Microsoft — and he’s since led product teams at Twitter, Snap and Facebook. Andreesen’s new Lon ..read more

Oscar Pierre is one of, if not the, best-known entrepreneurs in Spain. His delivery company Glovo — which was bought by its bigger, listed competitor Delivery Hero in 2022 — is one of the country’s big international success stories, and now Pierre is using his experience (and financial resources) to help Spain’s next generation of entrepreneurs. He’s also still running Glovo, largely independently of its new parent company. The business has 20m customers in 1,500 cities across 26 countries, including Spain, Italy, Ukraine, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan — and might consider further expansion ..read more

Startup Europe is back for our new-look podcast, where we'll be focussing exclusively on longer form interviews with some of the biggest names in European tech. Last year we brought you conversations with  founders, operators and investors behind companies like Wise, Monzo, Figma, Delivery Hero and Kry and we have a whole load more for you in 2024. This week it's Roxanne Varza, director of Parisian startup mega campus Station F.  In the years since Station F opened in 2017, France has seen startup funding more than triple and the number of unicorns more than quadruple.  And no ..read more

This week we discuss: 01:51 Hyme raises €8m for technology that could halve cost of storing energy 05:12 Xlinks raises $25m from TotalEnergies for 3,800km cable from the Sahara to the UK 07:46 Thought Web3 was over? This VC just raised €15m to back startups in the sector 19:27 Why Stability AI is launching a subscription fee  ..read more

This week we discuss: 01:05 Micromobility giant Tier lays off 22% of its workforce in push for profitability, Unicorn edtech Multiverse to lay off nearly a third of US employees 05:34 GenAI biotech Cradle raises $24m Series A led by Index Ventures 08:55 The top takeaways from Atomico’s State of European Tech report 20:13 Why hasn't EIF announced a single investment from its €3.75bn fund of funds yet ..read more

Sonya Iovieno knows European tech’s secrets. As head of venture and growth at HSBC Innovation Banking, where she works with thousands of VCs, startups and scaleups in the UK and Nordics, she has a view on who’s done an undisclosed down round, who’s been trimming headcount and who’s set up a “hunting line” for future acquisitions. And she also knows what it’s like to go through a merger, after her organisation, formerly Silicon Valley Bank UK, was acquired by HSBC for a mere £1 after the dramatic collapse of its US parent company in March. Iovieno joined us this week for a long-form interview ..read more

This week we discuss: Nordic merger between online grocers Oda and Mathem It ain’t Easee: How Norway’s EV rising star fell foul of regulators How Sequoia-backed e-bike refurbisher Upway raised $30m in a micromobility slowdown Grocery delivery is back as Crisp raises €35m to scale next-day delivery $400k graduate salaries and gun-for-hire ‘SWAT teams’ — inside the wild AI talent market of 2023 Why top AI talent is leaving Google’s DeepMind ..read more

This week we discuss: 00:53 Aleph Alpha raises $500m Series B in one of Europe’s largest AI rounds ever 03:56 What the pitch deck from Adaptive, a new AI startup raising at a $100m valuation, tells us 07:15 French startup Quandela raises €50m to manufacture commercial quantum computers 11:03 Swedish startup wants to ‘stream energy like music’ on electric roads to charge cars as they drive 18:21 10x more money goes to VC funds owned by all-male vs all-female teams ..read more

This week we discuss: 02:26 Web Summit announces former Wikimedia boss as new CEO 04:16 More unions sign up to Klarna strike on Nov 7 06:36 Benetton scion moves into tech investing with new €30m fund 09:40 How a “miracle” weight-loss drug created Europe’s most valuable company, and a startup investment machine 17:23 UK gears up to major AI summit under the shadow of its own lack of regulation ..read more