Innovation and Private Capital x aulium

Contact centers are broken — not because humans don't want to help, but because they lack the capacity. PolyAI CTO Shawn Wen explains why AI automation isn't about replacement, but about augmentation: picking up calls instantly, handling routine tasks, and escalating only the critical moments to human agents. Shawn Wen is the Co-Founder and CTO of PolyAI, a voice AI platform valued at over...

Buyers are now willing to hand over their most private CRM data to start a free trial—without ever talking to sales. That shift reveals just how much control modern B2B buyers expect over their own journey, and companies that resist this trend risk losing deals. Nick Turner is the CEO of Dreamdata, a B2B marketing attribution platform that raised a $55M Series B in 2024. Based in the U.S., Turner...

AI doesn't fix broken engineering practices—it accelerates the damage. When you strap AI onto a disorganized product organization, everything gets much worse, much faster. Daniel Jung is the CEO of TechMiners, a tech due diligence firm that has analyzed hundreds of software companies across Europe. With a background that spans Lehman Brothers during the 2008 crisis, mountain infantry service,...

What separates a promising pitch from a founder worth backing? Bruno Febvret, who runs Aonia Ventures and the Rise family office for Mantu's founder, doesn't look at decks—he looks at the person behind the idea. In this clip, he explains the one question that tells him everything he needs to know about an entrepreneur's conviction. Bruno oversees venture and private equity investments...

Is the obsession with entrepreneurship putting unhealthy pressure on young people? Stephan Moraes, General Partner at Indico Capital Partners, challenges the narrative that everyone needs to be a CEO at 25—and explains why learning with other people's money is often the smarter path. Stephan is co-founder of Indico Capital Partners, a Southern Europe–focused VC firm managing €240M+ across six...

What drives someone to disrupt music, television, and legal services across a 30-year career? Anthony Rose didn't plan to disrupt legal services—he just got tired of paying lawyers while building startups. In this wide-ranging conversation, Rose—founder and CEO of SeedLegals and the architect behind BBC's iPlayer—shares how he's built a platform now used by over 50,000 UK startups. Fro...

The core challenge of scaling a business isn't just about hiring more people—it's about ensuring your organization doesn't grind to a halt under its own weight. Conrad Ford, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Allica Bank, shares his "superpower" for identifying organizational waste and explains why most big corporate towers are filled with "non-jobs." Drawing on...

How do you trust a system when you don't know how it will fail? In this extract, Chris Jefferson, Co-Founder of Advai, explains the critical necessity of identifying AI failure modes to enable true enterprise adoption. Advai specializes in "red teaming" and adversarial AI to stress test systems across language, computer vision, and audio domains before they can go rogue in production...

The convergence of traditional finance and the blockchain is no longer a fringe concept; it is the next frontier of global banking. Adriana, the co-founder of Deblock and former COO of Revolut, explains how her team is building a natively Web3 institution that prioritizes true self-custody. By securing the first MICA license in France, Deblock is proving that a rigorous regulatory framework is the...

Can venture capital sourcing be automated before a company even has a website? Discover how the mechanics of deal flow are shifting from manual networking to real-time data feeds. In this episode, Jacob Houlberg, co-founder of Evertrace, joins Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas to discuss the "descriptive problem" of startup sourcing. Jacob explains how Evertrace helps early-stage invest...

The death of third-party cookies shouldn't mean the death of your growth. Discover how to reclaim lost attribution and feed the AI algorithms the high-intent signals they need to lower your CAC. In this episode, Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas sit down with Edward Upton, CEO and Co-founder of LittleData. They dive deep into the technical mechanics of the Shopify ecosystem, the reality of &q...

Can European deep tech actually compete with Silicon Valley, or is the lack of a unified market a fatal flaw? Watch as we break down the "Day One US" strategy that is defining the next generation of venture capital. In this episode, Augustin Sayer, General Partner at OVNI Capital, joins hosts Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas to discuss the mechanics of building a venture firm from scratch and th...

How do you transition from a decade of bootstrapping to a high-profile exit with one of the world's largest private equity firms? Gregory Blondeau reveals the mechanics of scaling Proxyclick to $10M ARR and why his new venture is set to disrupt private market reporting. In this episode, Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas sit down with Belgian entrepreneur Gregory Blondeau, founder of Proxyclic...

Can AI fix the world’s most inefficient industry? Discover how automated engineering is slashing costs and carbon footprints for the next generation of skyscrapers. The construction sector has long operated on "expert guesses" and manual silos, leading to massive hidden costs and sustainability gaps. In this episode, Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas sit down with Dominik Pezzei, co-fou...

Could a machine be more reliable than a human expert when millions are on the line? Discover how AI is fundamentally restructuring the economics of M&A and why the traditional law firm hierarchy is about to collapse. In this episode, Thomas Viguier sits down with Rick Van Esch, co-founder and CEO of Emma Legal, to explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and high-stakes legal due di...

Can your hospitality business survive the next five years without owning its customer data? Discover how to stop leaking revenue and build a resilient brand in the most challenging economic climate in decades. In this episode, Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas dive deep into the shifting landscape of the European hospitality sector with Fryderyk Szydlowski, co-founder of Embargo. Fryderyk shares...

Is the era of pure B2B SaaS dominance coming to an end? Discover why top investors are shifting focus toward hardware as the ultimate defensive moat in the age of AI. The venture capital landscape is undergoing a significant correction as interest rates fluctuate and market saturation hits software sectors. Hayden Smith, Head of Debt at Mountside Ventures, joins hosts Thomas Viguier and Markus Per...

Global financial services are worth trillions, yet most back-office processes are still trapped in the 1990s. Discover how a new generation of AI-native startups is finally moving beyond SaaS to automate the office of the CFO and redefine global payment rails. In this episode of Aulium, Will Orde, Partner at Passion Capital, joins hosts Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas to dissect the evolving la...

How do you move billions between Europe and China safely, instantly, and at a fraction of the cost? We explore the hidden infrastructure powering the world's most complex payment rails. In this episode, Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas sit down with Derick Li, CEO UK at Yeepay. With a background spanning Alibaba, Tencent, and Wise, Derick offers an unparalleled look at the mechanics of cross...

Why is a third of the UK population locked out of mainstream finance, and how do you build a profitable fintech without external capital? Learn the mechanics of non-prime lending and the algorithmic secrets behind bootstrapping a high-growth marketplace. In this episode of Aulium, Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas sit down with Aymeric Monod-Gayraud, Co-founder of LoanTube, to deconstruct the &qu...

Why do billion-dollar consumer brands lose market share to small insurgents despite having access to more data? Discover how fusing human expertise with vertical AI solves the critical "data-to-decision" bottleneck. As consumer behavior becomes exponentially complex, traditional generalist models like ChatGPT struggle with the accuracy required for enterprise financial decisions. Sandeep...

Data center capacity is expanding exponentially to support AI, yet the physical power grid is failing to keep pace. Discover how smart capital is solving the energy bottleneck and why "Core Plus" infrastructure offers the most resilient returns in a volatile market. Maciej Tarasiuk, Head of Investment at Aberdeen, breaks down the mechanics of the European mid-market infrastructure landsc...

Are we witnessing a dangerous bubble in AI data center construction, similar to the 19th-century railway mania? Discover how institutional investors are distinguishing between hype and the genuine structural shifts of the "4 Ds." In this episode, Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas sit down with Thibault Contat Desfontaines, Managing Director at UBS Infrastructure Private Equity. They dis...

Long term investors win when they respect macro risk, culture, and liquidity. In this conversation, Thomas digs into how Jean-Baptiste thinks about capital deployment after two decades in private equity, from BC Partners CIO to his family office, board roles at Pershing Square and Howard Hughes, and now teaching at Sciences Po. 💡 He lays out his investor matrix in plain language: start with macro...

Hypergrowth is possible when you accept that sometimes the smartest move is to stop going solo. In this aulium episode, Édouard Mandon joins Thomas to unpack how a finance role at Rocket Internet led him into payments, why he built Numeral in the first place, and how that journey ended in an acquisition by Mambu and a new life as VP of Payments. He walks through the unseen plumbing behind every ca...