This Much I Know - The Seedcamp Podcast

In our last podcast, we had a fantastic discussion with Andy Bromberg from CoinList on the trends and problems of ICOs from the viewpoint of an industry-leading token offerings platform. In this episode, we go more in-depth and learn even more by exemplifying one of the most successful token fundraising events in near history. Coming out of Lithuania is the remarkable success story of Justas Pikel...

Andy Bromberg’s is one of those stories made famous by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg in the movie Social Network. While enrolled at Stanford University, Andy and his colleagues started working on the Stanford Bitcoin Group, doing academic research and building side projects in the industry. However, his journey to the world of cryptocurrencies was not as straightforward as it may seem. In 2014, he...

Edward Wray graduated Oxford University to pursue a job at JP Morgan, where he spent 7 years eventually leaving as the VP of Dept Capital Markets & Derivatives. Going on to co-found Betfair in 1999, he was its first Chief Executive until 2003, when he moved to Australia to set up the company’s joint venture. It floated on the stock market in 2010, valued at £1.4 billion and is now one of the world...

David Siegel is one of the world's first web designers, a strategist, bestselling author, and a pioneer of the "personal data locker" concept. He's the CEO of the Pillar Project - a next-generation universal smart wallet that uses tokens and 20.30, a community of people who want to build the decentralized world, which includes blockchain, cryptocurrencies, decentralized apps and more. Having built...

Earlier this year, we headed out to Berlin to speak to early-stage founders at The Factory and share stories from a couple of our more recent investments in the region. In this live episode, Carlos is joined by Samir El-Alami, Co-founder and CEO of doctorly, a cutting-edge cloud-based practice management software for doctors, and Lara Hämmerle, Co-founder and CPO of Vantik, who are out to re-inven...

Room to Read has brought the enduring gift of education to 11.6 million children in 15 countries. Its founder, John Wood left his position as Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Greater China region to found the organisation. Seventeen years later, with over 20,000 schools and communities served, millions have been impacted by John’s decision to help a headmaster in Nepal fill his sch...

Sneaking out during lunch breaks to help out the chefs at the City law firm where he worked, Patrick Drake was always destined for a career doing what he loves: cooking. As co-founder and Head Chef of the world's largest recipe box service, HelloFresh, that's exactly what happened. Speaking to Seedcamp partner Carlos Espinal, Patrick recalls his story of jettisoning a corporate career and founding...

What is the financing environment looking like for European startup ecosystems and the entrepreneurs building companies within them? In this data-driven podcast, Carlos is joined by Robin Wauters, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Tech.eu, an online publication dedicated to covering the European technology industry in depth. Robin was formerly the European Editor of The Next Web and before that a...

Katie Marrache began her career working for entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den investor, James Caan. After landing an internship with him straight out of university, she was soon charged with managing Cann’s portfolio of consumer investments at his investment firm Hamilton Bradshaw. A brief detour into television journalism at the BBC followed, after which she joined London-based Innocent drinks as a c...

Levison Wood is a British explorer, writer and photographer whose work has featured around the world. He has recently returned from his most ambitious expedition to date - a 5000 mile circumnavigation of the Arabian peninsula from Iraq to Lebanon (a new book and documentary series are set to follow). He previously also walked the Himalayas, a six-month journey of over 1700 miles, as well as the le...

Rob Moffat joined Balderton Capital in 2009 and was promoted to partner in 2015. He is currently a board director or observer with five portfolio companies: Carwow, Wooga, Nutmeg, Prodigy Finance, and Patients Know Best. Prior to joining Balderton, Rob worked for Google in London, as a Manager in the European Strategy and Operations team, and for five years in strategy consulting at Bain. In this...

At $765m Atomico IV is one of the largest venture capital funds ever raised in Europe. But what do Atomico look for in the companies and founders which they choose to back? In this second Seedcamp Sessions podcast, Ben Blume, Principal at Atomico, elaborates on the fund's investment thesis and processes, explaining the high level benchmarks that the firm looks for when investing in entrepreneurs,...

I launched the Seedcamp 'This Much I Know' Podcast back in 2015 with a view to hearing and sharing the exceptional and often unknown stories of many inspirational thought leaders. We've learned about our guests' lives, goals and ambitions as well as their thoughts and first-hand experiences when it comes to building and scaling startups, teams and communities. As we near our 150th podcast and foll...

Daniel is a founding partner at the Berlin-based fund, Cherry Ventures. With a consulting background at McKinsey before co-founding CityDeal (acquired by Groupon) and later Quandoo - the SaaS company for restaurants sold to Recruit Holdings - Daniel's knows first-hand what it takes to found and lead a business as well as what to look for when it comes to backing successful ones. Speaking to Seedca...

In the crowded marketplaces of food and retail, how do you carve out space for independent new brands? For Jenny Costa, founder of Rubies in the Rubble, and Alex Mezger, director at the family managed Jude's Ice Cream, the answer lies in competing on the best quality products possible and relying on an authentic messaging. Since 2011, Rubies in the Rubble has been producing high quality relishes a...

Susan is a Partner at CrunchFund, the seed-stage fund launched by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington which has invested in the likes of Airbnb, Vine (acquired by Twitter), Cruise (acquired by GM for a reported $1 billion), Onfido and X.ai. Previously, Susan worked at Y Combinator and as the Director of Global Programming at TechCrunch where she focused on major events and the Startup Battlefield...

There's no 'blueprint' for how to spot a great startup says Sonali De Rycker, General Partner at Accel, one of the world's leading venture capital funds with investments in the likes of Facebook, Spotify and Supercell to name but a few. Sonali joined Accel almost a decade ago from Atlas Ventures and is an expert in consumer, software and financial services businesses. Starting out at Goldman Sachs...

Following the recent announcement of our fourth fund which at first close of £41M is over 2x larger than our last and 20x bigger than our first, we are joined by Seedcamp partners Reshma Sohoni, Carlos Espinal, Tom Wilson and Sia Houchangnia who share our plans to invest in 100 new startups across Europe and take a look back at how the European ecosystem has evolved over the ten years since Seedca...

Scott Brown is a veritable marketing guru, with decades of experience as an executive in Silicon Valley working with some of the world’s largest tech companies including the likes of Facebook, Cisco and Google during their hyper-growth phases. Speaking to partner Carlos Espinal, Scott -- who worked closely alongside dozens of Seedcamp companies on scaling their marketing, and go-to-market strategi...

Entrepreneur and former education consultant Lucy Stonehill experienced first-hand the pain points inherent in navigating the transition to higher education when she was an international student applying abroad herself. Confusing and opaque, the process has been largely pen-and-paper based for decades. Solving this pain point was the genesis of her company BridgeU, a tool which empowers schools to...

In 2004 polar explorer Ben Saunders - aged 26 - became the youngest person to ski solo to the North Pole, carrying a 180kg sled over 1,420 miles through arctic conditions. Between October 2013 and February 2014, alongside Tarka L'Herpiniere, he made another record-breaking expedition, completing the first ever return journey to the South Pole from Ross Island. In November 2017 he faces his next da...

At Seedcamp, we are passionate about identifying and investing early in startups using emerging technologies that have the potential to solve real problems. We began to invest in companies using blockchain technologies back in 2014 and our portfolio includes the likes of Clause, building the dynamic contracting infrastructure of the future, to Elliptic, providing the forensic tools with which to i...

At Seedcamp, we are passionate about identifying and investing early in startups using emerging technologies that have the potential to solve real problems. We began to invest in companies using blockchain technologies back in 2014 and our portfolio includes the likes of Clause, building the dynamic contracting infrastructure of the future, to Elliptic, providing the forensic tools with which to i...

With the recent proliferation of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), financing mechanisms for decentralised protocols and applications we are seeing teams raise millions pre-product and with little more than a white paper. What are the dangers with this? On that theme, Seedcamp partner Carlos Espinal and analyst Kyran Schmidt are joined by Dmitry Koval, Founder and CEO at Blockwise, a company specialis...

Which slices of the financial stack will new technologies irreversibly transform, and which will be the enablers – artificial intelligence, NLP, virtual assistants or blockchain – most significant in this transformation? On that topic Lex Sokolin, Partner at Autonomous Research, a leading research firm for the financial sector, joins Seedcamp partner Carlos Espinal. Lex is a futurist and entrepren...