Hi friends,
One thing we keep hearing from founders, operators and investors is that technology is becoming less of the differentiator.
AI is making software cheaper and faster to build. Models are improving, development cycles are shrinking and capabilities that once belonged to a small group of companies are now available to many.
But while building technology is getting easier, building something people consistently choose is not.
That is where the industry conversation seems to be moving. ICONIQ's 2026 State of AI report argues that competitive advantage is increasingly shifting to the application layer: workflow integration, product experience, customer value and distribution, rather than privileged access to the underlying models.
That was also reflected in the strongest conversations we had recently.
The builders who stood out were not talking about technology as the moat. They were talking about customer insight, workflow ownership, critical bottlenecks and the small product decisions that compound over time.
Their advantage came from understanding a problem more deeply than others and building around that understanding.
Technology may create the opening, but product is where value gets captured.
As AI lowers the barriers to building, durable companies will be created by teams that turn powerful technology into something useful, trusted and hard to replace. The winners will be the ones who solve a real problem so well that customers would rather not switch away.
More on technology, venture and company building across Europe below.
Enjoy the edition.
with 💖
David & Andreas
Event spotlight
Insights
Podcasts
Events
Event spotlight
Image credit: The Impact Circle
Our podcast episode with Joris Beckers and Mats Raes from Love Tomorrow dropped a few days ago. If you haven't watched yet, it's worth your time.
Love Tomorrow Summit takes place on July 23 at Tomorrowland, Belgium. The theme this year: The Future of Intelligence. 80+ speakers. A completely different kind of venue.
EUVC is curating the investment stage and we'd love to see people from our community there.
Insights
What are investors really backing when there is no product, no revenue and no proof the company will work?
That's the question we explored in a recent article based on our conversation with Pooné Mokari, CEO and Co-Founder at Ewake, and Pietro Bezza, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Connect Ventures, covering founder-market fit, product obsession and why deep understanding of a problem often matters more than early traction.
Key takeaways
Founder-market fit beats traction. The best founders have lived the problem they're solving.
AI should fit the workflow. Ewake is building AI teammates, not another dashboard.
Trust drives adoption. Enterprise AI only works if users rely on it when it matters most.
Podcasts
Most companies are still figuring out how to use AI. REHAU reached 10% adoption within months of launching its internal AI platform and is now targeting 50%. In our conversation with Nils Wagner, CEO of REHAU New Ventures we explored what it actually takes to drive AI adoption inside a large industrial organisation.
Key insights
AI adoption needs systems, not prompts. REHAU built an AI platform, AI Academy and AI Factory to scale usage across the organisation.
The bottleneck is organisational. Security, incentives and internal buy-in matter more than the underlying models.
AI is making products easier to build, but where does defensibility come from when everyone has access to the same models?
In this episode of Consumer Tech Napkin, we explore that question with Renato Circi and Rafaël Michali, Co-Founders at Sava, and Joe Seager-Dupuy, Director, Investment at True, examining why scarce data and critical bottlenecks may become the most valuable assets in consumer tech.
Main highlights
Data is the moat. As AI capabilities become commoditised, proprietary data becomes more valuable.
Own the bottleneck. The most defensible companies control a critical part of the value chain others depend on.
Moats compound. Long-term advantages are built through data, product, distribution and user behaviour working together over time.
Quantum computing has spent decades being years away. Is that finally changing?
In the latest episode of This Week in European Tech, Mads Jensen of SuperSeed is joined by Andrew J. Scott of 7percent Ventures and Callum Stewart of BullhoundCapital to discuss why quantum may be approaching its commercial inflection point.
Key topics
Why BullhoundCapital led the funding round in Oxford Quantum Circuits
When quantum advantage could become commercially meaningful
Why quantum sensing may arrive before large-scale quantum computing
Plus: SpaceX's IPO, sovereign AI, Anthropic's latest model release and Europe's deep tech opportunity.
Events
