Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

Feb 20 2025 114 ep. 30 mins 78
Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast artwork

Sifted brings you monthly long-form interviews with the biggest names in European startups. We hear from the founders, operators and investors behind the continent's biggest tech companies to learn what makes them tick and what they've learnt while building their businesses.

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Nord's Tomas Okmanas on why he had to launch an AI startup

Feb 20 2025 30 mins  
Tomas Okmanas is no stranger to scaling a company in a highly competitive space. When he launched NordVPN in 2012, the market was crowded with competitors, but today his company has 15m users, a $3bn valuation and a consistent stream of new features and products in development. Now, as if he wasn't busy enough, Tomas is launching a new startup — Nexos.ai, a platform that helps en

The 101 of angel investing with Jenny Tooth

Jan 23 2025 47 mins  
To kick off 2025, we're talking "business angels": the people who take big bets investing their personal wealth into startups at their earliest stages, and without whom most companies would never get off the ground. So, how do you actually become an angel investor? How much money do you need to commit? How many investments should you be making? And how can the UK and Europe lay the

Replacing fossil fuels: Proxima Fusion’s Francesco Sciortino on his mission to revolutionise clean energy

Dec 12 2024 30 mins  
On 2024's last episode of the Sifted Podcast, Amy is joined by an entrepreneur on a very big mission. Munich-based startup Proxima Fusion is developing a nuclear fusion reactor — a technology which many hope could help solve the climate crisis by producing clean, cheap and abundant energy that could replace a lot of fossil fuel power. But the technical challenges are considerable

Oura Ring founder Petteri Lahtela on fending off acquisition offers from Big Tech

Nov 28 2024 36 mins  
Podcast host and Sifted editor Amy Lewin sits down with Petteri Lahtela, founder of smart wearable company Oura Ring, to discuss how the business has grown to making $500m in revenue, hitting profitability and selling more than 2.5m devices in the process. They discuss the big idea behind Oura, how Petteri has turned down multiple offers from buyers and how the company is well pois

General Catalyst’s Jeannette zu Fürstenberg on how to scale European moonshot ideas

Oct 10 2024 45 mins  
This month we’re joined by Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, managing director at global VC firm General Catalyst and cofounder of La Famiglia VC — a Berlin-based early-stage investor which merged with General Catalyst last year. Jeannette’s investments include companies like HR platform Deel, logistics startup Forto, HR tech unicorn Personio, defence unicorn Helsing and AI unicorn

Mistral, DeepL and Kry investor Avid Larizadeh Duggan on where AI is creating value

Sep 12 2024 45 mins  
Avid Larizadeh Duggan, senior managing director at Ontario-HQed growth-stage investor Teachers’ Venture Growth, is one of Europe’s first operator-turned-VCs. Her career in tech began with stints as a product manager at places like eBay and Skype, and has switched between operational and investing roles ever since. In 2021 she joined TVG, which is part of the Ontario Teachers’

Programmable plants and neurotech devices: Inside the UK government’s £800m “inventions” agency

Aug 22 2024 38 mins  
This month we’re joined by Ilan Gur, CEO of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (or ARIA), a government body set up last year to fund ambitious, breakthrough innovations. Before joining Aria, Gur was a programme director at ARPA-E, the US government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was established to develop new cutting-edge technologies to generate, sto

Climate tech’s growing pains with Pale Blue Dot’s Heidi Lindvall

Jul 25 2024 41 mins  
She’s one of the three founders of Pale Blue Dot, a Malmö-based early-stage climate tech fund which launched in 2020 and backs pre-seed and seed-stage startups reducing and reversing the effects of climate change, in Europe and the US. Pale Blue Dot came along just ahead of the wave of climate tech funds which launched in Europe amid the tech boom. Its portfolio companies includ

DeepL founder Jarek Kutylowski on how his AI startup took on Google Translate — and won

Jun 27 2024 32 mins  
This week on the pod we’re joined by Jarek Kutylowski, founder and CEO of German AI startup DeepL. He’s built a profitable business in a field where he’s had to compete with the likes of Google, by developing cutting edge language translation technology. The company says it now has “a customer network of 100k+ businesses, governments and other organisations worldwide” inc

Index Ventures partner Martin Mignot on where Revolut should list

May 23 2024 47 mins  
Name a big European tech company, and there’s a high chance Martin Mignot, partner at Index Ventures, invested in it. Martin’s portfolio includes some of the continent’s big winners, like car sharing platform BlaBlaCar, digital bank Revolut, digital health provider Kry, HR platform Personio and delivery company Deliveroo — and some of its big failures, including energy supp