Ventures

HERE WE GO: Today on VENTURES 🚀: 9 Guests, 5 hours, 1 don't miss streamThe docket is locked, loaded & it's more informative than The Vatican archives.5 hours of streaming, bringing you the latest on what is happening in the landscape of Technology & Business. From Datasets for robots 🤖 - European Defense 🇪🇺 - Fashion StartupsTHE BLOC IS ABLAZE 🔥Where else are you going to find t...

Mark Costello, CEO of Meshed , transforms commercial insurance by building the UK's first AI-native brokerage that eliminates manual processes while saving SMEs 25-30% on premiums through automated underwriting and flat 10% commission structures. As a second-time founder and insurance veteran who sold his previous venture in December 2023, Mark addresses the critical problem that 50-80% of commerc...

Linda Hong Cheng, Founder of Infrajoy Labs, transforms digital accessibility by building ethical AI infrastructure that unlocks trillion-dollar elderly consumer segments currently excluded from technology markets due to systemic ageism and design failures. Originally a piano prodigy performing Bach inventions by age seven and intending to become a China studies professor, Linda discovered ethical...

Josh Tulloch, Founder/Curator of PLUGGED, transforms London's startup ecosystem by building authentic founder communities that provide emotional insurance and risk mitigation through deep personal connections rather than transactional networking. Starting from his own loneliness crisis during the 2022 energy crisis—working alone at home without heating while attending 2-3 boring networking eve...

Greg Cooke, Co-Founder of Rafiki, builds a cross-border payment operating system for fractional workforces using stablecoin infrastructure to solve the currency volatility challenges of managing global talent teams. Originally from Cape Town with a performance marketing background, Greg moved to London where he evolved Rafiki from a freelance marketplace for African software engineers into a compr...

Alina Croitoru, Founder of Inner On , builds a social operating system that eliminates media and content to create genuine one-on-one connections addressing the global loneliness epidemic affecting two billion people worldwide. Describing herself as a "nine lives cat with Labrador instincts," she transitioned from being a unicorn operator across seven countries to founding Inner On after becoming...

Tania Ladanova, CEO of TRMNL4, leads the global consumer tech acceleration platform that emerged as a spin-off, positioning TRMNL4 as "YC for consumer" by leveraging partnerships with Meta, Snapchat, and major consumer brands. Tania identifies 2024's dramatic shift where only 6% of venture capital went to consumer tech, but AI-native products are creating a renaissance because technology finally e...

Matthias Rossini, Co-founder of Avlana , builds AI-powered post-production tools that evolved from automated footage labeling and sorting for major brands to become "a remote editor in your messenger" where creators send raw footage and receive ready-to-post videos without touching editing software. After spending July in San Francisco's Bay Area meeting founders and investors, Matthias experience...

Aaron Jones, Founder of Yepic AI, pioneers empathy-driven avatars that transform digital interfaces by enabling real-time human-like interactions through video and voice technology designed to create meaningful connections rather than just providing answers. Coming from a diverse background spanning social enterprise work in Cambodia, visual search company development (C-Fashion), and media produc...

Dec McLaughlin, Founding Partner of Foras Ventures , builds the UK's first community-to-fund venture platform by leveraging three years of international founder programs across SF, New York, Austin, and Europe to create genuine global-first mindset adoption for ambitious UK startups. Starting as a "joke on a Slack channel" during his Startup Grind Scotland leadership days, Foras emerged when Scott...

HERE WE GO: TODAY ON VENTURES 🚀: 9 Guests, 5 hours, 1 don't miss streamThe docket is locked, loaded and it's a fun one! We're moving to a new day, so Europe can experience the best of the Renaissance across the week.5 hours of streaming, bringing you the latest on what is happening in the landscape of technology & Business. From Building a Fund 1 to a £950,000 Pre-seed raiseEUROPE...

Sasha Cayward, MSc., transforms venture capital by addressing the systemic psychological neglect of founders who receive massive funding without emotional support infrastructure. Coming from a background in competitive tennis, psychology, neuroscience, and religion at LSE, she transitioned through founding her own company via Techstars before recognizing that founders lack adequate psychological s...

Luke, Head of Brain Rot at Bigged, talks to us about startup marketing by spending hours "doomscrolling" across multiple phones to decode algorithm patterns, transforming viral format discovery into a systematic process that generates inbound leads with just two touchpoints. Starting as a summer intern recruited via LinkedIn DM while on holiday in the Lake District, he builds fresh algorithms usin...

Jakub Nowacki, CTO and Co-founder of Nusmark, builds an agentic AI assistant that transforms personal productivity by combining multiple specialised components into a seamless 24/7 digital secretary accessible in whatsapp. Starting his coding journey at nine years old creating video games and building AI opponents when friends chose basketball over programming, Jakub mentored over 100 students at...

Harvey Pitt, CTO and Co-founder of Alive Industries , pioneers the "zero-waste startup" approach by building a bootstrapped AI consultancy that gets paid to discover product opportunities while solving real customer problems, positioning AI as a "last resort" technology that should only be used when deterministic solutions fail. Having started at Oxford after witnessing early G...

Dana Aleff, CEO and Founder of Circonomit , builds the "ethical European Palantir" by creating enterprise software that maps reality into interconnected digital objects, enabling companies to understand causational relationships across their entire business ecosystem rather than relying on fragmented Excel spreadsheets and reactive monthly financial statements. As a mechanical engineer t...

Callum Woodcock, CEO and Founder of Wineify, democratises fine wine investing through a multi-award-winning platform that makes investment-grade wine accessible from £3,000 using innovative syndicate structures, positioning wine as a legitimate portfolio diversifier with equity-like returns and capital gains tax exemptions. Operating from rural France, he explains Winefi's UK Bear Trust nomine...

Ugne from ByFounders show us how Nordic startups evolved from overlooked markets to global unicorn factories, with Stockholm rivaling Silicon Valley in unicorns per capita through a fundamental shift where successful founders like those from Spotify and Klarna stay home to build ecosystems rather than emigrating, creating a virtuous cycle of mentorship and capital. Operating from their pre-seed fu...

Aaron Jones, Good Omen & Project Lovable Winner , transforms a spontaneous hackathon meeting into a €40,000 breakthrough by building video editing technology and AI journalism platforms in just 20 hours. Meeting teammates Gio (robotics and chip manufacturing expert) and Marco (described as "the smartest hacker I've ever met") at a Dawn Capital hackathon matching evening. The team...

We Max (Investor at wave Ventures) on VENTURES to break down the Lovable recap current state of Stockholm's startup ecosystem and investment challenges. "The talent density is, I would say, one of the highest in the world in Stockholm right now. And incredibly underrated, which works in your favour." "I think the problem is now that we see a lot of international investors coming...

TODAY ON VENTURES 🚀: 9 Guests, 5 hours, 1 don't miss streamThe docket is locked, loaded & it's special! 5 hours of streaming, bringing you the latest on what is happening in the landscape of technology across Europe. From Alternative Assets to Project Europe's Project LoveableWhere else are you going to find this 🤷‍♂️ 12:00: Callum Woodcock - CEO, WineFi 🍷12:30: Harvey Pitt - CT...

David, Founder and CEO of Car Crowd , revolutionises collectable car investing by democratizing an asset class previously exclusive to billionaires like the Sultan of Brunei and celebrities. Having managed collections for over 25 years since childhood, he reveals how Car Crowd's syndicated platform eliminates traditional barriers through expert sourcing, storage, and maintenance while deliveri...

Martin, co-founder and CEO of Bench, is building "Cursor for hardware engineering" to bring AI assistance to rocket builders, roboticists, and physical product developers. Connecting from San Francisco during a Valley exploration trip, he discusses raising a £1M+ seed round led by Superseed while evaluating whether to split operations between London and US markets. Having founded his uni...

Harry, Software Engineer and Labour Digital Committee Member, dissects the UK government's innovation strategy through the Number 10 Innovation Fellowship program and sovereign AI ambitions. Having witnessed the fellowship's evolution from Dominic Cummings' 2020 "misfits and weirdos" initiative, he reveals how the government is achieving dramatic efficiency gains through AI-p...

Zara Paul, CEO of Bigged and Dragons' Den alumna, is building a "performance marketing operating system" that combines human creativity with AI automation for paid social campaigns. After bootstrapping her first company, Choppity, to £150K ARR (currently in due diligence for sale), she pivoted to solve Meta's Andromeda algorithm changes that now favour creative variants over audi...