If you’ve spent any time in European venture lately, you’ve probably noticed two things:
Everyone says they “do AI now.”
Almost nobody wants to touch consumer.
That’s exactly where Michael Sackler and Supernode Global are leaning in.
Michael started his career not in venture, but in film. He founded and ran Rook’s Nest Entertainment in London, producing and executive producing 12 feature films, including cult horror hit “The Witch”, which still makes the rounds every Halloween.
As the streamers rose in the early 2010s, he watched technology companies steamroll the media value chain. At the same time, he began angel investing around the edges of content and tech. It didn’t take long before it was obvious where the real leverage was.
Today, Michael runs Supernode Global, an early-stage fund focused on application-layer software that people use every day at home and at work. Fund I proved out the model. Fund II is where it scales.
This episode is essentially Michael’s Fund II pitch and it’s a good one.
🎧 Here’s what’s covered:
02:40 | Fund I → Fund II — expanding from “content + tech” to technologies that enhance daily personal and professional life
03:55 | The thesis shift — six themes across wellbeing, productivity, vitality, life-ops, community, and creative/pro-work augmentation
05:27 | The unifying thread — application-layer software + UI/UX obsession (consumer-grade experiences applied to enterprise)
07:50 | Fund II in motion — 13 companies already deployed and why the portfolio itself tells the story
10:36 | Sourcing edge — 50/50 inbound/outbound, a gender-balanced team, and why that drives deal flow from overlooked founders
12:57 | Speed as a superpower — winning competitive deals through fast conviction, aggressive execution, and deep consumer focus
14:42 | Value add in practice — growth support, fundraising pathways, and SuperNode’s “connector” identity (with a shoutout to Naomi)
15:33 | 34% GP commit — why Michael and Gina put unusually large personal capital into the fund (and what it signals to LPs)
18:51 | The AI elephant — where AI enhances work vs. where it risks erasing human craft (with the Graswold example)
21:56 | Human creativity vs. automation — why AI will reshape the menial, not the art, and why stories still anchor value
23:32 | AI art, authenticity & meaning — when fully AI-generated output loses emotional value, and where hybrid human–AI creation wins
🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify — chapters ready to go.
From Film Producer to Application-Layer VC
Michael’s journey starts in film, but very quickly becomes a story about software.
Founded Rook’s Nest Entertainment
Produced / exec-produced 12 films, including The Witch
Sold most of those films to the streamers around 2014–2015
Watching Netflix & co. become the dominant buyer in his world was a wake-up call:
“It was very clear that technology businesses were coming into the media landscape and just dominating it.”
Alongside that, he was:
Angel investing in early-stage tech
Watching tools and platforms reshape how content was created, distributed, and monetised
When he exited film, formalizing that curiosity into a fund was the natural next step.
Fund I: Content x Technology
Fund I (2020 vintage) launched with a tight thesis:
Invest at the intersection of content and technology.
Practically: early-stage tech businesses in the content/media stack.
It worked, but the world moved fast:
New platforms
New behaviours
AI is starting to touch everything
Supernode started seeing opportunities around that core, still application-layer, still user-facing, but not strictly “content-tech”.
Rather than stay rigid, Michael and the team decided to broaden out for Fund II.
Fund II: Technologies That Enhance Daily Life
The core of Fund II in Michael’s words:
“We invest in early-stage consumer and B2B technologies that meaningfully enhance our personal and professional lives.”
Translated into practice:
Stage: Early (pre-seed / seed)
Layer: Application-layer software (not infra, not deep tech)
Product: Strong UI/UX, user-centric, “tools people actually touch”
Mix: Roughly 60% B2B / 40% consumer
Crucially, even the B2B side is built like consumer:
“Think Figma, Canva, Slack, Dropbox. They’re in essence consumer products applied to enterprise use cases.”
They’re not backing niche tools for a handful of specialists. They’re backing software that:
Is used by large teams or entire companies
Feels like a consumer product – intuitive, delightful, viral
Sits in workflows people touch every day
So far, Fund II is clustering around six main themes:
On the personal side
Wellbeing – mental, emotional, lifestyle
Health & vitality – staying healthy, active, functioning well
Life optimisation – streamlining messy life admin (finances, legal, immigration, etc.)
Community & social – including entertainment, which Supernode explicitly sees as part of modern wellbeing
On the professional side
Productivity – getting more done, better
Intelligent workflows – AI-powered tools that speed up teamwork
Creative enablement – tools that enable people to create, not just consume
Professional augmentation – AI-powered tooling that makes professionals faster and better
Across all of them, the common thread is:
“User-centric, UI/UX focused application-layer products that you and I can imagine ourselves using.”
So What’s Supernode’s Edge?
Lots of funds say they do “product-led, UI/UX-first” software. Where does Supernode actually differentiate?
1. Application-layer + “Consumer-like B2B” focus
Supernode is not trying to compete in infra, deep tech or hardcore infra AI. Their lane is very clear:
Application-layer
Strong UI/UX
Products designed for broad, everyday usage
That focus means they can:
Build pattern recognition around what great UX and engagement look like
Move faster on conviction
Help founders shape products that resonate with both end-users and buyers
2. A real consumer lens in Europe
Michael is blunt:
“Being a fund with at least 50% consumer businesses in the portfolio in Europe already gives us a bit of an edge – there just aren’t that many consumer-focused funds here.”
When everything is SaaS, infra, and dev tools, the consumer + consumer-like B2B lens is becoming a differentiator, not a liability.
3. Gender-balanced team & real track record with female founders
Michael’s partner, Gina, is a passionate advocate for women founders – and the team is gender-balanced by design.
That’s not a marketing angle. It shows up in:
The deal flow: more and more women founders seek them out
Their process: fewer default assumptions driven by a single demographic
Their portfolio: a meaningful cluster of female-led companies, evaluated on merit, not quotas
“We’re lucky enough to have a gender-balanced team that lets us take a lot of the normal biases out. Then it’s just: is this a compelling founder solving a real problem?”
Over time, this has created a snowball effect: female founders talk, and Supernode gets more inbound from founders who actively want that kind of investor.
4. 50/50 inbound vs outbound, with an “overlooked founder” bias
Supernode’s pipeline is roughly:
50% inbound – now increasingly via reputation, especially among women founders
50% outbound – hunting in overlooked pockets, geographies, and founder profiles
The criteria they care about are less “pedigree” and more lived experience and deep connection to the problem.
Value Add: Growth & Fundraising Between Seed and Series A
Supernode is very clear on where they want to add value:
“We really focus on helping founders with their growth and fundraising between seed and Series A.”
Two main lanes:
1. Growth
For consumer: user acquisition, retention, channels
For B2B: customer acquisition, pipeline, sales motion
They don’t pretend to be hands-on operators inside every portfolio company. Instead:
“We’re called Supernode for a reason. We’re connectors.”
They focus on:
High-level strategy
Then connecting founders to people with deep, specific expertise
Portfolio ops led by Naomi, who Michael credits with “finding the most unusual but perfect people” to help founders
2. Fundraising
This is the other half of the game:
Introductions to the right seed / Series A / growth funds
Targeted, not spray-and-pray
They already have multiple examples where Supernode-led introductions turned into lead investments for portfolio companies
For founders, the value proposition is simple:
Move fast (they can gain conviction quickly due to a tight focus)
Help you grow
Help you raise the next round
Track Record & Fund II Progress
Supernode isn’t pitching off a blank sheet.
Fund I
Focused on content x tech
1.9x MOIC
0.25 DPI
One solid exit already
Combined with Michael’s angel activity, they’ve backed ~60 early-stage companies
Fund II
Target fund size: $45M
Half the fund already deployed
13 of an expected 25 companies in
The existing Fund II portfolio is meant to demonstrate the thesis in action – application-layer, UI/UX-first, daily-use products across their wellbeing / productivity themes
34% GP Commit: Real Skin in the Game
One of the more striking data points in the deck:
34% of Fund II is committed by Michael and Gina.
That’s well above market.
Michael is very open about the “why”:
He comes from a well-off background and is in a position to commit materially.
Fund I was entirely GP capital – no external LPs, used primarily to build track record.
He wants LPs to know: this is not a casual experiment.
“We believe in what we’re doing. We want to be totally aligned, with no question marks about that.”
He also highlights something LPs sometimes gloss over: GP commit as a percentage of net worth. On that basis too, it’s meaningfully above the norm.
The high GP commit also enabled them to:
Start deploying early
Build a real Fund II portfolio before widening the LP base
Go to family offices and strategic LPs with live deals, not just a thesis
They’re now bringing in a small number of LPs they think can be genuine partners – rather than opening the doors wide and turning this into a spray-and-pray raise.
How Supernode Thinks About AI (And Where the Line Is)
Given their focus, AI is everywhere in Supernode’s world. But they have a clear lens:
“AI should be a tool to help humans.”
On the professional side, that looks like:
AI-powered workflows
Intelligent tools that make teams faster, more accurate, more creative
Professional augmentation rather than replacement
On the personal side, they’re more cautious about products that go “too far”.
Michael uses portfolio company Graswald as an example:
AI-powered workflow for e-commerce product photography
They generate:
Models
Backdrops
Every element of the shot
Using real images of your product, they create lifelike, on-model, on-brand visuals at scale
Yes, that removes some human labour. And Michael doesn’t sugarcoat the tension:
“It is taking away an aspect of someone’s livelihood. There’s no doubt about that.”
But he distinguishes between:
Menial, repetitive work (e.g. shooting 50 angles of a handbag on a plain background for a product page)
Art and human connection (e.g. a Mario Testino campaign, or a film with a story behind it)
His thesis:
Tools like Graswald will own the high-volume, low-soul workflows
Human-created art will:
Remain
Potentially become even more valuable in a sea of AI-generated images
Carry premium precisely because of the story and human connection behind it
“Stories are a universal human experience. As soon as you find out something is completely AI-generated from idea through to output, I think it loses a lot of value in certain areas.”
That stance fits their broader thesis: augment, don’t erase the parts of life and work where humans actually matter.
Why Supernode, Why Now?
If you zoom out, Supernode Global is making a reasonably sharp bet:
Application-layer software
Consumer and consumer-like B2B products
Daily-use tools that shape how we live and work
AI as an enabler, not a narrative crutch
A European base in a market where few funds really lean into consumer
Combined with:
A real track record from Fund I and Michael’s angel portfolio
A half-deployed Fund II already showing the strategy in practice
Unusual GP–LP alignment with a 34% GP commit
And a gender-balanced, connector-style team with a growing reputation among female founders
…this isn’t just another “we do AI and SaaS at pre-seed” story.
It’s a more specific, more human bet: on the tools that sit exactly where our fingers hit the screen and the keyboard.
