Colin Hanna - Competing as a team, Being adaptable, Time at Soundcloud, Getting in to the zone, Meditation, Assessing founders and investments, The partnership between an investor and a founder

Venture Europe: Entrepreneurship | Technology | Venture Capital | Eu/Acc

MP3•Αρχική οθόνη επεισοδίου

1:14:43

Artificial intelligence is evolving at an unprecedented pace—what does that mean for the future of technology, venture capital, business, and even our understanding of ourselves? Award-winning journalist and writer Anil Ananthaswamy joins us for our latest episode to discuss his latest book Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI . Anil helps us explore the journey and many breakthroughs that have propelled machine learning from simple perceptrons to the sophisticated algorithms shaping today’s AI revolution, powering GPT and other models. The discussion aims to demystify some of the underlying math that powers modern machine learning to help everyone grasp this technology impacting our lives, even if your last math class was in high school. Anil walks us through the power of scaling laws, the shift from training to inference optimization, and the debate among AI’s pioneers about the road to AGI—should we be concerned, or are we still missing key pieces of the puzzle? The conversation also delves into AI’s philosophical implications—could understanding how machines learn help us better understand ourselves? And what challenges remain before AI systems can truly operate with agency? If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Sign up for our newsletter at techsurgepodcast.com for exclusive insights and updates on upcoming TechSurge Live Summits. Links: Read Why Machines Learn, Anil’s latest book on the math behind AI https://www.amazon.com/Why-Machines-Learn-Elegant-Behind/dp/0593185749 Learn more about Anil Ananthaswamy’s work and writing https://anilananthaswamy.com/ Watch Anil Ananthaswamy’s TED Talk on AI and intelligence https://www.ted.com/speakers/anil_ananthaswamy Discover the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship that shaped Anil’s AI research https://ksj.mit.edu/ Understand the Perceptron, the foundation of neural networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron Read about the Perceptron Convergence Theorem and its significance https://www.nature.com/articles/323533a0…

πριν περίπου ένα χρόνο 25:28

Colin Hanna - Partner at Balderton Capital.

Balderton is multi-stage venture firm with over twenty years of expertise in aiding European founders from the initial seed stage through to IPO. According to Dealroom they have invested in over 30 companies valued at over a billion euros - among them Revolut, Sinch and Waye among many others.

Recently they’ve raised $1.3 billion, divided into a $615 million early-stage fund and a $685 million growth fund for more mature companies. The capital will be used to support emerging technology companies across Europe.

At Balderton, Colin invests in purpose-driven, product-focused founders spanning verticals including Cloud, Consumer, Crypto, and Fintech.

He began his career at Goldman Sachs in New York where he focused on raising capital for Asian internet companies, including Tencent, Nexon, and Tarena among others.

During this episode we discuss about his competitive swimming period from Princeton, the open-source movement and the crypto market.

Enjoy!

88 επεισόδια

#Entrepreneur #Business #Calin Fabri | Entrepreneur | Investor | Founder Coach

Colin Hanna - Competing as a team, Being adaptable, Time at Soundcloud, Getting in to the zone, Meditation, Assessing founders and investments, The partnership between an investor and a founder

Venture Europe: Entrepreneurship | Technology | Venture Capital | Eu/Acc

published πριν περίπου ένα χρόνο

Μοίρασέ το

MP3•Αρχική οθόνη επεισοδίου

Colin Hanna - Partner at Balderton Capital.

At Balderton, Colin invests in purpose-driven, product-focused founders spanning verticals including Cloud, Consumer, Crypto, and Fintech.

He began his career at Goldman Sachs in New York where he focused on raising capital for Asian internet companies, including Tencent, Nexon, and Tarena among others.

During this episode we discuss about his competitive swimming period from Princeton, the open-source movement and the crypto market.

Enjoy!

88 επεισόδια

#Entrepreneur #Business #Calin Fabri | Entrepreneur | Investor | Founder Coach

Όλα τα επεισόδια

1
Vadim Fedotov - Hyper-personalised Supplements, Why Cristiano Ronaldo started using it in 2022 and then invested, Building a high-preforming team, The future of personalised wellness 36:51

πριν 6 μέρες36:51

36:51

Vadim Fedotov, co-founder and CEO of Bioniq . Having raised a total amount of over $30M with backers like HV Capital and Cristiano Ronaldo - Bioniq is changing the world of personalized health with a data-driven wellness platform that’s redefining how we approach our health. From playing professional basketball to leading one of the fastest-growing e-commerce giants, Groupon, across 48 countries, Vadim has never shied away from a challenge. In this episode, we’re going to explore Vadim’s journey—from the discipline of sports to the high-stakes world of business, his leadership philosophy, and how he’s leveraging technology to change the future of health optimization. Get ready for an inspiring conversation packed with insights, resilience, and a glimpse into the future of wellness. Enjoy!…

1
Machines of Loving Grace - Essay review of Dario's Amodei, CEO of Anthropic 17:37

πριν 10 μέρες17:37

17:37

Dario Amodei is the CEO of Anthropic. Valued at $60B, the company focuses on AI research and products that put safety at the frontier and it is the company behind Claude. Dario Amodei's essay, "Machines of Loving Grace," explores the potential positive impacts of advanced AI, despite the risks. He believes AI's upside is vastly underestimated and details how it could revolutionize biology, neuroscience, economic development, peace, and the nature of work. Amodei anticipates AI accelerating progress in healthcare, mental health, poverty reduction, and governance while improving the baseline of human experience. He acknowledges challenges like inequality, societal constraints, and the potential displacement of human labor, but maintains a hopeful outlook. The author envisions a future where AI could lead to unprecedented economic growth, the prevention of most diseases, and a strengthening of liberal democracy. He advocates for proactive efforts to ensure AI benefits are widely accessible. Link to essay: https://darioamodei.com/machines-of-loving-grace…

1
Max Junestrand - Raising $35M in 6 months, Mapping pain points and using Aha! moments, Choosing Benchmark as a lead investor, Empowering Lawyers 31:08

πριν 11 μέρες31:08

31:08

Max Junestrand - CEO and co-founder of Legora . They recently raised $35M from investors including Benchmark and Redpoint to empower exceptional lawyers everywhere through collaborative AI. With a team of engineers and lawyers from Google, Microsoft, McKinsey, and top law firms, Legora curently serves several thousands users across 200 clients in 15 countries, including some of the world's largest and most prestigious law firms. The team has scaled from 10 to 60 in 9 months – and they have opened up new offices in London and NYC to complement the HQ in Stockholm. During this episode we discuss how they initially got rejected by YC and how they made their way back to get accepted, how they cleverly mapped the pain points and potential aha moments for specific roles of their customer segment and why they chose Benchmark as a lead investor. Enjoy!…

1
Daniel Keiper-Knorr - Speed and direction, Gap and the growth stages, Working with weird and exceptional people, The need for specialisation when scaling and the magic slide 24:45

πριν 12 μέρες24:45

24:45

Daniel Keiper-Knorr - one of the co-founders and Managing partners at SpeedInvest , a leading European early stage VC. Daniel role is capital formation, capital markets and investor relations. Starting in 2011 as an angel fund, today Speedinvest is a 1B euro European powerhouse investing in startups at the earliest phases. With 5 specialized investment teams with 40+ investment managers they offer founders a deep understanding of their space and a broad network in their target industries. Some of their flagship investments include wefox, schüttflix, goStudent, coachhub and primer. During this episode we discuss why every deck has a magic slide, why we don’t have more growth funds in Europe and the mechanics that prevent VCs from innovating. Enjoy!…

1
How I Learned to Let My Workers Lead - A review about how Ralph Stayer changed the way he lead to empower workers and improve efficiency 26:27

πριν 19 μέρες26:27

26:27

Ralph Stayer, CEO of Johnsonville Sausage, recounts his journey of transforming the company by empowering employees and distributing decision-making. Initially, Stayer felt burdened by the need to control every aspect of the business, leading to disengaged employees and missed opportunities. He recognized the need to shift from an authoritarian style to one where employees embraced responsibility. Stayer describes the challenges of implementing changes to the systems and structure within the company so that teams took over the function of many management roles. This included handing over quality control, personnel, and even strategic decisions to teams of workers, resulting in improved performance and a more engaged workforce. Stayer's experience highlights the importance of fostering a culture of learning, shared responsibility, and continuous improvement, a culture that ultimately redefined his role within the company. Link to essay: https://hbr.org/1990/11/how-i-learned-to-let-my-workers-lead…

1
Casper Heningsen - Agentic AI for consumer research, Snuggle with the customer to reach $10M ARR, The need for domain mastery, Focus on the inputs and the outcome will follow 39:55

πριν 28 μέρες39:55

39:55

Casper Henningsen - co-founder and CEO of GetWhy - The Agentic AI for Consumer Research. At GetWhy they obsess over finding the why and provide end-to-end consumer research for marketing and insights teams. They unlock empathy at scale to drive smarter, more precise decisions and transform insights from a bottleneck into an enterprise capability. They recently raised $34M dollars Series A, one of the biggest series A in the Nordics to unlock growth. During this episode we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the current hype in AI, how they almost ran out of money while figuring out what data set to focus on and why you should design your org chart by reverse engineering from customer problems. Enjoy!…

1
James Regan - Raising $35M to build Networks of AI chips with Photonic Integrated Circuits, Training LLMs 100x faster while reducing AI energy consumption, AI electricity demands by 2030 33:25

πριν 6 weeks33:25

33:25

James Regan, founder and CEO of Oriole Networks . Oriole Networks solves AI’s biggest challenges – speed, latency and sustainability. They use light, via advanced photonics technology, to create networks of AI chips and combine their processing power. With this novel approach, LLMs can be trained up to a 100x faster, whilst consuming a fraction of power, allowing algorithms to run with much lower latency. Oriole’s technology dramatically reduces the energy consumption of AI data centres which is putting a huge strain on energy grids and it is predicted to account for 15-25% of new electricity demand by 2030. They have recently raised a $22M Series A round led by Plural to accelerate growth, expanding the team and engaging with high-volume suppliers. During this episode we discuss about how photonics work, James background and the inefficiencies in the current AI data centers. Enjoy!…

1
John Rush - $400k ARR with 6 projects while bootstrapping, Going out of cash with a VC-backed startup and pivoting, Moving to a tax friendly country, The sovereign individual 44:04

πριν 7 weeks44:04

44:04

John Rush - Bootstrapper of more than 20 projects with 6 of them with $400k ARR and previously a co-founder and CTO of the VC-backed company Filmgrail. After following the investor advice to raise a Series A and expand the market, they almost ran out of cash and went bankrupt. They had to give up the unicorn dream and pivot into a regular midsize profitable business. After this learning John is a strong advocate of bootstrapping having currently more than 20 projects while enjoying more free time for his hobbies and family. You can check his projects at johnrush.me In this episode we discuss why not all ideas should raise venture capital, why he moved from Norway to Turkey and the 3 years tax free visa program and why Europe needs more bootstrappers. Enjoy!…

1
Thomas von der Ohe - Bridging the gap to full autonomy, Quitting a cushy job to start a startup, Embodied learning, The market opportunities in the more than $1T self-driving car industry 40:53

πριν 11 weeks40:53

40:53

Vay is one of Europe’s best funded startups in the mobility industry with almost $150M raised to date, from top tier investors like Atomico, Creandum and Kinnevik among others and Thomas the co-founder and CEO is here with us today, tuning in from Las Vegas to tell us more about his journey. Vay pursues a different approach to the likes of Waymo, which is “remote driving”. Remote driving is the most affordable door-to-door mobility service and you will learn why and how it works during the episode. Prior to founding Vay, Thomas spent six years in Silicon Valley, where he launched Zoox's first self-driving vehicle on public streets. Zoox was bought in 2020 by Amazon for $1.2B according to Dealroom. Thomas was also part of launching Amazon's first Echo in leading Technical Program Manager positions. During this episode we discuss the advantages of remote driving when it comes to safety, the market opportunities in the more than $1T driverless car industry, and why Elon Musk has announced to also focus on remote driving at Tesla pointing to the benefits of embodied learning. Enjoy!…

1
Anton Osika - Idea to app in seconds, The last piece of software, The YC hype, How to have a successful fundraise, Machine intelligence becomes more capable than human intelligence 29:20

πριν 12 weeks29:20

29:20

Anton Osika - co-founder and CEO of Lovable . With Lovable you can go from an Idea to app in seconds. It functions like your superhuman full stack engineer. Anton has a remarkable story in the startup world. He was the a founding member of several multimillion dollar startups. One, Sana Labs that recently raised $55m lead by NEA bringing the total raise to ~$130m, he was also a founding engineer of Depict which raised ~$20m and now his latest venture - Lovable where they raised ~$7m pre-seed round in October this year. During this episode we discuss about why now we are in the most transformational years in human history where machine intelligence become more capable than human intelligence, how you can get motivated when someone argues against you and how to run a successful fundraise. Enjoy…

1
Walter Ballheimer - Sending satellites into space, The CubeSats revolution, Different types of satellites, The space-tech market 32:27

πριν 14 weeks32:27

32:27

Walter Ballheimer - founder and CEO of ⁠Reflex Aerospace⁠ . The first venture backed satellite manufacturer in Europe. They have raised ~15m Euros to design and build mass customised satellites to send into space. Prior to founding Reflex Space he founded Germany’s first CubeSat Start-Up – “German Orbital Systems”. To date, the company has built and launched more than eleven satellites. During this episode we discuss about the different types of satellites, the space tech market and and the split on value capture between upstream and downstream. Enjoy!…

1
Christian Vollmann - Building the first of a kind green methanol plant, Learnings from building and selling multiple digital businesses and the importance of Mental Health for entrepreneurs 39:47

πριν 17 weeks39:47

39:47

Christian Vollmann - founder and CEO of ⁠Carbon One⁠ . Founded in 2022 they have raised approximately $14M to date with the mission to lower the green premium on green methanol and thus reduce the world’s dependency on oil, gas and coal. Their aim is to establish circular carbon economies in three hard-to-abate industries: container shipping, aviation and chemical production. Prior to founding Carbon One, Christian has built, sold and IPO-ed multiple business. First one, called iLove for his mentor ⁠Oliver Samwer⁠ where he built the business from scratch, up to Eur 25M Revenue while forgetting to get some equity in the business, ouch The second one MyVideo, which was one of the leading video platforms back then in Germany and France that he sold to ProSieben The third one was eDarling. They built a matchmaking business running 15 brands in 20 countries having revenue in 12 different currencies. They listed that on the New York stock exchange. And the forth one ⁠nebenan.de⁠ the largest social network for neighbours in Germany with around 3m active users. Such a hustler! During this episode we discuss about his learnings in building multiple consumer businesses, the motivation to start Carbon One and the mental struggles that an entrepreneur is usually faced with and some suggestions on how to deal with it. Enjoy!…

1
Colin Hanna - Competing as a team, Being adaptable, Time at Soundcloud, Getting in to the zone, Meditation, Assessing founders and investments, The partnership between an investor and a founder 25:28

πριν 19 weeks25:28

25:28

Colin Hanna - Partner at Balderton Capital . Balderton is multi-stage venture firm with over twenty years of expertise in aiding European founders from the initial seed stage through to IPO. According to Dealroom they have invested in over 30 companies valued at over a billion euros - among them Revolut, Sinch and Waye among many others. Recently they’ve raised $1.3 billion, divided into a $615 million early-stage fund and a $685 million growth fund for more mature companies. The capital will be used to support emerging technology companies across Europe. At Balderton, Colin invests in purpose-driven, product-focused founders spanning verticals including Cloud, Consumer, Crypto, and Fintech. He began his career at Goldman Sachs in New York where he focused on raising capital for Asian internet companies, including Tencent, Nexon, and Tarena among others. During this episode we discuss about his competitive swimming period from Princeton, the open-source movement and the crypto market. Enjoy!…

1
George Henry - Most successful investor in unicorns at seed stage, Learning velocity, Having a compelling vision, Taking more risks 34:33

πριν 21 weeks34:33

34:33

George Henry - General Partner at LocalGlobe - the seed fund which is according to Dealroom figures, EMEA’s most successful investor in unicorns at seed stage. LocalGlobe invests across Europe and some of its notable investments include Wise, Improbable, Motorway, Tide and Automata. George himself focuses on finding the next generation of industry-transforming businesses to serve two over-looked sectors: the creative economy and SMEs. His investments range across several sectors and include some of Europe’s fastest growing companies - Qogita, Rekki, Sorare, Taster and Travelperk. During this episode we discuss about learning velocity, the importance of having a compelling vision and taking risk. Enjoy!…

1
Lukas Saari - AI copilot for healthcare practitioners, Raising $10M seed round in 8 months, The administrative burden and the future of Healthcare 35:09

πριν 23 weeks35:09