Ventures

Rowan Aldean, pivoted from Casa Platforms' AI rental agent after recognising he skipped steps on Nathan Barry's "ladders of wealth creation," moving from agency work directly to consumer products without building the foundational SaaS experience that creates sustainable value rather than merely capturing it. Born in Iraq and formerly at Checkout, he's now developing software-...

Matt Clarke, Co-Founder of Leapfrog, raised £3.15 million in angel funding to build the "AI layer for the cloud," positioning LeapFrog as "Devon for DevOps" that automates infrastructure management across any cloud provider through natural language Terraform generation, seamless multi-cloud migrations, and autonomous incident resolution. Operating across three pillars—build, mi...

Jannes Klaas, Principal at QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, authored a machine learning book during undergraduate studies while teaching courses on neural networks and gradient descent—fundamentals that remain largely unchanged despite rapid AI evolution, though LSTMs have been superseded by transformer architectures that enable today's scaling laws through bigger models and datasets. Specialisin...

Oliver Quie, Tom Ryan & Oscar Hayek Co-Founders of Innerworks, raised $4 million to build "synthetic threat intelligence" that answers three fundamental questions: is a user human, which device are they using, and where are they located, as AI's ability to mimic authentic human behaviour renders traditional behavioural biometrics obsolete. Operating as an "immune system for...

David Gelberg, Fastest Exited Founder Ever at the20hr.co (acquired by Revel), achieved Europe's fastest hackathon exit by selling a company built in 20 hours during Project Lovable, leveraging London's competitive hackathon community where he consistently wins through strategic team formation and hunger-driven talent selection. Building secondary market disruption tools for family offices...

Josh Tulloch, co-founder of Plugged, operates a curated founder community with 34 paying members who undergo rigorous vetting for tenacity, wicked ambition, and cultural fit, maintaining a 30% acceptance rate through application processes that dig deep into candidates' "why" to identify founders who exhibit spiritual-level commitment to building regardless of pivots or obstacles. Dra...

HERE WE GO: Today on VENTURES 🚀: 9 Guests, 5 hours, 1 don't miss streamIt's more bang for buck than 39 SpaceX Raptor engines at max thrust 💥 5 hours of streaming, bringing you the latest on what is happening in the landscape of Technology & Business. From the fastest ever exit 🏃‍♂️ To European Defence 🇪🇺THE BLOK IS ABLAZE 🔥Where else are you going to find this 🤷‍♂️12:00: Josh Tull...

Johannes Korpela - VC, Wave Ventures

Aaron Morris, Co-Founder/CTO of Bigged, pivots the ad tech startup from creative tooling toward LinkedIn advertising optimization after recognizing enterprise pricing advantages over the consumer model (Update has pivoted back) Starting as a 12-year-old game developer building racing games and "psychedelic kitten tree" experiments, Aaron developed expertise in non-Euclidean geometry syst...

Alexandru Voica, Head of Corporate Affairs & Policy at Synthesia, navigates the complex intersection of AI regulation and startup innovation, drawing on 15 years of tech experience across ARM and Meta to educate policymakers about artificial intelligence while protecting European startups from regulatory overreach. Romanian-born Alexandru advocates for startups in EU AI Act discussions, highli...

Louise Maunoir, Director Europe at Sigma, bridges European and Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystems through community building and fellowship programs, drawing on her diverse background from creating carbon credit systems for 3,000 Egyptian farmers (generating €4.8 million in carbon credit value) to microfinance work in Kenya and founding her own venture-backed startup that she closed earlier this y...

Melissa Dewar, Founder of The Modernist, creates the "future of lifestyle membership" through a hospitality tech startup that provides ClassPass-style access to private members clubs, co-working spaces, and exclusive events across London, describing her platform as the offspring of "ClassPass and Soho House." Originally studying architecture at Cambridge where she conceived the...

Katie Saddleton, Senior Ecosystem Manager at Royal Academy of Engineering. Founded by Prince Philip 49 years ago to put engineering innovation in service of society. Operating under the Academy's Strategy 2030 framework focused on "engineering better lives," Katie supports bold, IP-rich deep tech innovations spanning the full breadth of engineering from software and biomedical to tra...

Brian Walker, Founder of REVEL, accelerates humanoid robotics adoption by building the world's largest library of digital twins for physical embodied AI training, positioning REVEL as "Scale AI for robotics" while pursuing partnerships with major manufacturers, including Dyson, Bosch, Milwaukee, Stanley Black & Decker, and IKEA. Originally a Czech filmmaker who spent 17 years in...

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...