Newsletter 24.11.25 | The “Power Behind the Power” Edition
Opportunity funds, deep-tech money, AI venture building & the macro forces shaping where talent and capital flow next.
EUVC field trip alert: We will be joining 500 Eurasia Demo Day in Tbilisi on Dec 4, plus the private Caucasus / mountain retreat right after. We can extend a couple invites to investors who want to learn more about the Eurasia region - if that’s you, reach out and we’ll share the details. Low-key, no pressure, pure curiosity mode.
This week’s newsletter is all about power: who allocates it, who earns it, and who’s quietly reshaping Europe’s tech future behind the scenes.
From Europe’s largest public LP explaining how Opportunity Funds should really work, to the Deep Tech & Climate Fonds showing what happens when government capital grows a backbone, to Merantix redefining what “AI venture building” actually means. The conversations this week cut straight into the structures that determine whether Europe can scale its breakout companies at home, or whether they’ll keep boarding a one-way flight to the U.S.
We also delve into the minds of founders and coaches with Dave Bailey’s frameworks for leveling up as a CEO, and zoom out to Europe’s macro moment — exit taxes, tech sovereignty, AI reality checks, and the now very real geopolitical rewiring that is shaping where talent, compute, and capital flow next.
Finally, in this week’s Insight, we unpack Europe’s “Centicorn Opportunity” - not in consumer apps or foundation models, but in the trillion-euro, paper-and-Excel industries where AI adoption will quietly create the continent’s next global champions.
Hope you enjoy.
With 💖 David & Andreas
You can’t pick winners. You can construct portfolios.
If that line resonates, you’re exactly who our 12-week Fund Modelling Cohort is built for.
Instead of relying on gut feel or pattern matching, this cohort teaches you how to engineer your fund’s performance through thoughtful portfolio construction, disciplined modelling, and scenario-driven decision-making.
Across the program, you’ll be able to build a LP-ready fund model from scratch: one that helps you define strategy, reserves, pacing, ownership targets, and return expectations with clarity and confidence.
By the end, you’ll walk away with a model that doesn’t just look good but that it helps you run a portfolio, not just pick companies.
Seats are limited. Join the cohort and start constructing the portfolio your future LPs will want to back.
Still unsure? Watch the teaser from our Essential Building Blocks masterclass.
Table of Contents
🎧 Podcasts of The Week
Lea Strumberger, KfW Capital: How Europe’s Largest Public LP Thinks About Opportunity Funds
Adrian Locher, Merantix Capital: AI Studios & the Future of Venture Building
Dave Bailey, FounderCoach.com: From Founder to Coach - Competence, Curiosity & Scaling European Tech
This Week in European Tech: Exit Taxes, AI Reality Checks & The New Tech Sovereignty Race
✍️ Insights of The Week
We’ve been seeing more GPs and founders struggle with narrative, media, and fundraising comms. The game has shifted: this isn’t “PR” as vanity anymore. It’s distribution. If your story isn’t compounding in the right rooms, you feel it fast.
For GPs, it’s the same refrain: “our edge is real, but it’s not landing consistently with LPs (or founders).” That’s usually a comms/distribution issue, not an investment issue. Narrative now compounds (or doesn’t) through LP updates, investor circles and media.
Founders raising in Europe are fighting two battles at once: the round itself, and the story travelling while you’re not in the room. Narrative + comms is distribution. When it clicks, fundraising gets meaningfully easier.
If you want a quick outside take on your narrative + comms, drop us a note and we’ll loop you in with one of our experts who can help.
🎧 Podcasts of The Week
Lea Strumberger, KfW Capital: How Europe’s Largest Public LP Thinks About Opportunity Funds
In this episode, Andreas is joined by Lea Strumberger, Senior Investment Manager at KfW Capital — Europe’s largest public LP and a key force behind Germany’s €10B Future Fund. Lea pulls back the curtain on how KfW thinks about Opportunity Funds, an increasingly important — yet often misunderstood — piece of Europe’s late-stage capital stack.
In this conversation, Lea breaks down the two dominant OF models — inside-only and blended — and what good looks like across pricing discipline, external leads, governance, duration, fees, carry, and GP commit. She explains how KfW diligences emerging managers, why a third-party lead of ≥25% protects alignment, and how Opportunity Funds differ fundamentally from continuation vehicles. For European GPs debating whether to launch an OF, Lea offers a clear, practical playbook rooted in alignment and real late-stage capability.
The discussion also zooms out to Europe’s structural challenge: the continent’s shortage of domestic Series B+ capital. Opportunity Funds, done right, can be a powerful mechanism to back breakouts without compromising incentives or governance. Whether you’re a GP exploring late-stage strategies, an LP building your OF diligence muscle, or a founder trying to understand how these vehicles shape follow-on dynamics — this episode is as instructive as it gets.
🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify — or queue it for later with chapters ready to go.
Elisabeth Schrey, Deep Tech & Climate Fonds (DTCF): How Government Capital Shapes Europe’s Deep Tech Trajectory
Elisabeth Schrey, Managing Director of the Deep Tech & Climate Fonds (DTCF) — a €1B vehicle backed by Germany’s Future Fund and ERP Special Fund. DTCF sits at the heart of Europe’s most difficult frontier: financing the growth-stage needs of deep tech and climate founders who require serious capital, long horizons, and policy awareness.
In this conversation, Elisabeth lays out how DTCF navigates the classic tension of public capital in venture — catalyzing markets without crowding them out. She explains why the fund only co-invests, how it evaluates policy-fragile sectors like hydrogen, and what “readiness to scale” really means when technology is racing ahead of market adoption. From avoiding the subsidy trap to backing hardware-heavy bets outside private capital’s comfort zone, Elisabeth offers a candid look at Europe’s industrial transition.
The episode also explores Europe’s emerging tech-sovereignty agenda — semiconductors, robotics, climate infrastructure — and why Munich’s industrial DNA is fueling a deep tech boom. For founders, policymakers, and VCs wrestling with how to fund Europe’s hardest problems, this is a masterclass in balancing returns, risk, and ecosystem-building at continental scale.
🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify — or queue it for later with chapters ready to go.
Adrian Locher, Merantix Capital: AI Studios & the Future of Venture Building
In this episode, we’re joined by Adrian Locher, co-founder and GP at Merantix Capital, the Berlin-born AI venture studio and fund that’s now expanding into London. Adrian has spent the last decade at the intersection of venture building, deep-tech AI, and community creation — a model he believes is uniquely suited to the demands of the AI era.
In this conversation, we unpack the reality of the studio model: what makes it work, where it breaks, and how Merantix blends venture creation, ecosystem building, and applied AI consulting into one operating machine. Adrian makes a strong case for validation before MVP — securing real customer commitments before a single line of code is written — arguing that early revenue signals beat prototypes every time.
We also dive into London’s rising AI gravity, the difference between deep-tech AI companies and thin “wrapper” plays, and why Europe needs more founders willing to solve hard, infrastructure-level challenges. If you’re curious about the future of venture building in an AI-first world, this episode offers a candid look behind the curtain.
🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify — or queue it for later with chapters ready to go.
Dave Bailey, FounderCoach.com: From Founder to Coach - Competence, Curiosity & Scaling European Tech
From co-founding Delivery Hero to time in venture to coaching some of Europe’s most ambitious CEOs, Dave Bailey — one of Europe’s most sought-after founder coaches and the mind behind FounderCoach.com - brings a rare mix of operator truth, coaching discipline, and founder psychology.
In this conversation, the trio unpacks what it really takes to scale as a CEO: why competence must precede confidence, how quarterly cadence creates true “Founder Mode,” and why visual clarity often beats verbal reflection. They dive into the deeper layers of founder leadership — trauma, ego, curiosity — and how these forces shape culture, execution, and long-term resilience inside fast-growing companies.
The episode also explores Dave’s five-pillar coaching framework, the hidden power of launch cadence, and how to transform board meetings into genuine strategic accelerators rather than reporting rituals. Whether you’re a founder scaling from Series A to C, an operator seeking clarity, or a VC wanting to support CEOs beyond the generic “be helpful,” this one is packed with frameworks, insight, and hard-earned wisdom.
🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify — or queue it for later with chapters ready to go.
This Week in European Tech: Exit Taxes, AI Reality Checks & The New Tech Sovereignty Race
Welcome back to another episode of Upside at the EUVC Podcast, where Dan Bowyer, Mads Jensen of SuperSeed, and Lomax Ward of Outsized Ventures unpack the headlines reshaping European venture.
This week, the trio dives into the UK’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it exit tax, China’s open-source AI surge, and Michael Burry’s hyperscaler accounting drama. They also tackle Europe’s growing supply chain fragility — from Nexperia’s chip packaging standoff to 5G vendor bans and the looming debate around kill switches and tech sovereignty.
The crew connects the dots between geopolitics, capital markets, and deep tech dependence — asking what it means for Europe’s founders to build in an era where trust, security, and compute are the new currencies of power.
🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify — or queue it for later with chapters ready to go.
✍️ Insights of The Week
Europe’s Centicorn Opportunity
Europe’s biggest AI opportunity isn’t in frontier labs or shiny consumer apps — it’s in the legacy industries that still run the continent. From government procurement to construction, healthcare, and manufacturing, trillions in economic value are trapped inside decades-old workflows built on paper, dictaphones, siloed software, and human “APIs.” AI has transformed bit-driven industries, but the atom-heavy backbone of Europe remains stubbornly manual — not because the opportunity isn’t massive, but because until now the technology was brittle and the transformation cost outweighed the benefit.
That equation is finally flipping. Modern OCR, agents, scribing, workflow orchestration, and domain-specific automation are starting to penetrate sectors once considered unreachable. Early data suggests that even modest gains — 5% efficiency in procurement, meaningful reductions in healthcare admin, or incremental improvements in construction and manufacturing — unlock GDP-scale impact. For founders willing to go vertical, embed deeply, and solve “boring” problems at trillion-euro scale, Europe’s centicorns will come from these overlooked trenches.
Over the next 2–5 years, AI will quietly become the operating layer across these industries: first augmenting humans, then gradually taking over routine work as trust and reliability grow. Workforces won’t shrink dramatically, but their composition will shift — less manual busywork, more oversight and high-leverage decision-making. The winners will be the founders who understand legacy workflows, build for the real constraints of atoms-heavy sectors, and deploy practical AI long before AGI arrives. This is Europe’s largest AI arbitrage — and its clearest path to generating global champions.
What does compensation look like in Venture Capital?💰
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Most of the stories in venture are about founders and VCs...
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A small step toward better fund models (for all of us)
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