Upside

Live from a Lisbon beach studio, Dan, Mads and Lomax dig behind the headlines shaping European venture. This week: China's AI power play, is UK pension money finally trickling into venture, and a full 10-vs-10 slugfest on whether we're partying like it's 1999. 01:10 — Quick news roundup. Grok 4.5 with Cursor, all three flavours of GPT-5.6, Nvidia shedding $1tn (still up 1,500% since...

Every week, Upside digs behind the headlines shaping European venture.  This week Dan, Mads and Lomax get into Burnham's Britain and what a Manchester PM means for tech and capital; how AI is being pulled into a new world order as Washington moves from regulating the frontier to gating it, and possibly owning a slice of it; why June's "AI meltdown" was really a rotation, not a...

Upside is a weekly podcast looking behind the headlines to see what's going to affect European venture, start-ups and investing.  Hosted by Dan and Mads from Superseed, and this week our special guest is Neil Shah from the London Stock Exchange.  A man, his pants, and an ice cube. Dan melts on air. Neil gets called an "artificial Indian" for failing British weather. The London Stock...

Upside is a weekly show that looks behind the headlines affecting European venture. This week Dan and Mads are joined by Joe Schorge of Isomer Capital — one of the people who literally decides which European VC funds get to exist. England beat Croatia 4:2, a new PM may have appeared overnight, and somehow we tied none of it back to venture. Onwards. 02:25 Economic vibe check — S&P on a record...

Upside is a weekly show that looks behind the headlines that will affect European venture, start-ups and investing. On the show this week: 3:03 — SpaceX IPO day: pop, flop or nothing-burger? 7:16 — OpenAI files for IPO — own OpenAI at $1tn or Anthropic at $965bn? 9:50 — Bending Spoons files for Nasdaq: Europe's app-Berkshire 14:01 — ECB's first hike since 2023, and Iran 14:35 — European...

Plus it's EU Sovereignty Week, more on the EU's Palantir Problem & who's now in the the $80bn club? This week Dan and Mads are joined by Matt Russell, Head of Secondaries at VenCap, the 40-year-old firm with a look-through portfolio of ~500 funds and ~17,000 companies, and seemingly exposure to every name that's ever mattered.  We get into why secondaries aren't the ba...

This week, Dan and Mads dig into the AI infrastructure boom spreading beyond GPUs, Europe's sovereignty contradictions, the era of the zero-employee unicorn, and a Pope weighing in on AI. 00:00 — The week's headlines and some chit chat. 01:15 — Ferrari's Luce, SpaceX Starship postponement, Gary Lineker's VC firm, Kirkland & Ellis builds its own AI stack.  07:00 — The new De...

This week on Upside: Nvidia is so rich it's literally throwing money at shareholders, three megacaps queue up to IPO, and Americans discover they hate AI almost as much as politicians. (00:47) Mads at the BBCA / UKPC. Same name, same problem, same answers nobody's implementing. Plus a quick spin through Ben Evans' latest, ASML's revenue upgrade, and Meta canning 8,000 engineers...

Upside Live from Montenegro: Five GPs, Five Bets Recorded live from a Montenegrin port at a European LP/GP gathering of 80 investors, Dan asked 5 European investors the same question:  If you had to put every penny of your fund and personal capital into one bet in Europe, where would it go? (01:21) Jens Lapinski — German super angel   Jens would back the full AI stack, money transfer infrastructur...

Hosts: Mads Jensen (moderator), Lomax Ward (Lisbon beach bum), Dr. Andrew Scott (serial mute-button offender) Missing: Dan Bowyer — scaling actual mountains. We told him to come back alive. Mostly because nobody else wants to moderate. [02:30] — ARM vs Spotify: One the Market Loves, One It Doesn't Both posted good numbers. ARM got rewarded, Spotify got a -13% haircut and a 25% YTD drawdown de...

Every week on Upside, we look behind the headlines to expose the real news affecting European venture, startups and investing.  Charles hands Trump a bell, Musk says he's not building AGI (this week), and Brussels manages 12 hours of trilogue with absolutely nothing to show for it. Meanwhile Big Tech spent the GDP of a small country on GPUs, and Europe, yes, Europe, quietly dropped two near-b...

Upside is a weekly podcast that unpacks the real news behind the headlines affecting European venture startups and investing. Hosted by Mads and Dan from SuperSeed .  This week: the EU admits it wrote a bad AI Act (shocking), Sergey Brin is wheeled out of retirement again , SpaceX buys a coding company because of course, and Wall Street invents a new way to short private credit. Dan and Mads untan...

Upside is a weekly podcast that unpacks the news and headlines that will affect European venture startups and investing. This week Dan and Mads go deep on what Hungary's political earthquake means for European capital flows, why Anthropic is speedrunning a monopoly, and whether one bloke with a laptop can really build a unicorn (spoiler: it's complicated). [03:28] Orbán Out, Money In Hun...

Upside is a weekly podcast that looks behind the headlines affecting European venture, startups and investing. On this week's show... Anthropic is having the week of its life, Jamie Dimon wants you to know the sky is falling (again), and Germany spent €2 billion learning that shipbuilding is hard. Dan and Lomax fly as a duo this week. 00:00 – Intro & News Radar – Iran ceasefire (maybe), g...

Every week we look behind the headlines affecting European venture, startups and investing. This week it's with Lomax from Outsized Ventures, Andrew from 7 Percent, and myself, your host Dan Bowyer from Superseed. 00:00 – Dan declares himself sexy for the first time ever. The physical AI / reshoring zeitgeist has finally caught up with what SuperSeed's been doing for a decade. Lomax gent...

Every week, we look behind the headlines to explore what's coming down the track that will affect European venture, start-ups and investing.  00:00 — Meet Harry Destecroix Dan butchers the fund status (already closed, Dan), Harry sets out the SCVC thesis: generalist deep tech, breakthrough technologies from UK universities, everything from quantum to advanced therapeutics. 01:40 — EIF's...

Every week on Upside, we try to unpack the news that's going to affect European venture, start-ups and investing. If you're a founder, GP, or LP, this is the show for you to catch up on the week's shenanigans. Hosted by Dan Bowyer, Mads Jensen, and Lomax Ward, all European venture capitalists.  00:00 — Nvidia's GTC: Jensen Drops a Trillion-Dollar Bomb  Three new chips announced...

Every week we dig into the news affecting European venture, startups and investing.  This week, Trump may have speed-run a global recession. Europe is having a moment. Cursor might be toast. And Jensen Huang promises a chip that will "surprise the world." 00:00 — The Oil Shock: Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, 20M barrels/day offline, IEA buffer lasts ~20 days. Dan calls it: we're...

Every week we unpack the real stories behind the headlines affecting European venture.  Hosts: Dan, Lomax and Mads - All European early stage VCs. 02:00 — Why Hormuz matters more than you think.  04:08 — Europe: affected, not influential. Europe keeps ending up front row for crises it cannot shape. 10:38 — The startup angles: energy, drones, sovereignty 13:29 — “Fast fashion” warfare. Ukraine-styl...

Upside is a weekly review of all of the news affecting European venture, startups and investing.  VC Hosts: Dan, Mads, Lomax [03:05] Nvidia Earnings — 14th consecutive beat. Data centre rev up 75% to $62B. Stock basically flat. The market has priced in perfection. Bull case: 16x 2028 earnings, Rubin shipping, China at zero = pure upside. Bear case: custom ASICs climbing, 75% margins under siege. &...

For the week's latest news behind the headlines affecting European Venture, startups and investing.   Hosts: Dan Bowyer, Lomax Ward Guest: Eyal Malinger — Co-founder, Resurge Growth Partners (venture equity — the gap between VC and PE) [02:18] Humanoid Robots at China's Spring Festival Gala Four Chinese firms showed off cable-free dancing robots. Eyal's reaction progression: "g...

01:52 - Anthropic's Insane $30B Round Started as $10B rumour, became $20B in January, closed at $30B.  03:21 - The Great Model Migration Sam finally kicked OpenAI off his iPhone homepage. Claude's in.  08:23 - Claude Code: Mads' Love Letter Mads hasn't looked back since discovering Claude Code's skills and agentic workflows. It's not just better writing anymore—it&apo...

Upside captures all of the week's news affecting European Venture. 01:22 — AI models: two flagships drop 20 minutes apart Anthropic ships Opus 4.6; OpenAI replies with GPT 5.3. Key tension: best model vs stickiest workflow (tooling + habits = raw benchmarks). China keeps coming: Kimi K2.5, Qwen3 Max — strong performance at lower cost, plus “swarm”/multi-agent vibes. 07:02 — Recursive AI + sec...

00:59 — Saudi surprises, NEOM shrinks, Vision 2030 = Europe takes notes. 02:58 — Europe: zero vibes, zero mission. 03:55 — War bonds?! Saudi winter games postponed. Reality intrudes. 🤖 AI Corner 07:32 — Clawdbot → Moltbot now OpenClaw?! AI intern… with admin rights. 09:19 — Early wins: negotiates car deals, plans diets, orders Tesco shops. 10:38 — Early fear: unconstrained agents + inbox access =...

01:35–10:24 — UK data centres: blocked… but a way through A £1bn London-area data-centre project gets halted after a planning/EIA mess-up → delays of 9–12+ months, potentially worse. The twist: data centres are being upgraded to “nationally significant infrastructure,” enabling central-government fast-track (DCO route) instead of local NIMBY planning. Still: EIAs + judicial reviews can keep slowin...