The last European companies to reach €100B+ market caps were SAP and ASML, both founded 40–50 years ago. If Europe wants a new generation of deep tech champions, venture capital alone won’t get us there. Customers have to step in.

In this episode, Andreas Munk Holm is joined by Martin Schilling, former operator, investor, and founder of Deep Tech Momentum, to unpack why Europe excels at funding breakthroughs, but consistently fails to industrialise them.

This is a conversation about:

• why enterprise buyers are the missing link in European deep tech

• what corporates are doing wrong (and how they can fix it)

• how founders actually win large customers in complex, regulated markets

• and why courage — not grants — is Europe’s real constraint

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🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 01:15 Martin’s background: from N26 operator to deep tech ecosystem builder

• 01:52 What is Deep Tech Momentum (DTM)?

• 03:00 Why commercialisation — not capital — is the real bottleneck

• 04:19 The age gap: Europe’s top companies vs the US

• 06:26 Why US corporates acquire twice as many startups as Europe

• 06:54 The uncomfortable truth: Europe funds innovation others industrialise

• 08:54 Why corporates (not just VCs) must change behaviour

• 10:49 Neo-primes: the new system integrators Europe desperately needs

• 12:50 The four things corporates must fix to work with startups

• 15:06 Why startup collaboration must be CEO-owned

• 17:14 Buyers first: why conferences get this wrong

• 19:03 Money + customers: the only two things founders really need

• 21:27 Trust, speed, and why procurement kills startups

• 23:25 Why trust starts inside the corporate, not with founders

• 27:03 Selling deep tech to enterprises & governments: what actually works

• 32:03 When CVCs help — and when they hurt

• 33:08 Enterprise sales mistakes founders keep making

• 38:28 Deep tech sales reality: defense, policy, and long cycles

• 44:57 Why DTM is not EU-funded — by design

• 49:07 The state’s real role: customer, not grant machine

• 49:23 Final takeaway: Europe needs courage, not more programs

🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify, or queue it for later with chapters ready to go.

✍️ Show Notes

Europe’s Deep Tech Bottleneck Isn’t Science — It’s Demand

Europe has world-class research in:

• quantum

• robotics

• biotech

• advanced materials

• space & defense

What it lacks is enterprise pull.

As Martin puts it:

“Europe funds breakthroughs — and others industrialise them.”

The result:

• European deep tech startups scale slower

• exits skew toward US acquirers

• capital recycles out of the continent

This isn’t new — but it’s now existential.

The Age Problem No One Talks About

One of the most striking stats Martin shares:

• Top 10 European companies by market cap: average age ~87 years

• Top 10 US companies: average age ~30–35 years

Why this matters:

• younger companies collaborate more easily with startups

• older corporates accumulate bureaucracy, risk aversion, and procurement drag

• acquisition and partnership muscle atrophies over time

In the US, Fortune 500 companies acquire 2x more startups than their European counterparts. Silicon Valley giants acquire 10–20x more.

That difference alone reshapes ecosystems.

Neo-Primes: Europe’s Missing Layer

Martin introduces the idea of “neo-primes” — modern system integrators that:

• assemble deep tech into deployable products

• act as customers, partners, and acquirers

• industrialise innovation at speed

Examples are emerging in defense and AI — but Europe needs many more.

“These companies must become the next SAPs and ASMLs — and pull startups with them.”

The Four Corporate Failures Blocking Deep Tech

Martin outlines four systemic problems corporates must solve:

1. CEO Ownership

Startup collaboration cannot live in:

• innovation labs

• venture units

• CTO side projects

If it doesn’t sit on the CEO agenda, it dies.

2. Trust Deficit

Corporates fear startups will:

• disappear

• fail to deliver

• collapse mid-procurement

Founders fear:

• endless pilots

• slow decisions

• zero P&L ownership

Trust must be rebuilt structurally — not rhetorically.

3. Capability Gaps

Most corporates lack:

• fast POC budgets

• empowered decision-makers

• integration paths into core business

Innovation theatre no longer works.

4. P&L Clarity

Startups must articulate — clearly:

• revenue uplift

• cost reduction

• competitive advantage

If it doesn’t hit the P&L within 9–12 months, it won’t scale.

Buyers First, Not Investors First

A core insight behind Deep Tech Momentum:

“Markets only work if buyers show up first.”

Instead of building conferences around:

• startups → then VCs → then LPs

DTM flips it:

• enterprise buyers first

• founders follow

• investors amplify

The goal isn’t inspiration — it’s contracts.

How Founders Actually Win Enterprise Customers

From Martin’s operator playbook:

• Track input KPIs, not just revenue

  • proposals sent per week

  • outreach → meetings → pilots

• Maintain 3–4x pipeline coverage

• Design sales cycles around:

  • regulators

  • policymakers

  • primes & system integrators

In sectors like defense, founders must:

• engage political stakeholders

• influence capability definitions

• sell years before procurement begins

This isn’t optional — it’s the job.

The State’s Real Role: Customer, Not Grant Giver

One of the sharpest critiques in the episode:

Europe doesn’t need more grants.
It needs state demand.

Historical reminder:

• The US Department of Defense bought ~70% of early semiconductors

• That procurement created entire industries

The lesson:

• less regulation

• fewer fragmented programs

• more state purchasing power deployed deliberately

Final Thought: Europe Needs Courage

Martin closes with a challenge:

“Trust requires courage.
Courage to take risk.
Courage to buy early.
Courage to move fast.”

Europe doesn’t lack talent, capital, or ideas.
It lacks confidence and commercial bravery.

💡 One-Liner Takeaway

Europe doesn’t need more deep tech — it needs customers brave enough to buy it.

Our guest is Alex Dang, co-author of the bestselling book The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth.

Alex is a seasoned technology executive and innovation advisor with over two decades of experience. He was a product leader at Amazon, where he launched new businesses across e-commerce, supply chain, and AI; a partner at McKinsey, helping Fortune 500 companies build digital ventures; and today advises corporate leaders and investors on AI strategies, venture building, and applying VC principles to large organizations.

In this conversation, Alex shares provocative insights on why the venture mindset is now non-negotiable for corporates in the AI era, where incumbents hold hidden advantages over VCs, and how to avoid “innovation theater” while turning data, distribution, and scale into real venture wins.

Let’s jump in!

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Here’s what’s covered:

• 01:56 | The Venture Mindset in one frame with nine principles from 20 years of Stanford VC research: uncertainty → portfolios → outliers

• 03:44 | The post-book update Alex wishes he had added time compression: “days, not weeks,” and the rise of the “one slice team”

• 05:53 | Venture mindset applied to AI

• 07:34 | Why “adding AI” is the wrong framing; start customer-backward, not tech-backward

• 08:43 | “AI theater”, innovation theater and press release strategies vs real product value

• 11:19 | The European corporate trap: regulation, consensus, and downside protection as the enemy of transformation

• 11:56 | The right AI rollout sequence with start in back office to learn and protect trust, then go customer-facing at scale

• 15:21 | Why CVCs die after 3.7 years: incentives, leadership fear, and why corporate venturing fails structurally

• 17:24 | AI is now the world’s most democratized intelligence: everyone has the same tools; the gap is execution

• 18:47 | Where corporates fit in venture + startup ecosystems: strengths: data, distribution, enterprise scale

• 20:38 | When corporates should build in-house, when to partner, and why AI must become an internal muscle

• 25:24 | Incentives drive behavior: why executives won’t take venture-style risks unless failure is structurally safe

• 28:18 | AI-native teams and corporate reskilling among smaller, senior teams + digital workers replacing junior tasks

• 35:24 | What happens to the average corporate employee: tasks disappear, workflows evolve, but people still matter

• 38:50 | If Alex were CEO: how to move a workforce into an AI-safe future and target 25% profit uplift through AI

• 44:01 | Most counterintuitive venture principle — “drop bad ideas fast” and why persistence is sometimes the wrong discipline

• 46:05 | What top CEOs are doing right now: coding with Claude, learning by building, and staying close to users

• 49:00 | The compounding effect: “what was impossible 6 months ago is normal today” and why constant feedback loops win

✍️ Show Notes

The Venture Mindset: Why VC Logic Matters More in the AI Era

Alex’s starting point is simple:

Venture capital works because uncertainty is high and outcomes are asymmetric.

Most investments fail.
A few become outliers.
Those outliers generate the returns.

That’s not just finance logic.
It’s an operating system for decision-making when you don’t know the future.

And AI is exactly that kind of environment.

“In uncertainty, your MBA playbook breaks. You need venture mindset tools.”

The book (based on 20 years of Stanford research) identifies nine principles that explain how VCs behave differently and why those principles are increasingly relevant for corporate leaders.

What Alex Wishes He Had Added to the Book

Since May 2024, one thing has become undeniable:

Time has compressed.

Amazon’s famous “two pizza team + launch in 90–111 days” model used to feel fast.

Now:

• prototypes launch in days

• products ship weekly

• teams get smaller

• and execution speed becomes the ultimate competitive moat

Alex frames it as:

“Apply the 10x rule to everything — including pace.”

He also introduces the concept of the one slice team:

Many initiatives no longer require a full startup team.
With AI tools + digital workers, one person can launch entire products.

AI Adoption vs. AI Investing: Stop Thinking Tech-Backward

Alex draws a critical distinction:

1) AI adoption

Using AI to reinvent workflows, improve products, personalize customer journeys, and automate internal operations.

2) Corporate venture/investing

Using CVC, partnerships, acquisitions, and startup collaboration as tools to access innovation and talent.

The mistake corporates make?

Treating AI as the strategy.

“The question isn’t ‘what do we do with AI?’
That leads to AI theater.”

Instead, the right framing is customer-backward:

• what pain exists?

• what workflow is broken?

• what can be simplified?

• what can be automated?

• what becomes possible now?

AI is just one of the tools — like One-Click, Dash, Alexa — successive waves serving the same user needs.

Europe’s Default Reflex Is Wrong for AI

Jeppe raises the European pattern:

AI teams sit close to operations and compliance, not growth.

Alex’s response is blunt:

Europe overemphasizes:

• consensus

• downside protection

• regulation-first execution

Which is the opposite of what you want during a revolutionary shift.

But he adds an important caveat:

trust matters.

That’s why he prefers “minimum lovable product” (MLP) over MVP:

You can move fast, but you cannot break user trust.

The rollout playbook:

1. start with internal/back-office functions (safe learning environment)

2. build competence and confidence

3. move aggressively into customer-facing use cases

Corporates Have a Structural Advantage Startups Don’t

Alex is clear on one massive corporate edge:

“A small win, scaled at enterprise level, can generate 100x impact.”

A startup’s win scales via new customers.

A corporate’s win scales through existing distribution.

That means corporates can:

• test small in one region

• validate quickly

• and roll out globally across millions of customers

Done well, that looks like a VC outlier.

Build vs Buy: The Make Wave Is Real (But Only for the Right Companies)

Andreas brings up the emerging “make wave”:

Why spend millions on generic SaaS when you can build internal tools yourself?

Alex’s take:

If you have the scale and talent to build, build.

Because:

• no vendor understands your workflow nuance like you do

• many “AI startups” are thin wrappers

• and the internal capability becomes a long-term competitive advantage

But he acknowledges not every company is Amazon.

The best approach:

Build core AI muscle internally.
Partner where needed.
Use startups for unique wedge technologies — not generic automation you can do yourself.

Why Corporate Venturing Fails: Incentives

Jeppe drops the stat:

Average CVC lifespan: 3.7 years.

Alex explains why:

Corporate incentives punish failure. VC incentives expect failure. A VC writes off 70–80% of investments.

If a corporate executive fails 70% of the time?

They get fired.

So executives rationally:

• make safe bets

• stay mediocre

• outsource responsibility

• hide behind vendor choices (“Microsoft Copilot is approved”)

• avoid being the person who tried something risky

Alex’s fix is structural:

change incentives + build culture.

He shares an Amazon moment:

He kept press releases from both successful launches and failures on his wall.

Because the signal matters:

“Failing is fine — and you can still be promoted.”

AI Will Replace Tasks — Not People (Yet)

A key part of the episode is workforce transition.

Alex frames it precisely:

AI doesn’t replace roles.

AI replaces tasks.

Routine, automatable workflows will disappear.
But human work remains essential in:

• customer understanding

• trust-sensitive interactions

• relationship building

• decision-making under ambiguity

• cross-functional coordination

His advice to employees is practical:

• use AI tools daily

• build something with them (even a game)

• understand the limitations

• embed yourself into the workflows

Because the winners will be those who can combine:

domain expertise + AI leverage + human empathy

If Alex Were CEO: The AI-Safe Workforce Plan

Alex outlines a CEO playbook:

1. set an ambitious goal

   • e.g., 25% profit uplift via AI initiatives

2. educate every senior leader

   • don’t delegate AI literacy to “the AI department”

3. equip teams with tools + training

   • AI basics + workflow automation (Zapier, n8n, etc.)

4. experiment across functions

   • supply chain, marketing, sales, support

5. roll out customer-facing AI once trust is protected

He adds a point that’s very EUVC:

The fastest way to shift perspective is to spend time in Silicon Valley, around founders, and see what’s possible.

Not because Europe lacks talent — but because proximity compresses learning curves.

The Most Counterintuitive Venture Insight

Alex’s pick:

“Drop bad ideas fast.”

In high uncertainty, persistence can be a trap.

Letting go early is not weakness — it’s discipline.

And it requires mechanisms to counter human bias:

• sunk cost fallacy

• ego attachment

• internal politics

• fear of admitting failure

This principle is one of the hardest for corporate leaders to accept — and one of the most powerful.

The Real Benchmark: Compare Yourself to the Best

Alex ends with a sharp warning:

Don’t compare yourself to the average corporate.

Compare yourself to the best.

The best CEOs are:

• building with Claude at night

• learning by doing

• talking to users constantly

• and treating AI not as a technology initiative — but as a reinvention engine

Because the shift is already here.

And the companies who treat AI as a press release strategy will lose to the ones who treat it as an operating system.

💡 Founder & Investor Takeaway

AI is forcing corporates to choose:

• stay bureaucratic and slow

• or adopt a venture mindset and become an innovation machine

The winners will combine:

• VC-style portfolio thinking

• customer-backward invention

• speed as a competitive moat

• and incentive structures that make risk-taking safe

And in the best case, corporates won’t “beat” VCs.

They’ll collaborate with them — and scale innovation together.

Axel is building Bosch’s venture-building engine with a clear mandate: get Bosch technology out into the world — through founder-led spinouts, joint ventures, and seed rounds that can stand on their own with external investors. With ~80,000 active patents, 20 new patents per day, and 80,000 researchers globally, Bosch has the assets to support its growth. Axel’s job is turning them into investible companies.

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🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 02:30 Bosch’s unfair advantage: 80k patents, 20 patents/day, 80k researchers

• 04:10 Horizon 2/3: building for 2030–2035 where incumbents can’t reach

• 05:30 Hybrid execution: not all in-house, not all studio but a blended model

• 06:25 Problem definition: Bosch theses + founders bringing problems from outside

• 08:25 Stage gates: “get to no fast” + external validation early

• 09:05 Gate #1: attracting “triple-A founders” before anything else

• 10:35 Founder-led 80/20 vs joint ventures when tech risk is still high

• 13:10 Venture market fit: choosing where to build is a venture builder superpower

• 16:20 Founder acquisition: why mediocre pre-seed talent is the biggest risk

• 23:05 Working with scale-ups: co-create instead of buying or minority investing

• 24:15 University engine: 5–6 deep partnerships (Carnegie Mellon example)

• 27:15 Biggest surprises: founder scarcity and portfolio restructuring complexity

• 29:05 Axel’s advice to founders: don’t start deep tech from scratch

• 30:30 Axel’s advice to VCs: don’t underestimate corporates’ learning curve

• 32:00 Axel’s background: founder → Silicon Valley → PWC CVC → Bosch

• 35:15 Career advice: no cookie-cutter route and trust your gut sometimes

• 37:10 How founders can engage: programs + direct outreach on LinkedIn

🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify, or queue it for later with chapters ready to go.

✍️ Show Notes

Bosch Has the Raw Materials, Venture Building Makes Them Liquid

Axel frames Bosch’s starting position in numbers that most startups can’t even imagine:

• ~80,000 active patents

• ~80,000 researchers globally

• ~20 new patents written per day

But the key point: venture building in its current form is new at Bosch. Axel started in January 2025, after prior internal entrepreneurship approaches didn’t produce the outcomes leadership wanted. The new mission is explicit: spinouts that can raise external capital and stand as investible companies.

Strategy Is Board-Aligned — Execution Is Founder-Led

Axel defines 4–5 venture theses aimed at Horizon 2 and 3 — the 2030–2035 opportunity set that large incumbents struggle to access.

Those theses are aligned with Bosch’s top management, but once a venture is formed, Axel’s goal is “maximum autonomy” for the founders — using a hybrid build model and partners where needed.

“Get to No Fast” + External Validation as a Discipline

Two principles drive the operating system:

1. Fall in love less quickly

2. Validate outside Bosch early

The first stage gate isn’t technical.

It’s:
Do we have triple-A founders willing to dedicate their life to this problem?

Then comes customer traction and the hardest forcing function of all:

Within ~12 months, the venture should raise a seed round independently in the market, ideally with an external lead.

Founder-Led 80/20 — Unless Tech Risk Demands a JV

When Bosch can contribute technology that’s already sufficiently de-risked, Axel goes for a VC-friendly structure:

• 80% founders / 20% Bosch

But when technology risk is still substantial (common in hardware and deep tech) Bosch will pursue joint ventures with corporates or universities to give the venture the time (and structure) it needs.

Venture Market Fit: Choose the Market, Don’t Just Accept It

Axel makes a sharp point: VCs compete for dealflow in whatever geography it shows up. Venture builders can choose.

Bosch has seven global hubs from Latin America to Japan, Middle East to Africa and can make deliberate decisions about where a venture should be built, based on ecosystem readiness, talent, customers, and investor density.

He calls out Pittsburgh (Carnegie Mellon) as an underrated deep tech ecosystem in robotics and AI.

Partners as Potluck

Axel’s partnership philosophy is one of the clearest metaphors in the episode:

Bosch brings:

• IP

• patents

• technical assets

• prototypes

• labs

Everything else should be filled by partners who do it better:

• founders

• VCs

• scaleups

• corporates

• universities

He highlights co-creation with scaleups, especially in areas where Bosch is “1–2 years behind” (like carbon capture), where acquisition or minority VC investing doesn’t solve roadmap influence.

The Closing Advice: Don’t Start Deep Tech From Scratch

Axel’s single strongest message to founders:

If you’re building deep tech or hardware, don’t start from scratch.

Defensible technology takes too long to reinvent. Instead, founders should be brave enough to reach out to corporates with underutilized assets — whether it’s Bosch or others — and compress the journey by one to two years.

To VCs, he adds: corporates have learning curves, but the best opportunities increasingly sit where corporate assets meet founder execution.

💡 One-Liner Takeaway

Europe’s deep tech advantage won’t come from more pitch decks. It’ll come from founders turning corporate IP into venture-scale companies, fast enough for markets and capital to believe.

Emil recently announced a $100M global startup program to back founders building the next generation of AI-native products on top of graph technology, from knowledge graphs to hallucination-free LLMs.

We delve into why graph thinking matters now, how Neo4j came of age during the Panama Papers investigation, and why Europe is better positioned than people think to compete in the AI platform shift.

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Here’s what’s covered:

• 02:00 The Panama Papers “Coming Out Party”
  How journalists used Neo4j to uncover 7-layer-deep financial relationships invisible to traditional databases and why it triggered a wave of global adoption.

• 06:40 Why Graphs Are the Missing Link for AI
  Knowledge, meaning, context, and relationships: why LLMs without structured knowledge graphs hallucinate.

• 08:50 The $100M Startup Program
  Why Neo4j is returning to its roots to support AI-native founders and why the packaging for startups had to change.

• 12:00 What Founders Get
  Free Aura credits, dedicated graph engineers, joint GTM, and access to the world’s largest graph developer community.

• 14:30 Early Traction: 300+ Startups in Weeks
  Why early demand is far ahead of expectations and the kinds of companies applying.

• 16:10 Community as a Strategic Moat
  500+ annual global events, deep developer love, and why skill availability is now a CIO-level buying criterion.

• 19:00 Building Deep Tech in Europe
  Why Neo4j kept engineering in Europe, how the ecosystem matured, and what today’s founders can learn.

• 22:00 Regulation & Competitiveness
  Will Europe overregulate itself out of the AI race? Emil’s perspective on models vs infrastructure vs applications.

• 23:40 The Future of AI Infrastructure
  Why every company must rethink its stack and why the biggest threat is assuming your business will survive without change.

✍️ Show Notes

Neo4j: Europe’s Quiet AI Infrastructure Champion

Neo4j started as a fringe idea:
“What if we represent data as networks, not tables?”

A decade later, it’s the backbone of knowledge-driven AI, powering everything from fraud detection and drug discovery to supply-chain intelligence and autonomous systems. Neo4j now serves:

• All 20 of the largest US banks

• 9/10 of the top global pharma companies

• Every major global car manufacturer

Graph technology has become mission-critical as enterprises rush to build AI that understands, reasons, and retrieves real knowledge, not just probabilistic text.

The Panama Papers Moment

Neo4j’s breakout came when investigative journalists faced 1.6TB of unstructured, messy data, passports, scanned PDFs, and shell company paperwork. Traditional databases failed.

Graphs didn’t.

They revealed multi-hop relationships impossible to find in tables:
Addresses → People → Officers → Subsidiaries → Bank Accounts offshore.

The result:

• The biggest global news story of 2016

• A Pulitzer Prize

• And a global wake-up call for banks and regulators: “How did journalists understand our customers better than we could?”

Neo4j became the default graph database for serious investigations, financial crime, and entity resolution.

Why Graphs Matter Now — Even More Than in 2016

LLMs are powerful but brittle.
They hallucinate. They forget. They confuse entities.

Graphs solve these problems by giving AI models structured memory, context, and ground truth.

Examples:

• RAG systems with knowledge graphs drastically cut hallucinations

• Context-aware agents can reason using real relationships

• Enterprise AI systems can track provenance and explain decisions

Graphs are to AI what GPUs were to deep learning.

The $100M Startup Program: Betting on the Next AI Wave

Emil’s insight:
Startups will adopt new AI architectures much faster than banks and corporates.

But Neo4j had a problem. They had become an enterprise company:

• Suits, not hoodies

• $250k entry contracts

• Long sales cycles

• Heavy packaging

Great for Fortune 500s.
Terrible for founders.

So Neo4j is changing the model:

What Startups Get

1. Free Neo4j Aura credits
Run production graph databases in the cloud at zero cost.

2. Dedicated graph engineers
Architectural reviews, design patterns, and brainstorming features. A huge advantage when everything in AI is moving weekly.

3. Co-marketing & GTM
Exposure to the world’s largest graph community, speaking slots, blogs, and joint announcements.

The response?
300+ startups in under two months putting Neo4j on track to run one of the world’s largest AI startup cohorts.

Community as a Moat

Before AI became hot, Neo4j built a bottom-up community:

• 500+ in-person events per year (pre-pandemic)

• Millions of downloads

• Thousands of developers globally are trained in graph thinking

CIOs now consider this a feature:
“I can hire talent because you already trained them.”

This is something European deep-tech founders can learn from:
Communities compound.
And they are defensible.

Europe’s AI Advantage (and Weakness)

Emil’s take:
Europe can win, but not everywhere.

Where Europe can compete:

• Infrastructure layers

• Applied AI

• Vertical AI apps

• Tools around LLMs and agents

Where Europe may struggle:

• Foundation models
  Capital intensity is brutal. Mistral may be the exception, but it’s not yet the global leader.

Biggest risk?
Overregulation is killing momentum before startups scale.

The Bigger AI Threat

This shift is so fundamental that Emil no longer views Neo4j’s startup program as optional:

“If we don’t win this next platform shift, we may not have a business to protect.”

AI is not a feature.
It’s a replatforming of the entire software stack.

And graph-powered AI is the architecture shift happening beneath that.

💡 One-Liner Takeaway

The future of AI belongs to systems that understand context. And context lives in graphs.

In this episode, we sit down with Martin Scherrer, Partner & Head of Managed Funds at Redstone, alongside our own CVC lead Jeppe Høier, to unpack what really happens when corporates leave venture — and how to do it without destroying value or reputation.

Redstone runs a dual model: classic VC funds + “VC-as-a-Service” for corporates and family offices. Martin himself has lived three lives:

• Inside Swiss Re’s CVC (later shut down)

• As a founder of an insurtech in Switzerland

• Now as VC & fund manager at Redstone across multiple corporate mandates.

This article distills the practical playbook and for the quick readers, here’s the TL;DR info graphic 👀

1. The Structural Problem: Why CVCs Keep Dying at 3.7 Years

The starting point is brutal: most CVCs don’t die because venture doesn’t work — they die because corporates aren’t set up to think like VCs.

Martin’s own career started at Swiss Re’s CVC, a 60+ person team that was shut down two years after the dot-com bust and one year after 9/11. Strategy refocused on the core, performance looked bad on a short time frame, and venture was an easy victim.

Add today’s examples like Munich Re stepping away from CVC, and you see the same pattern:

short horizons + lack of VC mindset at board level = shutdown risk, regardless of actual portfolio quality.

2. Redstone’s Positioning: Operator of Last Resort (and First Resort)

Redstone is not your typical venture firm, it can almost be understood as a VC asset management platform that:

• Runs its own sector funds (fintech, deeptech, industry 4.0, etc.)

• Manages corporate and family office funds (VCaaS)

• Takes over CVC portfolios in run-off (SCOR, Helen, others)

The edge comes from three lenses combined:

This mix is what lets Redstone step in after a corporate decides: “We’re out of venture — now what?”

3. The SCOR Case: How to Exit Without a Fire Sale

In the episode, we dive deep on the SCOR portfolio as a central case study of how Redstone takes over corporate venture arms.

At the time, SCOR’s choice was not: “CVC or no CVC?” That decision had already been taken: stop new VC investments. Instead, the choice was:

SCOR engaged a Big Four advisor, ran a structured process, and chose Redstone to manage the full transition, including taking board seats and defining the divestment strategy.

4. How to Onboard a Run-Off Portfolio (in 3 Weeks)

Redstone’s work with SCOR shows how a run-off can be onboarded fast and properly.

Step 1: Intensive onboarding (≈ 3 weeks)

• 25 portfolio companies

• No interaction with the old team

• Deep dive into all docs, cap tables, board material and open issues

Step 2: Prioritisation & role mapping

• Which companies are the biggest exposures?

• Where are the urgent financing needs or crises?

• Which Redstone partner is best suited for which board, by sector and stage?

Step 3: Scenario framework for each company
For every asset, Martin’s team builds three clear scenarios:

This becomes the backbone of the divestment strategy: balancing risk, liquidity and upside over a 4–5 year horizon.

Step 4: Board & governance takeover

• Redstone takes over the corporate’s board seats

• Sets lean governance, decision-making rules and reporting (e.g. IFRS 9 for listed entities)

5. Why Follow-On Capital Still Matters in a Wind-Down

One of the most counterintuitive points in the conversation:

Even when a corporate is exiting VC, follow-ons still matter.

In all corporate run-off mandates Redstone manages, there is capital reserved for follow-ons.

Why?

• Example: one company stuck between seed and Series A.

  • Only institutional investor = the corporate.

  • No new external VC interest.

  • Without some bridge money, it dies.

Redstone convinced the corporate to invest a few hundred thousand more. That:

• Attracted additional angels to extend runway

• Gave time for the company to hit milestones

• Enabled two new, strong VCs to lead a proper round later

Result: corporate is no longer a single point of failure, and its existing stake is actually protected instead of written off.

Principle:
Run-off doesn’t mean starvation. It means disciplined, selective support to protect and grow value where it still makes sense.

6. How Founders and Co-Investors React When a CVC Exits

Martin is very clear on the human dynamics once a corporate announces it’s leaving VC:

1. Immediate reaction:

   • Founders: “We’ve lost a supporter; will we get any follow-on help?”

   • Co-investors: “Is there dead capital on the cap table?”
     

2. After Redstone steps in:

3. Everyone tests your limits

   • Co-investors want cheap upsizing

   • Founders may try to buy back stakes at discounts

   • Later-stage investors want to tidy cap tables

Redstone’s line: you can’t be “a seller at any price”.
The job is to keep value discipline while using run-off as an opportunity to:

• Strengthen syndicates

• Improve cap tables

• Avoid panic selling

7. What Makes a Good Corporate–Redstone Partnership?

This came up both in run-off and active CVC work. The pattern is stable:

Without this, you either get value leakage or reputational damage — usually both.

8. Corporate LP vs Single-LP CVC: Know What Game You’re Playing

The conversation also touched on corporates as LPs in VC funds.

Martin draws a clear line:

• Corporate as one LP in a diversified VC fund

  • Same LPA as everyone else

  • You can offer extra services (deal flow, strategic sessions, etc.), but you cannot skew the fund to solve that corporate’s internal pain points

• Corporate as single LP

  • Very different game → this is CVC

  • Corporate can shut it down at will

  • Governance and IC must be designed to blend corporate and VC logic (e.g. mixed IC: Redstone partner + independent expert + corporate)

Key warning Redstone gives to other VCs considering corporate LPs:

Don’t let CVC become your “CRM team.”
CVC is for outside-in learning and strategic positioning, not for patching internal IT problems.

Use CVC to see where the best founders and most interesting money are going, not to fix this year’s SAP headache.

9. How to Design a CVC That Survives Longer Than 3.7 Years

The last part of the conversation zooms out:
How do you avoid winding down in the first place?

Martin’s answer is structural:

Jeppe frames it simply:

“Internally, it’s all about strategic alignment.
Externally, you still need to be a f***ing awesome financial investor.”

If you don’t clear both bars, you’ll eventually join the 3.7-year graveyard.

10. What Needs to Change in Europe?

The underlying question that runs under the whole episode:

Are European C-suites actually educated in what corporate venturing is?

In the US, many big corporates were once startups themselves. In Europe, much of the index is legacy. That shows up in:

• Short time horizons

• Lack of comfort with J-curves

• Misaligned incentives (bonuses vs long-term value)

Martin’s mission with Redstone is to bridge VC logic and corporate logic, so that:

• Corporates become better investors

• Startups don’t get whiplash when strategies change

• CVC isn’t just another short-lived initiative, but part of a serious innovation portfolio

If you’re:

• Running a CVC

• Thinking about shutting one down

• Or considering taking a corporate as a major LP
  

…this conversation is worth a full listen.

👉 Listen to the episode at eu.vc

And if you share this with one person, make it the CFO or CEO who still thinks “venture” is just a line item in the annual innovation budget.

From Rocket Internet to running a corporate-backed, family-owned venture arm, Matti shares how Kiilto Ventures blends family capital, industry know-how, and VC pace to back startups in the sustainable built environment. They dive into portfolio examples, CVC vs VC dynamics, co-investing with generalists, and why superior product performance at price parity is the only path forward in climate and construction tech.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:30 – Cold open & setup: why this is a “CVC episode”

• 01:00 – Who is Matti? From Rocket Internet & scale-ups to Kiilto Ventures

• 02:00 – What is Kiilto Ventures: mandate, geography, and ownership model

• 04:56 – CVC, VC, or family office? Matti’s “best-of-all-worlds” answer

• 07:30 – How Kiilto’s mothership helps: labs, chemists, and customer intros

• 10:44 – Rocket Internet lessons: speed, scale, and culture

• 18:12 – The built environment’s big four problems: carbon, circularity, health, inefficiency

• 20:25 – Portfolio snapshots: Recoma, Nobody Engineering, Acembee

• 24:21 – Co-investing & partnerships: specialists + generalists, and when offtakes make sense

• 37:27 – Macro & climate politics: why only price-parity products will win

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

Kiilto Ventures in one glance

• Owner & capital base: Single-family, 4th-generation Finnish owner behind Kiilto (chemicals/building materials; >100 years old). No external LPs; no formal fund vehicle.

• Mandate: Early-stage sustainable built environment across materials, hardware, and software. Typical entry: angel/Pre-Seed to Seed, with follow-ons.

• Geo: Nordics & Baltics focus; Europe opportunistically.

• Extras: Select fund investments; an invite-only accelerator.

• Hybrid model: Strategic proximity (labs, chemists, customers) without forced tie-ins; VC-style pace; family-office patience.

Where they hunt (problem clusters)

1. Decarbonization & biodiversity in construction and materials.

2. Circularity: construction consumes huge material tonnage, recycling lags.

3. Indoor health: a known Nordic issue, bigger globally.

4. Construction inefficiency: site delays, diesel waste, fragmented workflows.

Portfolio snapshots

• Recoma (Sweden): Boards from cardboard waste, replacing gypsum; fully operational.

• Nobody Engineering (Nordics): “Chromecast for buildings,” enabling legacy BMS to plug into modern optimization.

• Acembee (Denmark): Emissions tracking and energy optimization for construction sites.

Lessons from Rocket Internet

Bias to speed and scale from day one, paired with a later-found appreciation for culture and resilience. At Kiilto Ventures, this translates to startup-style iteration inside a 100-year-old corporate context.

Co-investing & partnerships
Prefers mixed syndicates: specialists + generalists. Strategic offtakes are a bonus, not a condition. Materials-heavy startups need partners with deeper pockets.

Macro & climate politics
Message to founders: product parity matters. Startups can’t win with “green but worse” or “green but 10× costlier.” Survivors of today’s scrutiny are stronger, price-aware, and more scalable.

Matti’s playbook for founders

• Build better, price-competitive products first; sustainability is the differentiator, not the excuse.

• Own the investor relationship — manage your VCs and corporates actively.

• Syndicate smartly: use specialists for validation, generalists for scaling.

• If in materials/FOAK, plan financing with long-term, deep-pocketed allies.

💡 One-liner takeaway
Family capital + sector expertise + VC discipline is Europe’s winning recipe for building startups in the sustainable built world.

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In this episode, Francesco Di Lorenzo, Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School, takes the stage to share fresh research on the state of corporate venture capital (CVC) in the Nordics. From Sweden to Denmark, Francesco explores how corporates are experimenting with different venturing models, what makes CVC effective, and why Nordic corporates are some of Europe’s most important venture partners.

Rather than polished slides, Francesco offers candid reflections from the Summit itself: the open questions corporates face, the trade-offs in structuring CVC units, and why cultural change in the boardroom is key if corporate venturing is to succeed long-term.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered

• 00:10 Nordic snapshot — Why the region punches above its weight in tech and CVC.

• 01:00 Tools beyond CVC — Incubators, accelerators, and venture clienting: complementary or conflicting?

• 03:00 The CVC effect — Beyond capital: what corporates bring to the table (and why it matters).

• 05:00 Measuring success — Why CVC units last only 3.7 years on average and the difficulty of proving ROI.

• 07:00 Smart money vs. just money — How engineer exchanges and board participation can be more impactful than capital alone.

• 08:00 Venture clienting — A rising model where corporates act as first customers instead of investors—and the risks it carries.

• 10:00 Governance cycles — Why CVC units live and die with CEO tenure, and why board-level protection is essential.

• 11:00 Collaboration vs. competition — What data says about corporates co-investing (and when they don’t).

• 13:00 Nordic findings — Early results from research in Norway, Finland, and Sweden: small portfolios, early-stage focus, and bureaucracy as the top blocker.

• 14:00 AI paradox — Corporates investing in AI startups but cutting internal AI budgets—what this signals for the future.

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

The Many Faces of Corporate Venturing

CVC is just one tool. Corporates mix and match accelerators, venture studios, and clienting models. The big question: should they be sequenced over time, or integrated?

The CVC Effect

Corporates rarely lead funding rounds but add critical non-financial assets: distribution, technical expertise, proof-of-concept pilots. The right hybrid of VC capital and corporate assets could be powerful—but needs intentional design.

Measuring Success

With average CVC lifespans under 4 years, success is hard to measure. Boards often pull the plug too early. Metrics remain fragmented and inconsistent.

Smart Money Requires Org Design

Capital alone isn’t enough. Impactful CVC comes when corporates share talent and know-how—engineers, marketers, board members—not just checks.

Venture Clienting: Promise & Risk

Corporates acting as first clients can derisk startups—but it requires deep operational commitment and governance. It’s not necessarily cheaper or safer than CVC.

Nordic Data

Early-stage, small-ticket investing dominates. Bureaucracy from parent companies is the biggest barrier to scaling CVC impact. Yet corporates stress scalability as a key startup criterion.

AI Paradox

S&P 500 corporates show a trend: the more they invest in AI startups, the less they invest internally. Outsourcing AI learning may create strategic friction later.

💡 One-liner takeaway:
CVC isn’t just about money—it’s about organizational design, board-level commitment, and cultural change. The Nordics show both the promise and the pitfalls of Europe’s corporate venturing journey.

In this session, Christian Tang-Jespersen, Partner at San Francisco–based ACME, and Claus Gregersen, CEO of the 275-year-old evergreen investor Augustinus Fabrikker, explore what global ambition really means in today’s venture landscape.

From recalibrating US expansion strategies to navigating sovereignty, trade tensions, and structural resets, they unpack how investors and founders must adapt to thrive in a more complex—but still interconnected—world.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:00 Setting the stage: Cycles, crises, and why this downturn feels different.

• 02:00 Structural reset, not just another downturn—why waiting for “normal” is not an option.

• 03:30 Investors as navigators, not moral arbiters—what it means in practice.

• 04:15 Why the US remains critical: learning, scaling, and surviving tough competition.

• 06:00 Page nine of every pitch deck: the inevitable US expansion slide.

• 07:20 Trade tensions vs. venture building—why early-stage models aren’t derailed by politics.

• 08:30 The importance of value-adding capital—choose partners for impact, not geography.

• 09:15 Lessons from COVID and defense: building lean, fast, and resilient.

• 10:00 Closing thoughts: capital may be scarcer, but ambition must remain global.

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

Structural Reset, Not a Downturn

• The uncertainty today is systemic, not cyclical.

• Investors and founders must adapt rather than wait for a return to old norms.
  

Global Ambition & the US Market

• Eight out of ten top opportunities still come from the US.

• Beyond business, the US provides unmatched learning and scale environments.

• Success in the US is the ultimate proving ground for global ambition.
  

Politics vs. Venture Building

• Trade wars and tariffs matter for industrial incumbents, less so for early-stage startups.

• Venture models thrive on resilience, adaptability, and optionality across markets.
  

Choosing Capital Wisely

• Founders should seek the most value-adding capital, regardless of geography.

• Ideology should not override pragmatism when building resilient, globally competitive companies.
  

Key Takeaways

• Build lean (COVID lesson), build fast (defense lesson), and above all, build resilient.

• The biggest challenge today is not geopolitics—it’s scarcity of capital compared to just a year ago.
  

💡 One-liner takeaway:
Global ambition isn’t optional—founders must embrace resilience and pragmatism to win in a sovereign, uncertain, yet interconnected world.

From personalized treatments powered by AI, to the crucial role of data rights and trust in scaling digital health, Anne and Henrijette share hard-won insights on how pharma and venture can collaborate without killing speed or innovation.

They discuss the “impatience economy,” where patients increasingly demand fast, personalized solutions, and why collaboration across startups, corporates, and investors is essential to turn science into scalable business models.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered

• 00:10 The next wave of health innovation — AI, deep tech, and strategic investment.

• 01:00 Beyond the pill — Novo Nordisk’s vision for personalized, AI-driven patient care.

• 03:00 Investor lens — what separates fundable AI health companies from “science projects.”

• 04:00 Data rights & distribution — why exclusivity and integration pathways are critical.

• 05:00 Corporate–startup collaboration — Novo Nordisk’s partner platform for scaling innovation.

• 06:00 Scaling globally from day one — why diversified data and pharma channels matter.

• 07:00 The “translator role” — people who speak both startup and corporate languages.

• 08:00 The impatience economy — consumerization of health and the risks of losing trust.

• 09:00 Looking ahead — specificity for patients as the next frontier in health innovation.

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

Beyond the Pill

• Novo Nordisk pairs GLP-1 treatments with AI-driven personalization.

• Patient behavior, preferences, and risk profiles guide tailored interventions.
  

Investor Perspective (Sofinnova Partners)

• Fundable AI health startups must demonstrate:

  • Clear demand and fast path to revenue.

  • Strong data rights and reusability.

  • Integration into existing distribution channels.
    

Collaboration at Scale

• Novo Nordisk’s partner platform connects startups’ APIs and SDKs to millions of patients.

• Corporates excel at scaling; startups excel at innovating.

• Successful collaboration requires translators who understand both worlds.
  

Consumerization & Trust

• Patients are increasingly willing to bypass regulation (“impatience economy”).

• Corporates must safeguard trust while learning from consumer tech’s UX playbook.
  

Looking Forward

• Health innovation will hinge on specificity for patients — precise, personalized, scalable care.

  ---

💡 One-liner takeaway:
AI and digital health will only scale if corporates, startups, and VCs strike the right balance between personalization, data rights, and patient trust.

Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:10 – Setting the stage: CVC as a $100B+ global force

• 01:00 – Why corporate venture matters: from Microsoft’s outlier story to the role of corporate backers

• 03:00 – Active CVC units: stock performance and why entrepreneurs should care

• 04:00 – Lower bankruptcy risk & higher exit multiples for CVC-backed startups

• 05:00 – State of play: fundraising headwinds, but CVCs take the long-term view

• 05:30 – Early-stage shift: corporates getting active in seed & pre-seed rounds

• 06:00 – Global hotspots: Latin America and APAC showing strong momentum

• 07:00 – What CVCs bring: board seats, portfolio support, but still lighter on financial-return expectations

• 08:00 – Who plays the game: large corporates with $1B+ revenues dominate, but LP stakes open doors for smaller players

• 09:00 – New frontiers: universities, accelerators, and venture clienting as the next CVC battlegrounds

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

CVC by the numbers

• Global CVC investment now >$100B annually.

• Startups with CVC backing are 50% less likely to go bankrupt.

• Exits: CVC-backed companies command slightly higher multiples than VC-only peers.
  

Trends to watch

• Shift to early stage: more CVCs writing checks at seed and pre-seed.

• Regional momentum: Latin America and APAC seeing the steepest growth.

• Support functions: best-in-class CVCs are building portfolio development teams, sometimes rivaling financial VCs.

• Beyond big corporates: while giants with $1B+ revenues dominate, a growing number of smaller players are participating as LPs.
  

Strategic vs financial balance

CVCs still skew toward strategic value-add — market access, customer validation, product fit — but Charlie argues there’s no reason more shouldn’t also pursue VC-like financial returns alongside.

New frontiers

• University ties: a massively underused pipeline for corporates.

• Accelerators & venture clienting: increasingly popular for structured startup engagement.

💡 One-liner takeaway
Corporate venture capital is no longer a side-game — it’s a $100B global force shaping exits, de-risking startups, and increasingly pushing into seed-stage and new markets.

In this session, Marcus Behrendt, Managing Director at BMW i Ventures, and Nicole LeBlanc, Partner at Woven Capital (Toyota’s global growth fund), join Andreas Munk Holm to explore the shifting landscape of mobility and corporate venture.

From navigating capital-intensive hardware bets to finding the balance between strategic alignment and financial discipline, Marcus and Nicole share what they’ve learned running two of the world’s most active mobility CVCs. They open up on exits, collaboration with startups, and how CVCs must evolve to remain relevant in an era of autonomous, connected, and electrified vehicles.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered

• 00:10 BMW i Ventures’ journey from corporate “experiment” to one of Europe’s most established mobility CVCs.

• 01:00 Woven Capital’s global mandate — $800M to invest in growth-stage companies shaping the future of mobility.

• 02:00 Strategic vs. financial returns: how to keep credibility with founders while serving corporate parents.

• 04:00 The hard part of hardware — why scaling in mobility takes patient capital and operational backing.

• 06:00 Startups + corporates = frictions and opportunities — lessons from portfolio collaborations.

• 08:00 Exit realities: IPO droughts, M&A dynamics, and how mobility startups find liquidity.

• 10:00 The next decade of CVC in mobility: sustainability, AI, and cross-border collaboration.

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

BMW i Ventures

• Launched as BMW’s venture arm, now one of Europe’s most established CVCs.

• Independent fund structure helped credibility with founders.
  

Woven Capital

• $800M global growth fund under Toyota, focused on connected, autonomous, shared, and electrified mobility.

• Positioned at growth stage to back proven teams scaling globally.
  

Strategic vs. Financial

• Both stressed the need to deliver competitive returns to maintain credibility.

• Strategic alignment works when CVCs act as trusted investors first, corporate connectors second.
  

Hardware & Capital Intensity

• Scaling hardware mobility startups requires patience and operational support from corporates.

• Example discussions: supply chain complexity, validation cycles, and regulatory hurdles.
  

Exit Landscape

• IPO window remains largely shut; M&A increasingly dominant.

• Corporates often play dual roles as investors and acquirers — creating both opportunities and challenges.
  

The Next Decade

• Sustainability, AI, and cross-border collaboration will define mobility venture.

• Both see corporates playing a crucial role in financing and scaling breakthrough technologies.

💡 One-liner takeaway: In mobility, CVCs succeed when they act as disciplined investors first and corporate connectors second — helping founders tackle capital-intensive scaling while staying credible in a fast-changing market.

In this episode, Andreas Munk Holm speaks with Tanja Lind Melskens, Head of Corporate Strategy and M&A at Terma, Denmark’s tier-one defense technology group. As Europe re-arms and defense spending surges, Tanja shares how startups, corporates, and investors must rethink dual-use technology, navigate inflated wartime valuations, and prepare for the post-conflict market.

From frontline innovation in Ukraine to the challenges of ESG in defense tech, this conversation sheds light on one of the most important—and controversial—frontiers for venture collaboration.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered

• 00:10 Europe’s re-armament: rising budgets, real opportunities—and inflated valuations.

• 01:30 Ukraine as the “Silicon Valley of defense tech”: 4 million drones a year and frontline R&D.

• 03:00 Why startups must prepare for the post-conflict market, not just donation-driven sales.

• 04:30 Terma’s Kyiv subsidiary and partnerships with Ukrainian startups.

• 06:00 Drone wars and critical infrastructure: protecting energy, transport, and hospitals.

• 07:00 ESG in defense: compliance vs. survival in frontline innovation.

• 08:00 Risks no VC faces: working with founders whose survival is uncertain.

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

Europe’s Defense Moment

• NATO commitments are climbing from 3.5% to 5% of GDP.

• Defense budgets will grow by billions across Europe, making the market very real.

• But valuations are overheated, driven by wartime donations and one-off sales.

Ukraine: Silicon Valley of Defense

• Over 4 million drones produced annually.

• Startups are testing and iterating in frontline bunkers, 3D printing parts and updating software in real time.

• Innovation pace far outstrips Western defense companies.

Post-Conflict Reality

• Donation-driven revenues don’t prove market viability.

• Long-term defense customers demand proven, reliable, and compliant products.

• Many VCs entering defense may get burned if they don’t plan for post-war conditions.

Critical Infrastructure Protection

• Lessons from Ukraine show hospitals, power plants, and transport hubs as military targets.

• Terma is focusing on protection solutions for these sectors across Europe.

ESG & Survival

• Terma maintains strict compliance in normal operations.

• But in frontline partnerships, survival trumps convention: startups don’t have a copy of the Geneva Convention on the table.

• Post-conflict, ESG standards and anti-corruption safeguards remain essential.

💡 One-liner takeaway: Europe’s defense tech boom is real but risky—success depends on bridging frontline innovation with post-conflict markets, and balancing ESG ideals with the brutal realities of war.

In this session, Sead Bajrovic of Water Impact Partners and Gijs de Bruin of PureTerra Ventures take the stage to unpack one of the most overlooked challenges in climate investing: water. From scarcity and pollution to corporate resilience and trillion-dollar opportunities, they explain why water technology must become a central pillar of Europe’s impact and climate strategy.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered

• 00:10 Why water is the “oil that runs everything” — and why it’s undervalued.

• 01:00 The hard facts: only 0.3% of Earth’s water is accessible, and demand will outstrip supply by 40% by 2030.

• 02:30 Legacy systems can’t cope — why centralized water treatment is failing.

• 04:00 Corporate risk: data centers, manufacturing, and the Amazon Arizona case.

• 05:00 Who’s leading: Apple, BASF, and L’Oréal’s water stewardship programs.

• 06:00 Investment shift — from niche impact to mainstream VCs entering water.

• 07:00 UN data: every $1 invested in water resilience returns $7.

• 08:00 Innovation spotlight: AI, software, and applied technologies for efficiency.

• 09:00 The most disruptive thing? Corporates putting real money into water.

You can listen to the full session from the EUCVC Summit 2025 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

✍️ Show Notes

Water as Climate’s Blind Spot

• Only 0.3% of Earth’s water is easily accessible.

• By 2030, demand will exceed supply by 40%.

• Water powers food, energy, data centers, and industry — yet remains undervalued.
  

Corporate Responsibility

• Companies like Apple, BASF, and L’Oréal are setting benchmarks with real stewardship programs.

• But many still “greenwash” with little action — risk is growing.
  

Investment Momentum

• Water tech crossed $1 billion in annual investment for the first time last year.

• Once seen as a niche for impact investors, water is now attracting mainstream VCs and thematic funds.

• UN: $1 → $7 ROI in water resilience.
  

Innovation Frontiers

• AI and software driving efficiency.

• New technologies turning wastewater into valuable byproducts.

• Loop factories: fully recyclable water use inside industrial systems.
  

The Big Call

• The most disruptive move isn’t a new tech—it’s corporates finally putting serious money into water solutions.

💡 One-liner takeaway: Water is climate’s hidden crisis. The winners will be corporates and investors who stop greenwashing and start funding real water resilience at scale.

In this session, Jeppe Høier is joined by Crispin Leick, Managing Director of EnBW New Ventures and Georg Reifferscheid, Head of Sustainability Ventures at REWE Group. Together, they explore how corporates are deploying capital, rethinking supply chains, and integrating AI to tackle Europe’s most urgent challenge: the energy transition.

From evergreen venture models to decarbonizing retail operations, the discussion dives deep into how industrial and consumer giants are investing, where capital is moving fastest, and why success still depends on aligning financial and strategic incentives.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered

• 00:10 The energy transition is here — Europe’s corporates on the frontlines.

• 01:00 Evergreen VC at EnBW New Ventures — why Crispin calls it the “best decision ever.”

• 03:00 REWE Group’s sustainability mandate — tackling scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.

• 05:00 Where venture capital meets infrastructure — smarter, more capital-efficient deployment.

• 06:00 AI in energy — real-world use cases from batteries to trading algorithms.

• 07:00 Cooling, HVAC, and sustainable construction — REWE’s innovation priorities.

• 08:00 Financial return first — why strategic impact only follows startup success.

• 09:00 Incentives matter — why carry and financial alignment are make-or-break in CVC.

You can listen to the full conversation from the EUCVC Summit 2025 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

✍️ Show Notes

Evergreen Model at EnBW New Ventures

• Unlike closed-end CVC funds, EnBW’s evergreen structure reinvests all exit proceeds into new startups.

• This creates stronger alignment with founders and sharper accountability for the investment team.

• Crispin: “It’s the best decision we made in nine years — we’re entrepreneurs ourselves.”
  

Decarbonizing Retail at REWE Group

• Sustainability ventures are embedded directly in operations.

• Current focus: scope 1 & 2 emissions (energy, mobility, buildings).

• Scope 3 (supply chain) remains the hardest challenge due to missing data and supplier dependency.
  

AI in Energy

• Not chasing LLMs or infrastructure — instead focusing on applied AI.

• Examples: battery analytics for health monitoring; algorithmic trading in intraday power markets.
  

Innovation Priorities at REWE

• Cooling and HVAC with natural refrigerants.

• Alternative building materials (wood, green concrete).

• Greener retail store construction.
  

Financial First, Strategic Second

• For both corporates, financial returns are non-negotiable.

• Strategic impact only comes if startups succeed.

• Incentives (including carry) are key for aligning CVC teams with true financial discipline.
  

💡 One-liner takeaway: The energy transition needs corporates that invest like VCs — financially disciplined, strategically relevant, and willing to back startups tackling Europe’s toughest infrastructure and sustainability challenges.

In this episode, Jeppe Høier sits down with Nadia Carlsten, VP at DCAI, and Bjarke Ruse Sejersen, CEO of Go Autonomous, to explore how Europe is putting AI hype into practice. From Denmark’s launch of the Gefion supercomputer to startups training proprietary models, this conversation dives into the reality of building AI factories that deliver business value — and what it will take for Europe to compete globally.

Nadia shares why compute sovereignty matters and how Denmark is positioning itself as a hub for large-scale AI innovation, while Bjarke explains how Go Autonomous trained the world’s first B2B foundation model — and why European startups need braver investors to seize the AI-native future.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:10 Forget the AI hype - why compute sovereignty matters for Denmark and Europe.

• 01:40 From infrastructure to innovation - Nadia on how Gefion enables Danish startups and researchers.

• 02:15 Go Autonomous’ leap - Bjarke on training the world’s first B2B foundation model.

• 03:20 Scale in action - handling €30B annually with tailor-made AI.

• 04:00 Adoption gap - Nadia on why Denmark must accelerate real-world AI use cases.

• 05:20 Capital mindset - Bjarke on why Europe lags the U.S. in risky AI-native investments.

• 06:30 Investor responsibility - Nadia on knowing which startups are fine-tuning vs. building foundational models.

• 07:30 Green AI - Europe’s unique advantage: pairing supercomputing with sustainability.

• 08:15 The missing link - Nadia on translating business ambition into compute-ready AI projects.

• 09:00 Corporate + startup collaboration - Bjarke on why structured partnerships could be Europe’s AI superpower.

You can listen to the full session with Nadia Carlsten and Bjarke Ruse Sejersen from the EUCVC Summit 2025 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

✍️ Show Notes

Europe’s Bet on Compute Sovereignty

• Gefion puts Denmark at the forefront of AI infrastructure.

• Local companies no longer need to depend on costly or foreign-controlled GPU access.
  

From Hype to Business Value

• Go Autonomous trained a world-first B2B foundation model.

• Proprietary data + compute = €30B in transactions powered by AI.
  

Adoption & Capital Challenges

• Denmark still lags in AI adoption for transformative use cases.

• European VCs remain risk-averse toward R&D-heavy AI models, unlike U.S. counterparts.
  

Investor Responsibility

• Founders need investors who understand the difference between fine-tuning existing models and building new ones.

• Growth trajectories differ dramatically — and so do capital needs.
  

Europe’s Unique Edge

• Unlike the U.S., Denmark can align AI supercomputing with renewable energy.

• Green energy + AI infrastructure makes Europe a natural leader in sustainable AI.
  

Startup + Corporate Collaboration

• Corporates can de-risk and bootstrap startups by funding mission-critical AI use cases.

• More structured collaboration could give Europe an AI-native edge.

  ---

💡 One-liner takeaway:
Europe’s AI edge will come from compute sovereignty, green energy, and bold collaboration between startups, corporates, and investors willing to build the next generation of AI-native companies.

In this session, Jeppe Høier speaks with Bodil Sidén, Founding Partner at Kost Capital, and Marika King, Head of PINC, the venture arm of Paulig. Together, they explore how Europe can reinvent food systems to feed 10 billion people by 2050—without destroying the planet.

From test kitchens and Michelin chefs in VC funds, to evergreen corporate models and the hunt for plastic-free packaging, Bodil and Marika share their unique approaches to food and agri-tech investing, the biggest opportunities ahead, and what they look for in founders building the future of food.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered

• 00:10 Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 — why food is “different” and needs a new venture model.

• 01:00 Inside Kost Capital’s test kitchen — from Michelin chefs to food historians in due diligence.

• 02:00 PINC’s evergreen model — why speed and long-term capital matter for food innovation.

• 03:00 Execution over ideas — why market obsession beats product obsession.

• 04:00 The secret sauce: validating food science claims in real time.

• 05:00 When corporates add value without killing agility — the good and bad of CVC in food tech.

• 06:00 The holy grail: plastic-free packaging that behaves like plastic.

• 07:00 Big bets today: green fertilizers, bio-controls, smart water, and sustainable agriculture.

• 08:00 AI as an enabler — cutting costs and accelerating product development.

• 09:00 Food, health & nutrition — the rise of sustainable fatty acids, vitamins, and bio-based aromas.

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

Why Food Is Different

• Food is culture, regulation, and taste—you can’t diligence it from a spreadsheet.

• Kost Capital set up a test kitchen with chefs, gastro-scientists, and historians to evaluate investments hands-on.
  

Evergreen + Strategic Capital

• PINC, Paulig’s venture arm, runs an evergreen model: more flexible than traditional VC, but still requires exits to prove results.

• Corporates can accelerate adoption by becoming customers, not just investors.
  

What Founders Need

• Execution > perfect ideas.

• Go-to-market too often comes too late; the best founders obsess about customers, not just product.
  

Investment Priorities

• Sustainable agriculture: green fertilizers, bio-controls, smart water solutions.

• Packaging: the “holy grail” — alternatives that look and act like plastic but biodegrade.

• Health & nutrition: new ways to produce fatty acids, antioxidants, vitamins, and aromas sustainably.
  

AI in Food Tech

• Enabling faster, cheaper product development by simulating outcomes digitally before lab work.

• Example: Danish startup Amass, applying AI to bio and food science.

💡 One-liner takeaway: Reinventing food for 10 billion people demands more than capital — it requires test kitchens, evergreen patience, and founders obsessed with execution and customers.

In this episode, Samuli Sirén, Managing Partner at Redstone, joins Andreas Munk Holm to explore how data-driven deal sourcing is reshaping venture capital. Redstone has spent nearly a decade building Sophia, its proprietary analytics platform, to track trends, identify group dynamics, and map startup opportunities long before they show up on mainstream radars.

From the promise and limits of AI in scouting to the common mistakes corporates make in startup sourcing, Samuli pulls back the curtain on what works, what doesn’t, and how data can give investors an edge without replacing human judgment.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered

• 00:10 Data, hype, and reality — is algorithmic deal flow just LP marketing or a real sourcing edge?

• 01:00 Building Sophia: Redstone’s proprietary database for mapping opportunities

• 02:00 Identifying groups and dynamics — why trends matter more than picking a single winner

• 03:00 From regulation to signals: how legal shifts and new markets trigger clusters of startups

• 04:00 Geography and global scope — why national champions rarely scale, and why global is better

• 05:00 Corporate mistakes in sourcing — overfocusing on core business and overestimating their value

• 06:00 Doing it right: how corporate LPs can learn, stay hands-off, and still gain massive value

• 07:00 Lessons from Redstone’s fintech funds — German banks as LPs and the power of curiosity

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

Data as a Tool, Not a Silver Bullet

• Redstone’s Sophia platform has been in development for 8–10 years.

• AI helps identify patterns, clusters, and group dynamics, but it doesn’t pick the “one winner” for you.

• Systems cover ~60–70% of the work; the final calls still need human judgment.
  

Signals & Trends

• Startup sourcing is less about single companies and more about spotting shifts (new regulations, technologies, or behaviors).

• Identifying clusters of 20–30 companies in a space is often the best entry point.
  

Geography Doesn’t Matter (Much)

• For digital and AI, global champions beat national champions every time.

• Investors should benchmark globally — not just against local competitors.
  

Where Corporates Fail

• Over-indexing on their own core business when defining strategy.

• Overestimating their ability to add value to startups.

• Falling into “generic thinking” that leads to misaligned investments.
  

Corporate LPs Done Right

• Corporates can gain huge value as LPs if they approach with curiosity, not control.

• Example: German banks in Redstone’s fintech funds — open-minded, hands-off, learning-focused.

💡 One-liner takeaway: Data-driven sourcing helps investors spot trends early — but lasting success comes from combining analytics with judgment, and from corporates learning to play the long game without forcing their own agendas.

As the day closed, Andreas Munk Holm, co-founder of EUVC, took the stage for the final word - a reflection on where real power comes from and what Europe’s venture community must do next.

Throughout the day, speakers discussed sovereignty, collaboration, and Europe’s industrial future. Andreas’ message cut through with urgency: if we want Europe to lead, we can’t stop at innovation - we must step into politics.

He pointed to the example of the United States, where the tech ecosystem has rallied around political power, influenced policy, and put its candidates into office. The takeaway? Values matter, but influence requires engagement and Europe’s founders and investors need to find their voice in the political arena.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:30 Closing thanks: to Sophia for orchestrating EUVC Live, to Jeppe for bringing it to life, and to Nicole and Team Woven for backing Team Europe.

• 01:00 Europe’s mood: sovereignty, collaboration, and the belief that unity is power.

• 01:30 The missing ingredient: understanding that real power doesn’t just come from technology or capital, but from politics.

• 02:00 Lessons from the U.S.: how tech rallied around a candidate, won power, and now shapes national policy from within the system.

• 02:30 The power of lobbying: Andreessen Horowitz’s largest internal team today isn’t marketing or hiring - it’s policy and lobbying.

• 03:00 The challenge for Europe: we have the values and the vision, but not yet the political infrastructure or the courage to collaborate.

• 03:30 The call to action is for VCs, founders, and ecosystem leaders to step up, take a side, and engage politically to secure Europe’s future.

You can listen to the full closing reflection on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

About Andreas Munk Holm & EUVC

Co-founder of EUVC, the European VC community and media platform dedicated to bringing Europe’s venture ecosystem together from founders and fund managers to policymakers and corporates.

Core Idea

Europe’s future in innovation won’t be secured through capital alone. Power lies in politics and the venture ecosystem must claim its seat at the table.

Key Concepts

• Real power = political power: innovation without influence is fragile.

• Learning from the U.S.: where lobbying and policy shape outcomes faster than markets.

• Europe’s edge: stronger values, better collaboration but a gap in political engagement.

• Next step for VCs: build internal policy capabilities and engage directly with regulators and governments.

💡 One-liner takeaway:
If Europe wants to lead in innovation, it must also learn to lead in politics because real power lies in shaping the rules, not just playing the game.

In this session, Nick de la Forge, Partner at Planet A Ventures, takes the stage to share insights from an eye-opening field trip through China’s climate and hardware startup ecosystem.

Nick’s story begins with a simple question: what if we’re wrong about China’s advantage? — and ends with a humbling realization of just how fast and how efficiently the world’s largest manufacturing ecosystem now moves.

Joined by fellow investors from 2150, Energy Impact Partners, and Compass, Nick toured factories, startups, and hyperscalers like CATL and BYD, witnessing firsthand what “scale” really looks like. The takeaway? Europe’s biggest competitor isn’t just cheaper — it’s faster, leaner, and far more integrated.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:30 Why China — what sparked the trip, who joined, and how a week-long “Disneyland of hardware” tour changed everything.

• 01:30 Inside the factory visits — from solid-state batteries to precision fermentation, startups founded just 3–5 years ago already hitting $30–60M in revenue.

• 02:30 The myth of state subsidy — why cheap labor and government handouts aren’t what’s driving China’s success.

• 03:00 The real drivers of scale

• 04:30 Capital efficiency at another level — $20M raised, $40M revenue, full-scale factories operational within 24 months.

• 05:00 What Europe can learn — humility, realism, and the need to choose its battles wisely.

• 05:30 Competing with China = playing Djokovic at tennis — pick a different game. Find niches in ultra-high-precision manufacturing and advanced polymers where Europe still leads.

• 06:30 The founder takeaway — every European hardware founder should go to China, see it, and learn from it firsthand.

• 07:00 Managing IP risk — why sourcing below component level is the new best practice for protecting innovation.

• 07:30 The role reversal — 20 years ago, China came to Europe to learn. Today, Europeans visit China in awe.

• 08:00 Europe’s opportunity — use China’s speed as leverage: source smarter, integrate faster, and turn dependency into advantage.

• 08:30 Final message — be humble, be smart, and keep perspective: Europe has world-class science and talent — but must learn to play to its strengths.

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

About Nick de la Forge & Planet A Ventures

Partner at Planet A Ventures, a climate-focused VC based in Hamburg, backing founders who combine scientific impact assessment with scalable business models.

Core Idea

Europe can’t out-China China — but it can outsmart it. Competing on cost is futile; competing on precision, innovation, and speed of learning is essential.

Key Insights from the Trip

• Supply Chain Density: everything built within a 100 km radius.

• Buyer Mentality: corporate buyers move at startup speed.

• Talent Depth: abundant, disciplined, and technically trained.

• Capital Efficiency: $20M in, $50M out — in three years or less.

Europe’s Edge

• Advanced manufacturing in ultra-high-precision domains.

• Leadership in materials science and advanced polymers.

• Science-backed innovation ecosystems and deep academic networks.
  

The Challenge

Europe’s founders must see China firsthand to understand the benchmark — and policymakers must support strategic scale-up in critical industries.

💡 One-liner takeaway:
Europe won’t beat China on cost or speed — but by playing to its strengths in science, precision, and creativity, it can still win the game that matters.

In this session, Danijel Visevic, Founding Partner at World Fund, takes the stage with a powerful message: Europe’s strength has always been its ability to turn crisis into collaboration — and it must do so again.

Daniel traces Europe’s journey from the coal and steel community of 1951 to today’s climate and geopolitical challenges. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to COVID and the war in Ukraine, he reminds us that Europe’s greatest leaps have always come from unity, resilience, and investment in shared progress.

Now, as Europe faces an age of “polycrisis” — from war and climate to supply chain fragility and tech disruption — Daniel calls for a new act of radical innovation: rebuilding Europe’s industrial leadership through collaboration, deep tech, and climate investment.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:30 The Coal and Steel Treaty of 1951 — when Europe chose collaboration over conflict.

• 02:00 From war to unity — Daniel’s personal story of a continent rebuilt through cooperation.

• 03:00 The “Age of Polycrisis” — or, as Daniel reframes it, the age of opportunity for those who collaborate.

• 04:00 Europe’s new sovereignty — not armies and flags, but semiconductors, raw materials, data, and AI.

• 04:30 The hard numbers: 98% of rare earths and 97% of lithium imported; 80% of solar panels made in Asia.

• 05:30 Europe at risk of becoming a spectator in a game it helped invent — and why collaboration is the antidote.

• 06:00 Lessons from history — how Europe expanded prosperity after 1989 and launched the NextGenEU fund during COVID.

• 07:30 Real transformation: cutting Russian gas dependency from 40% to 11% in two years — with renewables as resilience.

• 08:30 The venture challenge — Europe raises 7x less VC than the US, and only 11% of climate startups reach Series B.

• 09:00 Hope in motion — from €300M climate funds to €1B+ deep tech and climate vehicles driving the next wave.

• 09:30 European champions

• 10:30 The next phase — Europe needs ambitious scale-up capital, public–private partnerships, and a shared mission.

• 11:00 The call to action — Europe’s story isn’t stagnation; it’s reinvention through unity and belief.

You can listen to the full session on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧

✍️ Show Notes

About Daniel Wiegand & World Fund

Founding Partner at World Fund, Europe’s climate tech VC investing in technologies that accelerate the transition to a net-zero world.

Core Idea

Europe’s strength lies in collaboration. From post-war unity to clean energy transitions, crisis has always been the catalyst for innovation.

Key Concepts

• Polycrisis or Opportunity: War, climate, and disruption are tests of Europe’s ability to work together.

• European Sovereignty 2.0: Defined by chips, AI, batteries, and clean energy — not borders.

• Scaling Climate Tech: Bridging Europe’s funding gap with deep tech and industrial-scale investment.

• Innovation in Action: Companies like IQM, Silo, and Planet A Foods show Europe’s capacity to lead in quantum, materials, and food.
  

Europe’s Next Act

• Build resilience through investment.

• Scale climate and deep tech from seed to infrastructure.

• Turn crisis into competitiveness through collaboration and shared mission.
  

💡 One-liner takeaway:
Europe’s story has always been one of reinvention — and its next chapter will be written by those who turn today’s crises into collective innovation.