EU-Startups Podcast

Roundtable episode

Key points:

What if technology could give blind people the freedom of a guide dog - without the waitlists, the cost, or the care requirements? In this episode, we sit down with Cornel Amariei, CEO and founder of .lumen, the Romanian startup building smart glasses that help blind and visually impaired people navigate the world independently. Cornel's story starts at home. Born into a family where both parents live with locomotor disabilities and his sister with a mental disability, he saw firsthand how much technology can change a life - and how little of it actually exists for people with disabilities. He...

In this episode, we sit down with Paul Bonnet, General Partner at 20VC, the London-based venture capital firm founded by Harry Stebbings that sprung from the extremely popular 20VC podcast. We start with Paul's path into venture - from equity capital markets and equity research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, through five years at DST Global, to joining 20VC in 2024. We explore how his days as an investor at DST Global shaped the way he thinks about investing today, and what drew him to a firm as unusual as 20VC, where the media platform famously came before the fund. ...

This is a special two-part addition, building on the back of the A5X conference series we published last week. Since the EU-Startups team could only stay for part of the event, we missed the Singapore Defence Tech Hackathon (SDTH) in person - so we're bringing it to you in a slightly different format. Instead of our usual deep-dive conversations, we sat down with the winners to hear how they built their projects and where they're heading next. The hackathon brought together teams assessed by a panel of senior leaders from the Singapore Armed Forces, Singapore's defence science and technology...

This is a special two-part addition, building on the back of the A5X conference series we published last week. Since the EU-Startups team could only stay for part of the event, we missed the Singapore Defence Tech Hackathon in person - so we're bringing it to you in a slightly different format. Instead of our usual deep-dive conversations, we sat down with the winners to hear how they built their projects and where they're heading next. The hackathon brought together teams assessed by a panel of senior leaders from the Singapore Armed Forces, Singapore's defence science and technology community...

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other. In this conversation, we sit down with Gary Ang, Professor of Practice in Defence Innovation & Applications at NUS Enterprise and a senior representative of the Strategic & Defence Technology horizontal, to explore dual-use innovation and the growing Europe–Singapore DefenceTech partnership. Having worked across de...

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other. In this conversation, we sit down with Professor Helmut Schönenberger, co-founder and CEO of UnternehmerTUM and VP Entrepreneurship at the Technical University of Munich, to explore what Europe and Singapore can learn from each other on university venture building and DeepTech talent. U...

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other. In this conversation, we sit down with Professor Benjamin Tee, Vice President (Ecosystem Building) at NUSX, for a look inside the university's lab-to-market engine and NUS's push to build globally competitive DeepTech spin-outs. Prof. Tee has lived both sides of this world: as...

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other. In this conversation, we sit down with Dr. Babak Parviz, DeepTech inventor and entrepreneur, best known as one of the founders of Google Glass and later as a leader of major innovation initiatives at Amazon. Today he leads NewDays.ai, a startup applying...

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other. In this conversation, we sit down with Dr. Orna Berry, Technical Director at Google Cloud and former Chief Scientist of Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade, whose career spans national R&D policy, venture capital, cybersecurity, cloud and AI. We explore the themes...

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other. In this conversation, we sit down with Dr. Tan Sian Wee, Senior Vice President (Innovation & Enterprise) at the National University of Singapore, to explore the NUSX story - from the A5X vision and its billion-dollar ambitions to Singapore's growing role as a...

Join us for a conversation with Andreas Flodström, co-founder and chairman of Varangians, as we explore the journey that led him from building the Swedish-Ukrainian tech ecosystem Beetroot to investing in Ukraine’s DefenceTech sector. Varangians is a DefenceTech-focused investment fund backing Ukrainian technologies developed and tested in demanding frontline conditions. With more than €10 million raised, the fund has invested in companies including Norda Dynamics, Himera and Sine Engineering, working across autonomous UAV systems, secure communications and technologies for contested environments. In this interview, Andreas reflects on more than a decade of building companies in Ukraine and how that exper...

Join us for a conversation with Patrick Ryan, co-founder of Odin, as we explore the journey that led him from consumer goods and corporate venture capital to launching a platform that’s transforming how investment firms operate. Odin, often described as "Shopify for Venture Capital," enables anyone, anywhere, to launch and run a private investment firm online - handling everything from legal structuring and investor onboarding to KYC/AML, payments, and reporting. In this interview, Patrick dives into the inspiration behind Odin, the inefficiencies he identified in traditional investing, and how the platform is empowering a new wave of fund ma...

Join us for an interview with Momchil Sabev, Director of the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA), as we explore the critical role of public institutions in shaping Europe’s startup and innovation landscape. With a career that bridges entrepreneurship, private sector consulting, and high-level EU leadership, Momchil shares how his diverse experiences inform his approach to supporting ambitious founders and driving systemic change across the continent. This conversation shines a spotlight on EISMEA’s often-unsung but vital work in strengthening Europe’s innovation ecosystem. We delve into the biggest hurdles startups face when scaling internationally, the EIC’s growin...

Join us for a conversation with Oana Jinga, co-founder and Chief Commercial & Product Officer at Dexory, an innovator in warehouse robotics and intelligence. In this interview, Oana shares her journey from leading strategic partnerships at Google and Telefónica to co-founding a company that bridges the gap between cutting-edge robotics and practical, scalable solutions for the logistics industry. Oana shares the evolution of Dexory - from its early days as BotsAndUs to its current status as a European scale-up with nearly €300 million in funding, including a $165 million raise in 2025. She discusses the challenges of transitioning from DeepTech innovation to global sca...

Karin Fleck, CEO and founder of Vienna Textile Lab

Key Points

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European...

Join us for an interview with Angela Ivanova, the co-founder and CEO of LAM’ON Compostable Films, a Bulgarian company at the forefront of sustainable packaging solutions. Angela shares her journey of addressing one of the most pressing environmental challenges: the 1.2 million metric tons of laminated paper wasted annually. LAM’ON has developed bio-based, compostable laminating films and packaging foils that seamlessly integrate with paper recycling, offering a circular economy solution without compromising quality. In this discussion, Angela dives into the challenges of building LAM’ON from the ground up. She reflects on the gender gap in entrepreneurship, the moments that l...

In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Nikita Miller, Chief Product Officer at Perk, formerly TravelPerk, to discuss the company’s evolution into an AI-native travel and spend management platform and its global ambitions. Nikita joined Perk in September 2025 as the Barcelona-founded scale-up was expanding beyond travel into spend and expense management, integrating acquisitions such as Yokoy, and accelerating its growth in the US. Central to Perk’s strategy is eliminating what Nikita calls “shadow work”: repetitive tasks such as reconciling receipts, managing invoices, booking travel and navigating company policies. By automating these processes, Perk aims to give employees more tim...

Interview with Jekaterina Romanova, founder & CEO of PrintyMed For today’s podcast, produced in association with the Women TechEU scheme, we sit down with Jekaterina Romanova, CEO and co-founder of Latvian biotech startup PrintyMed, to discuss biomimetic spider silk, its medical potential, and the challenges of scaling deep-tech innovation in Europe. The Women TechEU scheme is an EU-funded project supporting women leading deep tech startup companies from Europe. As part of the consortium team implementing the programme, our mission is to foster inclusive innovation by supporting women-led startups, including under-represented deep tech sectors and European regions.  We believe that diversity dri...

Interview with Tom Wehmeier, Partner and Head of Intelligence at Atomico For today's podcast we sit down with Tom Wehmeier, Partner and Head of Intelligence at Atomico, to discuss European technology, the firm’s investment philosophy, and the influential State of European Tech report. Tom reflects on his unconventional route into venture capital. Before joining Atomico, he worked in telecommunications, witnessing shifts such as the emergence of 3G and internet-based calling. This taught him to recognise hype cycles, adopt a patient long-term view, and understand why established companies often struggle to respond to disruption. He explains that breakthrough technologies are fr...

Interview with Lena Hackelöer, founder & CEO at Brite Payments In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Lena Hackelöer, founder & CEO at Brite Payments, to explore the company’s growth, the future of European payments, and the challenges facing fintech founders. Lena shares how Brite has evolved from a Swedish startup founded in 2019 into a leading pay-by-bank provider operating across 27 European markets. Following its Series A round, the company expanded into Germany and France. She reflects on how her early career shaped her entrepreneurial approach. Her experience at Klarna during its hypergrowth phase taught her how to build and...

In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Tim Schumacher, the visionary co-founder of saas.group and General Partner at World Fund, to explore the journey, philosophy, and future of his founder-friendly SaaS acquisition platform and his ClimateTech investments. Tim shares how saas.group evolved from its first acquisition, DeployBot, to a thriving ecosystem of 18 independent SaaS brands spanning 30 countries. He dives deep into the core values that drive saas.group’s success: a commitment to preserving the bootstrapper mindset, fostering cultural alignment, and ensuring every acquisition is tailored to the founder’s personal and professional goals. Tim also reflects on t...

Join us for a deep dive with Job van der Voort, CEO and co-founder of Remote, as he explores the evolution of work, the challenges of global employment, and the principles behind scaling remote-first teams. From his transition from neuroscientist to startup leader, to the lessons learned at GitLab and Remote, Job shares insights on mindset shifts, cultural nuances, and the future of distributed work. Job discusses the practical challenges of building a globally distributed team, the importance of asynchronous communication, and why treating all employees as equals - regardless of location - is key to fostering a cohesive culture. ...

Jos White, co-founder of Notion Capital

Key Points

Join us for a conversation with Tarek Müller, co-founder and co-CEO of ABOUT YOU, a leading European fashion and lifestyle e-commerce platform and Hamburg’s first unicorn. Tarek shares his journey from building websites at 13 to scaling one of Europe’s fastest-growing tech companies, and dives deep into the future of digital commerce, AI, and sustainable retail - and his close brush with a scammer! In this interview, Tarek reflects on his entrepreneurial roots, the evolution of ABOUT YOU, and the strategic shifts shaping e-commerce today. He also explores the role of AI, the balance between personalisation and sustainability, and h...

Interview with Julian Ellis Brown, CEO & co-founder of Ponda

**Key Points

In this exclusive interview, Janne Hietala, CEO of Kelluu, discusses how his company is pioneering the use of autonomous, hydrogen-powered airships to revolutionise aerial monitoring. Unlike traditional drones or satellites, Kelluu’s fleet delivers persistent, high-accuracy environmental data in extreme conditions - from Arctic temperatures to GPS-denied environments. Learn how these near-silent, emission-free platforms are reshaping intelligence, surveillance, and environmental monitoring for defence, infrastructure, and beyond. From its humble beginnings in a Finnish farm shed to its recent €15 million Series A funding, Kelluu has proven its platform in real-world conditions, including NATO exercises and Arctic operations. The company’s autonomous airshi...

Join us for a deep dive with Frédéric Mazzella, founder of BlaBlaCar, as he reflects on the origins of the world’s leading carpooling platform and shares insights on the future of shared mobility, sustainability, and entrepreneurship in Europe. From a personal Christmas trip that sparked a global movement to redefining how we travel, Frédéric discusses the vision, challenges, and impact of BlaBlaCar - and how it’s shaping the way we think about transportation, community, and innovation. In this interview, Frédéric explores the balance between practicality and purpose, the role of technology in fostering...

Join us for a deep-dive conversation with Dr Emil Kendziorra, CEO of Tomorrow.bio, as we explore the cutting edge of cryopreservation and medical biostasis. Dr Kendziorra, who began his career in cancer research with a summa cum laude degree from the University of Göttingen, shares his remarkable journey from academic science to entrepreneurship, and ultimately to founding Tomorrow.bio - a company he considers his life’s work. In this interview, he discusses the motivations behind his pivot from traditional longevity research to the frontier of cryomedicine, the operational and emotional lessons learned from cryopreserving over 20 human patients and...

Interview with Tyler Edwards, Founder & CEO of Overmind In this edition of the EU-Startups Podcast we had a cht with Tyler Edwards, the ex-MI6 founder who set out to secure AI Agents.

Join us for an in-depth conversation with Pieterjan Bouten, Founding and Managing Partner at Entourage, as he reflects on his journey from co-founding In the Pocket and scaling Showpad to $100M ARR, to now building and funding the next generation of B2B SaaS companies through Entourage Studio and Entourage Capital. Pieterjan also shares insights on his role as an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Vlerick Entrepreneurship Academy and the vision behind Wintercircus, a hub for entrepreneurs, researchers, and digital creatives. Pieterjan dives into the challenges and triumphs of scaling a global SaaS company, the evolution of his perspective as...

In this interview, Ahti Heinla - co-founder, CEO, and CTO of Starship Technologies and one of the original engineers behind Skype - shares his journey from a young programmer in Estonia to leading one of the world’s most advanced autonomous delivery companies. Ahti reflects on how his early exposure to coding shaped his mindset, and the lessons he carried from building Skype into scaling Starship. He dives into why last-mile delivery became the problem he wanted to solve, and how autonomous robots are changing the way goods move through cities. The conversation explores the human side of automation - ad...

What does the future of travel really look like - and how is AI reshaping the way we explore the world? In this episode, we sit down with Patrick Andrae, co-founder and CEO of HomeToGo, to unpack the evolution of TravelTech - from early marketplace bets to today’s AI-powered platforms. Founded in 2014 in Berlin, HomeToGo has grown into Europe’s leading vacation rental group, with over 20 million listings worldwide and a public listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Patrick shares the original insight behind the company, how traveler behavior has shifted over the past decade, and what it takes to s...

Interview with Founder & CEO Jordi Romero This interview features Jordi Romero, Founder and CEO of Factorial, offering an in-depth look at the evolution of one of Europe’s leading HRTech scaleups. Based in Barcelona, Romero shares his journey from engineer to entrepreneur, reflecting on his early experience at Redbooth and the founding of Factorial in 2016. The conversation explores how Factorial has grown into a global business software platform serving thousands of companies across more than 90 countries. Romero discusses the company’s mission to eliminate manual administrative work through automation, enabling organisations to focus more on people and decision-making. With increasing inve...

Interview with Ropa Popat, Founder & Managing Partner at Arāya Ventures In this episode, Rupa Popat, founder of Arāya Ventures, shares her vision for redefining early-stage venture capital. Rupa discusses the persistent under-allocation of capital to diverse founders, highlighting that female-led teams in the UK still receive less than 1% of VC funding - even though data shows diverse teams consistently outperform. Rupa also dives into the world of AI investing, focusing on workflow-native, human-centred AI rather than headline models. She shares her perspective on the UK’s positioning as a European AI hub, the growing opportunities in Health x AI...

Interview with Founder and CEO of n8n, Jan Oberhauser In this interview, Jan Oberhauser, Founder and CEO of n8n, talks about how a personal frustration with repetitive coding led him to build one of Europe’s best-known workflow automation platforms. From the early pain point of constantly rewriting the same code to creating a fair-code automation tool used by developers and enterprises worldwide, Jan shares the thinking behind n8n and the principles that shaped it from day one. Jan explains the meaning behind the company’s unusual name, why openness and community-driven technology matter, and how flexibility, self...

Interview with the CEO & co-founder of Neuroelectrics, Ana Maiques This episode features Ana Maiques, CEO and co-founder of Neuroelectrics, a Barcelona-based neurotechnology company pioneering non-invasive brain stimulation for neurological and psychiatric conditions. Founded in 2011 as a spin-off from Starlab, Neuroelectrics has grown into a global digital brain health company operating in over 74 countries, with a presence in both Barcelona and Boston since 2014. Their tech enables clinicians to both read and influence brain activity in real time, offering applications in epilepsy, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and anxiety disorders. The conversation explores how the neurotechnology landscape has evolved over the...

Interview with Refurbed founder Kilian Kaminski In this interview, we speak with Philipp Heltewig, Refurbed founder Kilian Kaminski. The Austrian scale-up is turning e-waste into Millions.

Interview with GM of NiCE Cognigy Philipp Heltewig In this interview, we speak with Philipp Heltewig, Chief AI Officer at NiCE and General Manager of NiCE Cognigy, about the journey of building Cognigy from a startup in 2016 to a $1 billion acquisition by NiCE Ltd. in 2025. Philipp reflects on the early frustrations that inspired the company, the rapid evolution of enterprise AI adoption, and how customer service is shifting from chatbots to agentic AI systems capable of acting autonomously within enterprise workflows. Cognigy was founded in 2016 by Philipp Heltewig, Sascha Poggemann, and Benjamin Mayr with the goal of transforming how enterprises...

Interview with Enrico Giacomelli, the Founder of Namirial In this interview, Enrico Giacomelli, Founder and Chairman of Namirial, reflects on building one of Europe’s leading Digital Transaction Management and Qualified Trust Service Provider (QTSP) groups - from a small Italian software house founded in 1991 to a pan-European digital trust leader valued at approximately €1.1 billion. Founded in 2000 in Senigallia, Namirial now operates in 90+ countries, employs over 1,300 people, and serves enterprises, SMEs and public administrations across Europe, Latin America and Asia. In 2020, Ambienta acquired a majority stake, accelerating international expansion. In July 2025, Bain Capital acquired a majority stake. Later that year, Nami...