Ahead of Slush 2022, we sit down for a conversation that provides everyone who’s joining us in Helsinki with a bit of the backstory and context behind the event you’re about to attend. We'll cover: Why and how Slush was founded How it became a student-run event (and continues to be that to this day) The impact Slush has had on the Finnish ecosystem What lies ahead now that Finland has a prospering ecosystem Why Slush 2022 is the best Slush to date What you should do on Nov 16–18 to make the most...
Nov 09, 2022•1 hr 1 min
We bring you two sides of the German collaborative presentation company Pitch as its Co-founder and CEO Christian Reber is joined by board member and Lakestar partner Stephen Nundy to discuss product-driven companies. Christian and Stephen (as a CTO himself) discuss the various balancing acts companies can struggle with from both founder and board member perspectives: marketing and product team inputs, product-led CEOs and their CTOs, and even the emotional toll of such leadership positions....
Aug 11, 2022•30 min
Jeppe Rindom is the Co-founder and guiding hand of Pleo- The corporate card and expense claim company and the fastest to reach the €1bn valuation in Denmark. Jeppe dives deep with Mikko Mäntylä into the granular details of how to define your problem space, some key ways to create investor FOMO, and what he believes is a counterintuitive company-building truth.
Jul 14, 2022•28 min
Sonali de Rycker is a true icon of European venture. In her fourteen years with Accel, she has made early investments in success stories ranging from Spotify to Avito, Hopin to Kry and Monzo to Sennder. Together with Sonali, we explore everything that more than a decade of backing the greats of European tech has taught her about the formative choices that build legendary tech companies.
Jul 07, 2022•30 min
Cristina Cordova spent a decade leading partnerships at two of the most iconic tech success stories of the past decade – Stripe & Notion – before joining First Round Capital in March of 2022. Today, we discuss tactical company-building lessons that that her decade as an operator taught here.
Jun 07, 2022•24 min
Today, we speak to Des Traynor of Intercom about problem selection, pricing, using principles to scale yourself as a leader, and maintaining alignment as an organisation grows. Des is one of the most succinct communicators in European tech. He didn't disappoint on the episode. Throughout it, you'll come across surprising, unique principles and heuristics that have helped Des propel Intercom into €1B+ business it is today.
May 26, 2022•27 min
Today, we’re speaking to Brian O’Malley, Managing Partner at Forerunner Ventures – the famously consumer-savvy Silicon Valley firm – on everything it takes to build generational outcomes in the consumer space.
Apr 26, 2022•26 min
Guy Podjarny is Co-founder and President of Snyk – the €8B developer-first security platform. Together, we unpack tactical considerations that go into scaling a business – especially one with a product-led, freemium-based go-to-market. Guy started Snyk with his co-founders Assaf and Danny in 2015, spent four years as CEO, and migrated into his current role of President in 2019. Built dually in Tel-Aviv and London, and later in a distributed fashion around the world, Snyk is a platform that enabl...
Apr 21, 2022•28 min
Today on the Soaked by Slush podcast, we're joined by Deena Shakir, Partner at Lux Capital – the notoriously frontier tech focused fund. We cover topics ranging from recognizing iconic entrepreneurs early to Deena’s efforts to write a children’s book about a young girl who starts a company. Deena herself has the most fascinating of backgrounds. She is a first-generation daughter of Iraqi immigrants and she self-funded her way through Harvard and Georgetown. After kicking off her career in media,...
Apr 05, 2022•30 min
When it comes to building legendary engineering and product organizations, there really aren’t many people more experienced than Quentin Clark. Having spent 20 years moving up the ranks at Microsoft, Quentin went on to become CTO at two legendary software companies in SAP and Dropbox. These days, Quentin looks for next-generation products at General Catalyst, and sits on the boards of some exceptional startups like Coda, Commure, Hopin, Minio, and Aviatrix. In this episode, we unpack what Quenti...
Mar 23, 2022•27 min
In just over three years, Alex Bouaziz has scaled Deel to more than €5B in valuation and 700 employees across 60+ different countries. In the episode, we discuss the principles, systems and choices that have put him and Deel on that trajectory of true hypergrowth. This episode marks the first in a new era for the Soaked by Slush podcast, in which we will laser focus on company-building advice, interviewing some of the most iconic founders and investors of our generation to uncover the first prin...
Mar 16, 2022•25 min
Hi folks. Slush 2021 happened, and we had the opportunity to record some fun and interesting episodes on location. This week’s guest is Robert Lacher, an entrepreneur and Founding Partner at the Berlin-based VC Visionaries Club. Robert is a central figure in the European VC-scene, and is an excellent brain to pick about what entrepreneurs should think about when shopping for investors nowadays. Being a recent former entrepreneur, he himself has sought out to build a VC from his perspective of wh...
Dec 16, 2021•38 min
In this episode, recorded live at the Slush 2021 event in Helsinki, William and Isak talked to Gini and Eccie Newton from Karma Kitchen. Gini and Eccie are a pair of British siblings who decided to enter the catering business, and ended up finding a niche that they developed into Karma Kitchen. What was that niche? Buying warehouses and turning them into kitchens for restauranteurs. Oh, and their idea has raised over 300 million dollars to date. It sounds astounding, but the more you hear Gini a...
Dec 09, 2021•30 min
In this episode, we had the pleasure of talking to one of the absolute veterans of venture capital, the Managing General Partner of NEA, Scott Sandell. NEA has been around since the 1970’s, making it one of the oldest VC firms in history. That coupled with Scott’s personal track record and experience makes for a heap of knowledge and insights about investing, venture capital, entrepreneurship, technology and more. We hope you’ll enjoy listening to this as much as we enjoyed making it. Expect to ...
Nov 25, 2021•38 min
How does one rebrand? Should you even rebrand? We were joined by Nicola McClafferty and James Clark, from the establishment formerly known as Draper Esprit. That’s right, Draper Esprit did what many people often advise against and rebranded themselves, to Molten Ventures. In fact, it’s probably not great that I’ve written Draper Esprit more times than Molten Ventures. In this episode we will talk to James and Nicola about the reasons behind the rebranding, the operational checklist for rebrandin...
Nov 18, 2021•47 min
I don’t know about you, but there’s something special and even beautiful about trucking. About the seemingly simpler life on the highway, accompanied by demanding distances and fleeting views. It doesn’t immediately conjure up images of digital platforms and software, but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be a good idea. Sennder is a Berlin-based digital freight logistics company that seeks to provide a platform that connects shippers with a unified fleet of trucks in Europe, and David Nothacke...
Nov 11, 2021•39 min
When Softbank unveiled its first 100 billion dollar Vision Fund in 2017, the world had never seen investment funds of such magnitude. Two years later in 2019, Vision Fund 2 was announced, and in 2021, their combined fair value was estimated to be 154 billion dollars. In this episode, we talked to two representatives from SoftBank, Anthony Doeh and Nahoko Hoshino, about what this journey has been like from their perspective. What are some of the lessons taken from the first to the second fund? Do...
Nov 04, 2021•38 min
Our guest this week, Edgeir Vårdal Aksnes, is reinventing how people buy electricity. I don’t know about you, but I don’t always even remember that I’ve bought electricity, I just know that I pay a bill. To Edgeir and his co-founder Daniel, this sounded like a transaction that was ready to be improved, to fit both the problems and opportunities that our ever-weird modern age has to offer. And not only does Tibber, the company Edgeir co-founded, already provide a much appreciated product to many ...
Oct 28, 2021•39 min
In some previous episodes, we have discussed the state of the European ecosystem and its future trajectory, everywhere from the projections of investors to what’s happening on the aisles of accelerators. In this episode, Philippe Botteri from Accel joins Isak and William to discuss the Accel 2021 Euroscape report, which outlines pretty much all you need to know about the state of the European cloud ecosystem. With Philippe we discussed data on the amount of public and private funding in Europe a...
Oct 21, 2021•38 min
No trace of darkness in this episode, where we talked to Emily Orton, Co-founder & CMO at the cybersecurity success-story Darktrace. Emily has been on board from the beginning, and shared some of her main learnings from the founding days to their recent IPO. In this fast-paced discussion, Emily and William discuss Darktrace’s early days in terms of customer acquisition and brand building, hiring and training people to become future leaders, scaling yourself as a founder in a rapidly growing ...
Oct 14, 2021•40 min
Roxanne Varza not only has one of the most cinematic names of anyone we’ve talked to, but it also carries a boatload of weight in the European startup ecosystem. She is the Director of Station F, the biggest startup campus in the world, located in Paris (France, not Texas). Roxanne has played a central role in building one of the most vibrant startup communities ever, helping founders give their startups a boost. But what is the exact function of such communities? How can they ‘teach’ entreprene...
Oct 07, 2021•36 min
In this episode of the Soaked by Slush podcast, we had the opportunity to host Nicole Quinn, Partner at Lightspeed Ventures. As an investor, Nicole is a master at working with founders, brands, and end-customers. Her impressive background in both investing and entrepreneurship has garnered her a wealth of experience and knowledge – especially when it comes to consumer brands. Nicole’s unique style of working with founders certainly makes her ideas worth a(n intriguing) listen. Expect to le...
Sep 22, 2021•39 min
In this episode, Isak and William talked to two Northzone Partners, Pär-Jörgen Pärson and Wendy Xiao Schadeck. Northzone is an early-stage venture capital fund based in Stockholm and New York, with many impressive companies in their portfolio. Many of these are shaping the almost paradigmatic change that the internet, decentralized protocols, and entrepreneurship are facilitating in these times. Some refer to it as Web 3.0. Listen to this episode to find out what that is and what it means for us...
May 27, 2021•46 min
Europe is a wonderful place, I think we can agree on that. I could spend all day listing reasons why, but then again this is just an episode description. However, some people are claiming that the jury is in regarding the state of European tech. Europe lost the race. Pack your bags. Martin Mignot, Partner at Index Ventures, begs to differ. He has worked with many rising European companies like Revolut, Deliveroo, and BlaBlaCar, and sees a bright future for European innovation. Listen to this epi...
May 20, 2021•49 min
“Purpose” and “impact” are not new concepts anymore; millennials have been growing up with and spreading them around for many years now. They might still seem abstract to many people. Until you meet Hanno Renner, Co-Founder and CEO of Personio, to whom the idea of purpose defines the way a business should be run. In this episode, Isak and Oona talk to Hanno about what purpose actually means in practice; for Personio, their employees and investors, and Hanno himself.Expect to learn: What does pur...
May 11, 2021•42 min
Sofia Nunes is the Co-Founder and Head of Culture at Mambu, which is a combination that isn’t often seen. In fact, some would question whether or not culture is something a Founding team should even be thinking about. Sofia Nunes and Mambu, on the other hand, have put culture in the centre right from the start. In this episode, she shares her insights into why that is, what she thinks company culture is, and how it should be scaled up when your company scales up. Expect to learn: Why should cult...
May 06, 2021•42 min
Let’s talk about growth. Or, I mean, we did already. With Nick Dahl, Spotify’s Growth Strategy Lead and Truecaller’s ex Head of Growth. Nick is an excellent example of how to think about startup growth in a modern and analytical way. In this episode, he gives great insights and frameworks on how to approach growth and make it work for you. We delve into both Nick’s personal stories from Spotify and Truecaller, as well as his insights into how to think about growing your own company, at different...
Apr 29, 2021•44 min
When Founders build a product, they are quite literally creating a new thing in the world. Part of that creative process is – as strange as it may sound – defining what the product actually is . What does it do? Who is it for? What can it be used for? How should it be thought about? This process is often called product positioning, and there are only a few voices in the world who talk about it as astutely and interestingly as April Dunford. In this episode, we delve into the dos and don’ts...
Apr 22, 2021•43 min
The pandemic has arguably accelerated the onset of many future trends, not least for the rise of remote work and daily human interaction through live streams and video conferencing. Phil Libin, the creator of Evernote, has founded a new company called mmhmm (pronounced “mmhmm”), which aspires to add a fresh layer of fun on top of the usefulness of video calls, or what he refers to as “fuseful.” Phil Libin believes that the real world will increasingly fuse with the digital, and both will have to...
Apr 15, 2021•44 min
Sophia Bendz was there when Spotify was taking its first adolescent steps, and left when it had amassed an over 9-digit global user base. Like many other companies of the same size, Spotify is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a brand and an idea that lives in public consciousness. Sophia was the person behind the heart and voice of those ideas, and she joined the Soaked by Slush podcast to share her insights into everything from nuts and bolts marketing strategy to understanding the deeper s...
Apr 08, 2021•38 min
