This week on the pod we’re joined by Jarek Kutylowski, founder and CEO of German AI startup DeepL. He’s built a profitable business in a field where he’s had to compete with the likes of Google, by developing cutting edge language translation t

Index Ventures partner Martin Mignot on where Revolut should list

May 24th, 2024 47m 19s

Name a big European tech company, and there’s a high chance Martin Mignot, partner at Index Ventures, invested in it. Martin’s portfolio includes some of the continent’s big winners, like car sharing platform BlaBlaCar, digital bank Revolut, di

Sophia Bendz on why Spotify's Daniel Ek hired people with "no track record"

Apr 19th, 2024 46m 35s

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 m

Why Andreesen Horowitz is betting big on crypto in Europe with Sriram Krishnan

Mar 26th, 2024 42m 41s

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 ti

Hussein Kanji from Hoxton Ventures on how just much he made from investing in Deliveroo and Darktrace

Feb 29th, 2024 57m 29s

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 Delivero

Hussein Kanji from Hoxton Ventures on how just much he made from investing in Deliveroo and Darktrace

Feb 29th, 2024 57m 29s

Glovo's Oscar Pierre on the gig economy and building scaleups in Southern Europe

Feb 15th, 2024 46m 15s

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 Pie

Station F’s and Sequoia’s Roxanne Varza on how to stop tech companies moving to the US

Feb 9th, 2024 41m 46s

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 behin

“We’ve made more money than we ever dreamed of”: RELEX Solutions’s Johanna Småros

Dec 18th, 2023 45m 7s

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

Why is Stability AI changing its business model?

Dec 7th, 2023 26m 35s

This week we discuss:01:51 Hyme raises €8m for technology that could halve cost of storing energy05:12 Xlinks raises $25m from TotalEnergies for 3,800km cable from the Sahara to the UK07:46 Thought Web3 was over? This VC just raised €15m to bac

More layoffs at European scaleups as the tech slowdown bites

Nov 30th, 2023 26m 10s

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 employees05:34 GenAI biotech Cradle raises $24m Series A led by Index Venture

HSBC’s Sonya Iovieno on undisclosed down rounds, startups trimming headcount and SVB’s collapse

Nov 23rd, 2023 38m 44s

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, w

Some tech workers are now earning $400k straight out of uni. Why?

Nov 16th, 2023 37m 56s

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 ba

Aleph Alpha raises one of Europe's biggest AI rounds, but is all as it seems?

Nov 9th, 2023 23m 49s

This week we discuss:00:53 Aleph Alpha raises $500m Series B in one of Europe’s largest AI rounds ever03:56 What the pitch deck from Adaptive, a new AI startup raising at a $100m valuation, tells us07:15 French startup Quandela raises €50m to m

Klarna’s workers are going on strike as the company cuts more roles

Nov 2nd, 2023 26m 16s

This week we discuss:02:26 Web Summit announces former Wikimedia boss as new CEO04:16 More unions sign up to Klarna strike on Nov 706:36 Benetton scion moves into tech investing with new €30m fund09:40 How a “miracle” weight-loss drug created E

France’s big plan for startups

Oct 26th, 2023 29m 22s

This week we discuss:02:05 French early-stage startups get a €500m funding boost in 2024 budget04:33 Northvolt’s $20bn listing in Stockholm — a win for European stock exchanges07:20 Solar energy storage breakthrough could make European househol

Babylon: how it all went so wrong

Oct 19th, 2023 26m 19s

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 Catalyst09:2

Interview: Wayve’s Alex Kendall on autonomous vehicles, embodied AI and Elon Musk's U-turns

Oct 12th, 2023 38m 31s

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,

Stripe’s John Collison on launching his $50bn business at the age of 19 — Sifted Summit special

Oct 5th, 2023 32m 46s

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

Can French AI startup Mistral ever compete with Big Tech?

Sep 28th, 2023 27m 41s

This week we discuss:02:07 — Improbable’s refocus on the metaverse sees big reduction in losses04:46 — ‘The economics of trading equity for compute are not great’ — Mistral releases its first model07:15 — Dutch arm of vertical farming startup I

Interview: Seedcamp’s Reshma Sohoni on bunker mentality during a downturn

Sep 21st, 2023 51m 47s

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 Le

European valuations tumble as the great startup fire sale begins

Sep 14th, 2023 21m 13s

This week we discuss:01:24 Getir valuation reduced 4x in new $500m funding round02:14 The big French fire sale: record numbers of startups are selling at big discounts05:51 German HR tech Personio opens New York office, plans to double US workf

Interview: ‘The age of AI resembles the age of DaVinci’ — Builder.AI’s Sachin Duggal on the need for polymaths in machine learning

Sep 7th, 2023 51m 2s

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 com

Klarna is back in black after a tough 2022

Aug 31st, 2023 23m 31s

This week we discuss:02:55 US AI startup Poolside raises $126m seed round and relocates to France05:50 Klarna cuts losses and sees “huge opportunity” in generative AI08:10 N26 CPO Gilles BianRosa steps down, becomes supervisory board member08:4

Getir is laying off 2,500 employees to try and survive

Aug 24th, 2023 29m 39s

This week we discuss:02:25 Weight-loss drug mania reaches Europe: Denmark’s Embla raises €10m06:47 Getir cuts 10% of staff in latest sign of speedy grocery industry's struggles08:30 Northvolt raises $1.2bn convertible note from BlackRock10:33