Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

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Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

Sifted brings you monthly long-form interviews with the biggest names in European startups. We hear from the founders, operators and investors behind the continent's biggest tech companies to learn what makes them tick and what they've learnt while building their businesses.

  1. FEB 21

    Nord's Tomas Okmanas on why he had to launch an AI startup

    Tomas Okmanas is no stranger to scaling a company in a highly competitive space. When he launched NordVPN in 2012, the market was crowded with competitors, but today his company has 15m users, a $3bn valuation and a consistent stream of new features and products in development. Now, as if he wasn't busy enough, Tomas is launching a new startup — Nexos.ai, a platform that helps enterprises to make the best use of AI models. On this episode of the Sifted Podcast, he tells Amy why he believes he...

    30 min

  2. JAN 24

    The 101 of angel investing with Jenny Tooth

    To kick off 2025, we're talking "business angels": the people who take big bets investing their personal wealth into startups at their earliest stages, and without whom most companies would never get off the ground. So, how do you actually become an angel investor? How much money do you need to commit? How many investments should you be making? And how can the UK and Europe lay the groundwork for a more representative next generation of investors? Amy poses these questions to Jenny Tooth, a...

    47 min

  3. 12/13/2024

    Replacing fossil fuels: Proxima Fusion’s Francesco Sciortino on his mission to revolutionise clean energy

    On 2024's last episode of the Sifted Podcast, Amy is joined by an entrepreneur on a very big mission. Munich-based startup Proxima Fusion is developing a nuclear fusion reactor — a technology which many hope could help solve the climate crisis by producing clean, cheap and abundant energy that could replace a lot of fossil fuel power. But the technical challenges are considerable. Nuclear fusion reactors need to remain stable at incredibly high temperatures, while confining volatile plasma ...

    31 min

  4. 11/29/2024

    Oura Ring founder Petteri Lahtela on fending off acquisition offers from Big Tech

    Podcast host and Sifted editor Amy Lewin sits down with Petteri Lahtela, founder of smart wearable company Oura Ring, to discuss how the business has grown to making $500m in revenue, hitting profitability and selling more than 2.5m devices in the process. They discuss the big idea behind Oura, how Petteri has turned down multiple offers from buyers and how the company is well poised to pounce on the AI boom with the data it holds.

    36 min

  5. 10/11/2024

    General Catalyst’s Jeannette zu Fürstenberg on how to scale European moonshot ideas

    This month we’re joined by Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, managing director at global VC firm General Catalyst and cofounder of La Famiglia VC — a Berlin-based early-stage investor which merged with General Catalyst last year. Jeannette’s investments include companies like HR platform Deel, logistics startup Forto, HR tech unicorn Personio, defence unicorn Helsing and AI unicorn Mistral. She also sits on Helsing and Mistral’s boards, giving her a front seat at two of Europe’s most closely-watched ...

    46 min

  6. 09/13/2024

    Mistral, DeepL and Kry investor Avid Larizadeh Duggan on where AI is creating value

    Avid Larizadeh Duggan, senior managing director at Ontario-HQed growth-stage investor Teachers’ Venture Growth, is one of Europe’s first operator-turned-VCs. Her career in tech began with stints as a product manager at places like eBay and Skype, and has switched between operational and investing roles ever since. In 2021 she joined TVG, which is part of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, one of the world’s biggest pension funds. Its investments include German AI translation company DeepL,...

    46 min

  7. 08/23/2024

    Programmable plants and neurotech devices: Inside the UK government’s £800m “inventions” agency

    This month we’re joined by Ilan Gur, CEO of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (or ARIA), a government body set up last year to fund ambitious, breakthrough innovations. Before joining Aria, Gur was a programme director at ARPA-E, the US government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was established to develop new cutting-edge technologies to generate, store and use energy. He’s also been a founder — starting two companies in Silicon Valley We discuss what technologies he...

    38 min

  8. 07/25/2024

    Climate tech’s growing pains with Pale Blue Dot’s Heidi Lindvall

    She’s one of the three founders of Pale Blue Dot, a Malmö-based early-stage climate tech fund which launched in 2020 and backs pre-seed and seed-stage startups reducing and reversing the effects of climate change, in Europe and the US. Pale Blue Dot came along just ahead of the wave of climate tech funds which launched in Europe amid the tech boom. Its portfolio companies include Ember, a Scottish intercity transport startup; Monta, an app connecting charge point owners and electric car driv...

    41 min
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Sifted brings you monthly long-form interviews with the biggest names in European startups. We hear from the founders, operators and investors behind the continent's biggest tech companies to learn what makes them tick and what they've learnt while building their businesses.

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