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!

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!

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!

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!

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

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!

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.

1. 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
2. The second one MyVideo, which was one of the leading video platforms back then in Germany and France that he sold to ProSieben
3. 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.
4. 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!

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!