Emerging Forward Podcast

Episode 11 – Building Pre-Seed Infrastructure in CEE (with Petr Šíma, DEPO Ventures) Prague, Czechia 00:00 – Intro & setup Welcome to Emerging Forward and introduction to Episode 11. Who is Petr Šíma and what DEPO Ventures does at pre‑seed across CEE and Baltics. 01:00 – Europe’s fragmented early‑stage market Why Europe has “many problems,” but early‑stage financing is the one Petr is trying to fi...

CEE as a Liquidity Lab: Why the IPO Isn’t the Exit Short episode intro: After a short break, Emerging Forward returns with Episode 10, a deep dive into what real liquidity looks like in ecosystems that never had enough growth capital in the first place. I’m joined by Viktor Manev , Co‑Founder and Managing Partner at IMPETUS Capital , to explore CEE as a “liquidity lab”: using small, disciplined IP...

In this episode of Emerging Forward, I sit down with Kevin Brockland, CFA , Founder & Managing Partner of Indelible Ventures , a seed-stage fund focused on Southeast Asia’s B2B ecosystem. We unpack what power-law investing actually looks like in a nascent region, why 50–250M exits matter more than unicorns right now, and how emerging managers and founders should recalibrate their mental models. We...

Rebuilding Early-Stage Capital in Southeast Asia In this episode, Adi speaks with Ankit Upadhyay , Founder & GP of A2D Ventures and Senior Advisor at McKinsey, about how early-stage capital in Southeast Asia is being rebuilt in 2026.They cover the collapse of earlier early-stage funds, the rise of accelerators, government grants, and angel syndicates, sector opportunities from fintech to food inno...

In this episode of Emerging Forward, I’m joined by Alexandra Vidyuk, CEO and Founding Partner at Beyond Earth Ventures, for a conversation on how deep tech really gets funded and scaled across global markets. We explore what physics teaches us about venture judgment, how a healthy deep-tech cap table is actually built, why geography is often overrated as an investment lens, and where the next gene...

“Women have been returning an average of 35% higher ROI for more than 30 years of data. Hedge funds go nuts for a point. We’re talking 35. And yet the money doesn’t follow the money.” – Gillian Muessig, Mastersfund ​ This issue is a special investor edition of Emerging Forward , a deep dive into how venture is (and isn’t) evolving for founders who don’t fit the “archetypal” mold, and for LPs/GPs w...

Episode 5 - How a Nordic Industrial-Tech Partner Actually Runs the Funnel (with Sagar Chandna, RunwayFBU) About Sagar Sagar Chandna is Senior Partner and CTO at RunwayFBU, an industrial tech VC backed by one of Norway’s largest industrial groups. A Top 100 Data-Driven VC Leader, he brings experience from scaling global technology platforms and investing in deep tech companies across Europe. Bullet...

Episode: From Angel Chaos to Angel OS: How Taya Kudashkina Systematises Early-Stage Investing Across Europe and the US About Taya Taya Kudashkina is a 4x founder turned angel investor and syndicate lead. She is currently building an investment syndicate that automates parts of angel investing while providing curated deal-flow for LPs and experienced operators. Based in Luxembourg, she mentors foun...

Episode 3: Central Asia VC Leapfrog and Southeast Asia Corridor Guest: Ruslan Rakymbay, Investment Director, Quest Ventures Ruslan Rakymbay is an Investment Director at Quest Ventures, a top venture capital fund in Asia. He works closely with startups to accelerate their growth through a combination of acceleration services and programmes. He is also responsible for market access initiatives for k...

Episode 2: Central Asia's "Default to Global" – How Syndicates Bridge the US Gap Guest: Almaz Edilbaev (@almaz-edilbaev) Almaz Edilbaev is co-founder of chANGELS, an angel syndicate from Kyrgyz Republic backing Central Eurasia founders building global businesses; COO & co-founder of DataCall AI (backed by 500 Global), a Chicago-based healthcare AI startup automating phone operations like benefit v...

Episode 01: Why Nobody Builds Between Europe and Asia Aadi Vaidya (Partner, The Scale Factory) spent 10 years building across India, Southeast Asia, and Europe. He was founding team member and COO at Zilingo (Sequoia-backed, scaled to near-unicorn status) and now helps software companies expand between Europe and Asia. In this conversation, we explore:• Why the Europe-Asia corridor is underserved...

Emerging Forward is a short, focused podcast about how capital actually moves between Europe and emerging markets including MEA, APAC (with some emerging Europe in the mix), beyond the warm‑intro VC deals everyone talks about. Each episode breaks down real patterns from investors, and founders: from sourcing, structure cross‑border rounds, and navigate on‑the‑ground constraints. Hosted by Adi , an...