Welcome back to another episode of Upside at the EUVC Podcast, where Dan Bowyer, Mads Jensen of SuperSeed, Lomax Ward of Outsized Ventures, and Andrew Scott of 7percent Ventures, to break down the real stories behind the headlines shaping European tech and venture.
From Bending Spoons’ audacious European rollup strategy, to Brexit’s economic hangover, to the existential challenges facing Volkswagen, to Google vs. OpenAI’s new “Code Red”, and finally whether Europe has had its long-overdue shock moment — this episode goes wide, fast, and deep.
This is Upside, where the takes are sharp, the macro is messy, and the optimism is… conditional.
What’s covered:
02:00 The valuation reset, debt-fuelled M&A, and the Italian PE–VC hybrid model
04:00 Arbitrage: firing US teams, rehiring elite Italian engineers
06:00 Do rollups really work? Tech debt, distribution, and execution risk
07:00 Brexit revisited: GDP losses, trade collapse, and political reality
08:00 The myth of “you can’t know the counterfactual” — and why you actually can
10:00 Will the UK rejoin the customs union? And would Europe even take us back?
12:00 Europe’s manufacturing crisis: Porsche, Volkswagen, BYD and the end of German exceptionalism
15:00 China’s shift: stop importing, start replicating
17:00 Welfare-state complacency and the European stagnation problem
20:00 The bitter truth about Europe’s carbon “success story”
22:00 How to actually fix European tech: R&D, immigration, procurement, capital markets
24:00 Why 0.02% pension allocation to VC is Europe’s biggest structural handicap
26:00 Should we “Farage-pill” Europe into a tech-first agenda?
33:00 Distribution vs. loyalty: why consumers don’t care about brand
36:00 Who wins the cost base war: Google, Amazon, Meta, or OpenAI?
38:00 Anthropic’s IPO plans and what they signal about the private capital cycle
42:00 Deals of the Week: Black Forest Labs, ICEYE, Expedition Growth Capital
44:00 Robotics is the next AI wave — and the picks-and-shovels startups emerging now
✍️ Show Notes
Bending Spoons: The Rollup Nobody Saw Coming
Bending Spoons’ model is as odd as it is brilliant:
Buy US legacy software brands at distressed valuations
Remove expensive US org structures
Rebuild teams with elite Italian engineers
Run each asset as a high-efficiency cash machine
It’s PE discipline meets product-centric operator culture — with one of the highest Glassdoor scores in Europe. The gang debates whether this is Europe’s own Berkshire Hathaway moment — or a spreadsheet fantasy colliding with tech debt reality.
Brexit: The Economic Data Is Now Unavoidable
This week’s new wave of Brexit pieces triggers the most honest discussion we’ve had yet:
UK GDP 6–8% lower
Investment 12–18% lower
Productivity down 3–4%
Trade intensity diverging sharply from every G7 peer
The team dismantles the “we can’t know the counterfactual” myth and outlines exactly how the UK underperformed every comparable economy — and why rejoining the customs union may now be politically inevitable.
Europe’s Industrial Long Winter
Volkswagen and Porsche’s decline is a microcosm of Europe’s structural challenge:
China no longer needs German engineering — it can now replicate it
German labor laws block reform and plant closures
Energy prices and regulation keep pushing manufacturing abroad
Europe’s productivity problem isn’t temporary — it’s foundational.
How Europe Really Fixes Itself
The group lays out the uncomfortable truth: real change requires political courage Europe hasn’t yet demonstrated.
The fix list:
Massively increase R&D investment
Aggressively recruit global tech talent
Cut red tape at every level
Make governments first buyers of critical tech
Reform capital markets so late-stage companies can stay in Europe
Shift pension rules from “minimize volatility” to “maximize long-term returns”
The result would be more sovereign tech champions — and fewer European startups selling to US acquirers by Series C.
AI Corner: Google vs. OpenAI, Chips Everywhere, and an Anthropic IPO
A huge week:
Google’s Gemini 3 triggers an internal Code Red at OpenAI
Sam Altman shifts to “focus mode”: monetization, core product, nothing else
Anthropic hires IPO counsel
Amazon, Meta, and everyone else is designing custom silicon
The EU fines X again
The funniest moment: Dan’s ongoing prophecy that Apple will own personal AI — and the others’ utter disbelief.
Deals of the Week
Black Forest Labs — €300M at a €3.25B valuation
Germany’s quiet giant behind the next generation of image models.
ICEYE — €200M for Europe’s SAR satellite defense champion
Finland continues its run as Europe’s most underrated deep-tech hub.
Expedition Growth Capital — €323M new fund
A long-needed injection of European growth equity.
NeuraCore Robotics Platform — €2.5M
A signal of the robotics wave coming fast.
💡 One-Liner Takeaway
Europe is in a moment of reckoning — industrial, political, technological — but the venture ecosystem continues to surge. The winners will be the founders and investors who build despite the macro, not because of it.
