Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

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.

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 London team plans to invest primarily in crypto and Web3 — and has already done a handful of investments in Europe. Sriram joins us on the podcast to talk about Europe’s crypto prospects, what he’s learning about the continent since his move over from Silicon Valley, the attributes of great CEOs, and why he remains optimistic about tech despite wider market doom and gloom.

This week Sifted editor Amy Lewin is joined by one of London’s best-known VCs Hussein Kanji, founding partner at Hoxton Ventures. He reflects on the kinds of big returns he won, and missed out on, by making early bets on companies like Deliveroo, Darktrace and Babylon.

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 soon, Pierre tells Sifted. On its app, you can order everything from a Burger King to groceries to flowers, from both independent high street businesses to big global chains. It’s raised more than €1bn from investors and employs over 4,000 people, while working with around 65,000 riders. On Startup Europe, The Sifted Podcast, editor Amy Lewin asked Pierre about his budding VC career, what’s going on in the southern Europe startup scene, the state of the food delivery market in 2024 — and if he’s thinking about his next move yet.

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 now Paris is at the centre of the Gen AI boom too. Mistral, PhotoRoom and Poolside are just a handful of the buzzy AI startups based there raising huge amounts of funding. As an angel investor (and one of Sequoia’s most active scouts in Europe) with more than 60 deals under her belt now, Varza is also getting to place some bets in the sector. In the first episode of the Sifted podcast this year, editor Amy Lewin speaks to Varza about what’s on founders’ minds right now, Station F’s expansion plans and what she’s learnt so far as an angel investor.

What do Lidl, Auchan, Sephora and Flink have in common? They’re all customers of RELEX Solutions, one of Finland’s four private tech companies. RELEX makes supply-chain and retail-planning software — which might sound boring, but it's extremely important when you consider how much inventory, especially food, is wasted due to poor planning. Sifted sat down with cofounder Johanna Småros to talk about the company’s decades-long journey from academia to commercialisation, just how many millions of kilos of waste annually the company is helping to avoid and why RELEX’s engineers are tired of hearing about AI.

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

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?

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 on Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast to share her predictions for 2024 and her experience of the tumultuous weeks of this spring.

This week we discuss: Nordic merger between online grocers Oda and MathemIt ain’t Easee: How Norway’s EV rising star fell foul of regulatorsHow Sequoia-backed e-bike refurbisher Upway raised $30m in a micromobility slowdownGrocery 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 2023Why top AI talent is leaving Google’s DeepMind

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

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

This week we discuss: 02:05 French early-stage startups get a €500m funding boost in 2024 budget 04:33 Northvolt’s $20bn listing in Stockholm — a win for European stock exchanges 07:20 Solar energy storage breakthrough could make European households self-sufficient 12:30 Quantum computing is not a threat to national security. So why can't Europe work together? 20:35 Founder to reality TV star — a shortcut to startup success? This podcast is brought to you by Harper James, a national full-service law firm designed to support ambitious businesses. Having supported over 3,500 businesses, Harper James isn’t a run-of-the-mill law firm. It has transformed the traditional law firm model through unique price plans, smart technology and teams of almost exclusively senior lawyers — giving you affordable, commercial and high quality legal advice. If this sounds too good to be true, then head over to harperjames.co.uk and see for yourself. While you’re there, you’ll find 100s of resources to help your journey from startup to scaleup and beyond.

This week we discuss: 00:59 Germany is about to legalise cannabis. What does it mean for startups? 03:49 Payments fintech Modulr agrees with regulator to stop onboarding new customers 05:32 German fund La Famiglia merges with General Catalyst 09:29 Northvolt founder’s heat pump startup secures €87m 17:24 The rise — and fall — of Babylon Link to subscribe to the Sifted Fintech newsletter: https://sifted.eu/newsletters This podcast is brought to you by Harper James, a national full-service law firm designed to support ambitious businesses. Having supported over 3,500 businesses, Harper James isn’t a run-of-the-mill law firm. It has transformed the traditional law firm model through unique price plans, smart technology and teams of almost exclusively senior lawyers — giving you affordable, commercial and high quality legal advice. If this sounds too good to be true, then head over to harperjames.co.uk and see for yourself. While you’re there, you’ll find 100s of resources to help your journey from startup to scaleup and beyond.

This week on the podcast we’re joined by Alex Kendall, CEO of self-driving car company Wayve, for a long-form interview on the challenges of getting autonomous vehicles onto our roads. Alex discusses how to win public trust for this technology, how he sees a future world filled with “embodied AI” and about how Elon Musk followed Wayve’s approach to self-driving tech. This podcast is brought to you by Harper James, a national full-service law firm designed to support ambitious businesses. Having supported over 3,500 businesses, Harper James isn’t a run-of-the-mill law firm. It has transformed the traditional law firm model through unique price plans, smart technology and teams of almost exclusively senior lawyers — giving you affordable, commercial and high quality legal advice. If this sounds too good to be true, then head over to harperjames.co.uk and see for yourself. While you’re there, you’ll find 100s of resources to help your journey from startup to scaleup and beyond.

This week we are live from the Sifted Summit — our annual event bringing together the best of European tech and startups. Today on the pod you’ll hear from Stripe cofounder John Collison, AI startup sensation Mistral cofounder Arthur Mensch and digital bank Monzo COO Sujata Bhatia. *And, if you want to learn how to live into your 100s, here's a write up of the top tips from longevity investor Christian Angermayer. This podcast is brought to you by Harper James, a national full-service law firm designed to support ambitious businesses. Having supported over 3,500 businesses, Harper James isn’t a run-of-the-mill law firm. It has transformed the traditional law firm model through unique price plans, smart technology and teams of almost exclusively senior lawyers — giving you affordable, commercial and high quality legal advice. If this sounds too good to be true, then head over to harperjames.co.uk and see for yourself. While you’re there, you’ll find 100s of resources to help your journey from startup to scaleup and beyond.

This week we discuss: 02:07 — Improbable’s refocus on the metaverse sees big reduction in losses 04:46 — ‘The economics of trading equity for compute are not great’ — Mistral releases its first model 07:15 — Dutch arm of vertical farming startup Infarm declared bankrupt 11:22 — US eyes British startups in chip sovereignty bid 13:50 — UK-France AI rivalry heats up with dual summits 14:48 — Why is applying for EU funding such a nightmare? Get yourself a ticket to the Sifted Summit here.

This week it’s a long form interview with Reshma Sohoni. In 2007 she cofounded the London-based venture fund Seedcamp, which has backed leading European tech companies like UIPath, Wise and Revolut. Reshma sat down remotely with Sifted’s Amy Lewin to share her thoughts on what she’s seeing in the market today, and lessons learnt from more than a decade and a half of investing in startups.

This week we discuss: 01:24 Getir valuation reduced 4x in new $500m funding round 02:14 The big French fire sale: record numbers of startups are selling at big discounts 05:51 German HR tech Personio opens New York office, plans to double US workforce 07:33 Smart chatbot maker DRUID raises $30m to double down on US business 14:48 Want to capitalise off America’s $369bn climate bill? Here’s how Get yourself a ticket to the Sifted Summit here.

This week, Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast is joined by Sachin Duggal, founder and CEO of Builder.AI, a company that uses AI to help customers build software applications more easily. He sat down with Eleanor in the studio to talk about competition for talent, building culture and the future of software development.