Welcome back to another episode of the EUVC Podcast, where we bring together Europe’s venture family to share the stories, insights, and lessons that drive our ecosystem forward.
This week, we sit down with Will Wells, founder-turned-VC, and now Partner at Speedinvest, where he leads deep tech and supports the firm’s growth strategy.
Will’s journey spans building Hummingbird Technologies, an AI-powered agtech company exited to Agreena in 2022, to leading frontier tech at Firstminute Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Now at Speedinvest, he’s focused on backing European founders working on sovereign compute, defense, energy resilience, biosecurity, and the “picks and shovels” of the next decades.
You can read more about Will by Callum Burroughs here.
🎧 Here’s what’s covered:
01:00 From founder to investor: lessons from building Hummingbird Technologies and the empathy it gave Will as a VC.
05:00 Learning venture at Firstminute and Lightspeed: what “good” looks like in deep tech investing.
07:00 Beyond buckets: why the biggest opportunities lie in combining AI, hardware, defense, and science into multi-sector platforms.
10:00 Big bets in deep tech: Europe’s challenge at pre-seed and why bold consortium funding matters early.
12:00 Defense tech & geopolitics: reconciling economic opportunity with moral responsibility.
15:00 Strategic sovereignty: compute, semiconductors, energy resilience, and why Europe needs its own infrastructure.
17:00 Thesis-building: inevitable truths, technical stacks, and where customers will actually buy.
20:00 Agtech, climate, and humility: what Will learned from being early in robotics and regen agriculture.
24:00 Leveraging Speedinvest’s platform model: why deep vertical teams and operational scale matter in frontier tech.
29:00 Looking ahead: biosecurity, autonomy, energy resilience — and why Europe must back multi-generational deep tech companies.
🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify — or queue it for later with chapters ready to go.
✍️ Show Notes
Deep Tech in Europe
The US excels at companies transcending categories (Tesla, Palantir, SpaceX). Europe must learn to combine domains — not stay siloed.
Founder Empathy
Will’s mistakes as a founder — from bad hires to product missteps — now help him support entrepreneurs with credibility.
Big Bets
Pre-seed deep tech often requires bold, capital-intensive syndicates. Europe is improving but needs more conviction early.
Defense Tech
Rapid adoption due to geopolitical realities, but raises questions on sovereignty and ethics.
Strategic Sovereignty
Energy, compute, and biosecurity are “must-win” areas for Europe.
Speedinvest Edge
Its people-heavy, sector-structured model gives founders more support and equips the firm to operate across highly technical domains.
Takeaways for Founders & VCs
Empathy matters: Founders value investors who’ve been in the trenches.
Think across domains: The biggest opportunities sit between categories — not inside them.
Early boldness: Europe needs more pre-seed conviction in deep tech.
Sovereignty is strategy: Compute, energy, and biosecurity are not optional.
Platform advantage: Generalist firms can thrive in deep tech if they build deep, vertical teams.
💡 One-liner takeaway:
Deep tech in Europe is moving from silos to systems — and investors like Will Wells at Speedinvest want to back the companies that transcend buckets and build sovereign infrastructure for the future.
🤗 Join the EUVC Community
Looking for niche, high-quality experiences that prioritize depth over breadth? Consider joining our community focused on delivering content tailored to the experienced VC. Here’s what you can look forward to as a member:
Exclusive Access & Discounts: Priority access to masterclasses with leading GPs & LPs, available on a first-come, first-served basis.
On-Demand Content: A platform with sessions you can access anytime, anywhere, complete with presentations, templates, and other resources.
Interactive AMAs: Engage directly with top GPs and LPs in exclusive small group sessions — entirely free for community members.
Share this post