Hi friends,
The EUVC Summit & Awards Show lands in London on April 22. The agenda is set: built for decisions, not scale, with focused conversations on AI-native teams, liquidity, pension capital, and Europe’s next industrial wave—all in a highly curated room of founders, LPs, GPs, and policymakers driving outcomes.
That same calibre of European thought leadership shows up clearly in this week’s conversations. Sasha Vidiborskiy of Atomico reframes deep tech as compounding R&D, not complexity, and explains what it really takes to evaluate technical founders. Oliver Schmäschke of T.Capital breaks down why most corporate venture arms fail and the principles behind those that endure.
Camilla Dolan of Eka Ventures shares how impact and returns align in building the UK’s largest early-stage impact fund, fresh off their $107 million Fund II. Join us in congratulating Camilla, Jon, and the team on this major milestone (and yes—you’ll meet them at the Summit).
We also bring you an article on why the “death of SaaS” debate misses the point for Europe, a new masterclass on VC fund KPIs, and the VC Compensation Benchmark Survey as we collect final inputs.
There’s still time to join us in London, so request your place if you haven’t already. We look forward to seeing you.
We hope you enjoy this edition.
with 💖
David & Andreas
Table of Contents
Insights of the Week
Podcasts of the Week
Live Interviews Serving Europe’s Builders
Community Updates
Events and Community Gatherings
Insights of the Week
The “death of SaaS” debate is loud but overlooks the real shift. In this piece, our very own David Cruz e Silva argues AI isn’t killing software but moving value up the stack and into services, creating a major opportunity for Europe to win by owning high-value, deeply embedded industry workflows rather than trying to lead in infrastructure or model layers.
Metrics only matter in context. In this new EUVC Academy masterclass with Marc Penkala, General Partner at āltitude, we explain how core KPIs evolve across the fund lifecycle, how LPs assess performance versus GPs using metrics to decide and how to align modelling, reporting and dashboards into a single, clear view of fund health.
Podcasts of the Week
Deep tech is about simplifying complexity and telling the story right. Andreas Munk Holm speaks with Sasha Vidiborskiy, Partner at Atomico, on what defines deep tech, how to evaluate founders and how firms assess and invest in technically complex companies.
Key themes
Compounding R&D, not complexity, defines deep tech
Timelines are hard to predict, especially in quantum
Founder quality goes beyond technical skill
Deep tech requires a different investment approach
Europe is gaining ground in deep tech
Why do most corporate venture arms fail within four years, and what principles make them last? Andreas Munk Holm and Jeppe Høier speak with Oliver Schmäschke, Managing Partner at T.Capital, on what works in CVC, from choosing between strategic or financial investing to using access as an edge and building for longevity and real impact.
Key highlights
Why you must choose between strategic or financial investing
How corporates win through access and value creation
The importance of governance and decision speed
Why most CVCs fail and how to avoid it
How to build and retain top CVC talent
Anthropic is building a full stack app builder and expanding beyond just models.
In this episode of This Week in European Tech, Dan Bowyer and Mads Jensen from SuperSeed cover the key forces shaping European tech right now, from Hungary’s political shift and its impact on EU capital flows to frontier AI competition, small teams building more with AI and accelerating compute demand.
Key Highlights
Hungary leadership change and EU funding unlocks
Anthropic moving beyond models into products
Mythos vs GPT Cyber and benchmark differences
Small teams building more with AI
Compute demand accelerating across the market
Live Interviews Serving Europe’s Builders
What does it take to build the UK’s largest early-stage impact fund? Camilla Dolan, General Partner at Eka Ventures, joined Andreas Munk Holm live to share more on Eka’s recent $107 million Fund II close and what it signals for impact investing. She explains why health, wellbeing and sustainability are major commercial opportunities, how impact drives returns, how AI is reshaping healthcare, and how Eka identifies founders who build companies used every day.
In this live conversation, Andreas Munk Holm speaks with Andreas Cleve, Co-Founder and CEO of Corti, a frontier AI lab building clinical-grade systems for healthcare. They discuss why general AI falls short in this domain and how Corti’s flagship model, Symphony, powers accurate, production-ready applications across EHRs, virtual care and life sciences.
AI agents can think, build, and act, but still can’t reliably transact across systems. That’s the gap SolvaPay is solving. Andreas Munk Holm speaks with Viggo Stenseth, CEO and Co-Founder of SolvaPay, fresh off a €2.4 million pre-seed round, to explain how a new payment layer unlocks autonomous AI transactions.
What has actually changed in venture over the past decade? In this live conversation, Andreas Munk Holm speaks with Meghan Stevenson-Krausz, CEO of Diversity VC, on the firm’s 10-year impact report, exploring what’s worked, what hasn’t and where structural change in VC is still needed.
Community Updates
Last call to shape this year’s VC Compensation Benchmark.
What does compensation really look like in venture today? We’re collecting the final inputs and closing shortly. Last year, 400+ participants across 24 countries contributed—this year, we’re aiming even higher.
It takes under a minute, it’s 100% anonymous (no emails or personal data), and your input directly sharpens the final report.
Take part while you still can. We’ll be sharing the results back with you.
