Innovation and Private Capital x aulium

Most roboticists think people love robots — because roboticists love robots. That fundamental misunderstanding, according to this conversation, is holding back the entire industry from mainstream adoption. The discussion unpacks a critical gap in the robotics stack that has nothing to do with dexterity or computer vision. While foundation models and scaling laws are unlocking short-horizon skills...

When Claude is 10x better, is your business model still defensible? That's the question Hillel Zidel says every growth investor must answer before writing a check — because frontier models will get there faster than most founders expect. This conversation unpacks how Kennet Partners sources and scales capital-efficient B2B software companies — businesses that have bootstrapped to meaningful sc...

Industrial heat decarbonization represents nearly 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet alternatives like hydrogen and electrification repeatedly fail feasibility studies. Mark Verhagen and his co-founders at RIFT discovered a century-old technology that modern economics finally make viable: burning iron powder to generate industrial heat with zero carbon emissions. The process sounds counte...

95% of tenders in North America now include AI requirements, while France lags far behind. The gap isn't about innovation—France produces world-class startups—but about adoption speed, regulatory complexity, and a reluctance to move beyond legacy systems. The conversation unpacks why European SMBs, particularly in France, remain slow to embrace cloud and AI despite aggressive domestic innovati...

Ten years ago, telling investors you were doing secondaries in venture-backed tech companies meant explaining what secondaries even were. Today, everyone wants to talk — because everyone has liquidity needs or is considering a transaction. Thomas Dadashi, founder of eNTIER Capital, walks through the mechanics and market dynamics of secondary investing in late-stage European tech. The conversation...

Impact investing has been criticized as superficial—labeling without real change—but what happens when a fund puts 50% of its carry at risk unless it triples measurable impact? Rémi Said explains how Partech Impact built a €300M growth equity strategy around companies that deliver both environmental ROI and hard financial returns, and why that dual value proposition isn't a trade-off but a com...

Thomas Goergen spent 30 years in Luxembourg's fund industry, exited his AIFM business for a low nine-figure sum, and started a family office — only to discover that digital health offered something his fintech and real estate plays never did: purpose at scale. Now, as founder of Catalpa Ventures, he's betting that Europe is standing in front of a wave in healthcare innovation, driven by ag...

Europe's venture ecosystem needs more than capital — it needs scale, unified industrial policy, and the willingness to let go of narrow national interests. Drawing on nearly three decades in venture, the conversation unpacks why fragmented sovereignty, undersized funds, and "green fundamentalism" are holding back the continent's ability to compete with the US and China. The discu...

Bringing a drug to market in Europe costs as much as a typical pre-seed round just to comply with AI regulations — before a single line of code is written or a patient enrolled. That bottleneck is slowing innovation at the exact moment AI could cut clinical trial timelines by two-thirds. Clara Bernardes co-founded Biorce in 2024 to automate the clinical trial lifecycle from phase one to phase thre...

Can a business survive if its economics depend on anticipated regulation? Mahir Sahin, General Partner of Cloudberry Ventures, argues it cannot — a lesson that shapes every deep-tech investment decision his firm makes, from quantum computing to hydrogen generation. The conversation unpacks how early-stage investors navigate highly technical markets where product-market fit is measured not in downl...

Not every good business is a good investment — and for venture capital, the gap between the two can cost billions. Alexey Bulygin of Verb Ventures explains why intellectual honesty from founders matters more than polished pitch decks, and why his fund focuses on the unsexy, archaic backbone of global trade: a $33 trillion market still running on fax machines, Excel spreadsheets, and paper document...

Can AI truly replace the weeks lawyers spend grinding through due diligence documents — or will it just reshape how legal value is delivered? As M&A dealmaking grows more complex, the manual work of reviewing thousands of contracts remains a massive bottleneck, and the answer may lie in workflow integration rather than raw automation. Jorrit Willaert explains how Jurimesh tackles legal due dil...

Healthcare remains one of the least digitalized industries — still largely operating in the "dinosaur phase" with paper records and fragmented systems. Yet the sector is expected to grow at over 20% annually for the next decade, creating massive opportunities for investors who understand both the technical and regulatory complexity of healthcare innovation. Christoph Kausch, Managing Par...

Athletes writing cheques into European startups was once considered a red flag by VCs. Today, it's a legitimate asset class—but only if founders and investors understand what's actually on offer beyond the Instagram following. Arthur Bernard launched Athletico Venture to bridge Europe's top athletes with the tech ecosystem, following a model that had already matured in the US two decad...

Early-stage venture capital is often romanticized as spotting the next unicorn, but the real edge lies in understanding when to hold and when to exit. Nicolas Debock, partner leading Eurazeo's early-stage fund, explains why the power law is not a bug but a feature of venture design — and why liquidity matters more than most founders realize. The conversation moves from the mechanics of buildin...

Why does Jean Schmitt feel physically ill every time someone mentions a unicorn? Because, as he puts it, no serious entrepreneur should want their company named after "a fake animal from fairy tales for girls." This isn't just rhetoric—it's a philosophy that shapes how Jolt Capital invests in European deep tech at the growth stage, targeting companies doing €10–20 million in reve...

Deep tech ventures require years of patient capital, yet most of them reach Series B without any revenue at all. Matthias Winter explains why traditional metrics like monthly recurring revenue and churn rates simply don't apply when you're building quantum computers or photonic processors — and why that's exactly the point. This conversation unpacks how Constructor Capital conducts due...

If Europe wants resilience and sovereignty, it must stop treating green tech as a moral project and start treating it as the path to re-industrialization. Laurits Bach Soerensen argues that 92% of Europe's risk capital flows into software, fintech, and biotech—sectors designed to hit a profitability plateau—while the hard technologies needed to rebuild energy infrastructure, production systems...

Roland Dennert argues that European tech could grow one hundred-fold over the next twenty years—but only if the continent's pension funds and insurers shift from allocating roughly one percent of their assets to technology up to ten percent, matching their US counterparts. The capital exists; the problem is where it's directed. Dennert explains how Cipio Partners operates in the growth equ...

Most startups fail not from lack of talent, but from lack of experience. When a 28-year-old founder has only recruited three people in their life, they're walking into lethal mistakes that seem obvious to someone with 20 years of experience. Elie du Pré de Saint Maur is co-founder of TOMCAT, a French venture fund and accelerator that works with early-stage B2B startups. Before co-founding TOMC...

No one wants to pay indirect tax. It is added to the sale price, collected from customers, and then businesses must file returns monthly just to hand it over to tax authorities. For companies selling internationally, the complexity multiplies across jurisdictions, each with different rates, thresholds, and filing deadlines. Gareth Kobrin is Co-Founder and CEO of Yonda Tax, a compliance platform fo...

AI valuations have reached levels that Thomas Bigagli from Plug and Play calls totally insane. But not for the reasons you might think. According to Bigagli, the race is justified — because we are literally building the companies that will shape the next decades. Thomas Bigagli is a Partner at Plug and Play, one of the world's most active venture capital platforms, managing EMEA operations. He...

Most startups vanish when they fail. But crypto tokens? They live forever at a fraction of a cent, visible to anyone, impossible to put into insolvency. Christopher May, Co-Founder and CEO of Finoa, explains why this fundamental difference makes crypto failure more visible than traditional startup death — and what that means for how investors should think about the space. Christopher brings a rare...

Most entrepreneurs obsess over building the perfect product — and ignore the numbers that actually keep their business alive. Sevan Marian, Co-Founder and CEO of Fleet, explains why focusing on margin and cash flow from day one is the difference between scaling to €100M and shutting down after three months. Sevan built Fleet from €5,000 to a €100M valuation without raising VC, using an asset-light...

Being smart and hardworking isn't enough to build a successful startup. Timing, co-founders, networking, and sheer luck all play a role—and most entrepreneurs don't realize that until they've lost everything. Bogdan Ochiana is the Founder and CEO of Orbotix, a Poland-based defense technology company building autonomous drone swarms designed to operate in GPS-denied, radio-jammed enviro...