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’ Pension Plan, one of the world’s biggest pension funds.

Its investments include German AI translation company DeepL, German battery startup Instagrid, Swedish healthtech unicorn Kry, British chip scaleup Graphcore and French health insurance unicorn Alan. 

She sat down with Sifted editor Amy Lewin to discuss what’s top of tech companies’ minds at the moment, and why investors and board members without operational experience don’t always quite “get it”.

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, store and use energy. He’s also been a founder — starting two companies in Silicon Valley

We discuss what technologies he’s most excited about today, covering topics from neuroscience to “programmable plants” to fight climate change.

What do Lidl, Auchan, Sephora and Flink have in common? They’re all customers of RELEX Solutions, one of Finland’s four private tech companies.

RELEX makes supply-chain and retail-planning software — which might sound boring, but it's extremely important when you consider how much inventory, especially food, is wasted due to poor planning.

Sifted sat down with cofounder Johanna Småros to talk about the company’s decades-long journey from academia to commercialisation, just how many millions of kilos of waste annually the company is helping to avoid and why RELEX’s engineers are tired of hearing about AI. 

This week, in Eleanor's absence, we were joined by a special guest host… journalist-turned-Zapp VP of Strategy, Steve O’Hear! We discuss The Family, France’s most famous incubator whose cofounder has been accused of embezzlement. We also chat to journalist Tim Smith about his reporting on the toxic workplace allegations made against delivery startup Glovo. Finally, we’re discussing journalists’ relationships with tech companies — and one very explosive tweet that started the conversation.

This week, we’re talking about Getir, the speedy delivery company which has raised a massive $768m Series E round at a $11.8bn valuation. We ask, is the company really worth all that cash? We’re also speaking to reporter Mimi Billing about social shopping — or shopping-turned-social game — and the Finnish startup trying to bring the Chinese craze to Europe. Finally, we’re discussing our latest coverage on the war in Ukraine, including how Russian founders are reacting.

An episode with no audio issues? It’s true! This week, we’re discussing startups hiring ethical advisory boards — will it help them avoid Big Tech’s big mistakes? We’ll also be speaking to reporter Freya Pratty about how Brexit is squashing the UK’s edible bug industry, and discussing Sifted's most controversial story of the week.

We're back with episode 2 of the new season of The Sifted Podcast. Cursed by the audio gods, this was a second, DIY attempt at recording the podcast after a studio malfunction, so we apologise for the slightly suboptimal quality this episode (next time will be better, we promise). We didn't want to stop that from sharing some of what's been going on at Sifted this week, including discussion of how our women-led newsroom thinks about diversity, the European startups trying to end Europe's reliance on Russian fossil fuels, and human stories from the tech community in Ukraine.

We’re back with season two — but we now look a bit different. Each week, Sifted editor Amy Lewin and deputy editor Eleanor Warnock will bring you the latest news coming from Europe’s tech and startup sector. In this first episode, we’ll be discussing the events unfolding in Ukraine and how they’re affecting local businesses and the people that work for them. We’ll hear from Ivan Babichuk, VP engineering of tech company EduNav, based in the western Ukrainian town of Lviv, and our journalists who've been looking into how Europe's tech community are responding to the crisis. 

For years, squeamish — and typically male — VCs have avoided the topic of women’s sexual health. But a new wave of women-led audio erotica startups are here leading a quiet revolution in the world of pleasure and sexual wellbeing. In episode 4, we’ll hear from Sifted’s Germany correspondent Miriam Partington, Julie Lepique, cofounder and CEO of sensual audio platform Femtasy, and Andrea Oliver Garcia, founder of audio intimate wellbeing startup Emjoy. We’ll also hear from an audio advertising startup founder who will try to convince 5-year-old Eliza to invest in his business in the latest edition of Baby Shark Tank.

Europe’s millennials are starting to get rich — with many cashing in on the continent’s fast-growing tech sector — and entrepreneurs are seeing dollar signs. In episode 3, we take you on a journey into the minds of the next generation of high-net-worth individual, and hear what they want from a digital bank. Think Coutts, oak-panelled walls, cigar smoking financiers, Switzerland — but all in one handy app on your phone. We’ll also hear from a less-than-impressed Eliza in Baby Shark Tank, who grills a Swiss digital private bank founder on how he’s really going to make all her dreams come true.

Psychedelics aren’t only about getting high, and a new wave of startups is here that’s all about using natural and synthetic drugs to tackle the globe’s growing mental health crisis. In episode two, we’ll speak to Sifted Iberian correspondent Tim Smith about how psychedelics got from Ancient Greece to the VC boardroom. We'll also hear from a founder who took his employees off on a team-building psychedelic retreat that almost went very, very wrong. Finally, 5-year-old Eliza will grill a magic mushroom startup CEO in our second episode of Baby Shark Tank.

Oranmore is just like any other sleepy Irish town — except for the fact that everything is delivered by futuristic drones. During lockdown, Oranmore became the testing bed for Manna Aero, a drone delivery startup that promises candy, curry and hot coffee to your door in a matter of minutes. In this first episode, we’ll hear from Sifted innovation editor Maija Palmer, Manna Aero founder Bobby Healy and the Oranmore locals who are the guinea pigs for this frontier technology. You’ll also hear from 5-year-old Eliza, who will grill Healy on his business model in our first episode of Baby Shark Tank.

This week we discuss:

01:51 Hyme raises €8m for technology that could halve cost of storing energy
05:12 Xlinks raises $25m from TotalEnergies for 3,800km cable from the Sahara to the UK
07:46 Thought Web3 was over? This VC just raised €15m to back startups in the sector
19:27 Why Stability AI is launching a subscription fee 

This week we discuss:

01:05 Micromobility giant Tier lays off 22% of its workforce in push for profitability, Unicorn edtech Multiverse to lay off nearly a third of US employees
05:34 GenAI biotech Cradle raises $24m Series A led by Index Ventures
08:55 The top takeaways from Atomico’s State of European Tech report
20:13 Why hasn't EIF announced a single investment from its €3.75bn fund of funds yet?

Sonya Iovieno knows European tech’s secrets. As head of venture and growth at HSBC Innovation Banking, where she works with thousands of VCs, startups and scaleups in the UK and Nordics, she has a view on who’s done an undisclosed down round, who’s been trimming headcount and who’s set up a “hunting line” for future acquisitions.

And she also knows what it’s like to go through a merger, after her organisation, formerly Silicon Valley Bank UK, was acquired by HSBC for a mere £1 after the dramatic collapse of its US parent company in March.

Iovieno joined us this week for a long-form interview on Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast to share her predictions for 2024 and her experience of the tumultuous weeks of this spring.

This week we discuss:

• Nordic merger between online grocers Oda and Mathem
• It ain’t Easee: How Norway’s EV rising star fell foul of regulators
• How Sequoia-backed e-bike refurbisher Upway raised $30m in a micromobility slowdown
• Grocery delivery is back as Crisp raises €35m to scale next-day delivery
• $400k graduate salaries and gun-for-hire ‘SWAT teams’ — inside the wild AI talent market of 2023
• Why top AI talent is leaving Google’s DeepMind

This week we discuss:

00:53 Aleph Alpha raises $500m Series B in one of Europe’s largest AI rounds ever
03:56 What the pitch deck from Adaptive, a new AI startup raising at a $100m valuation, tells us
07:15 French startup Quandela raises €50m to manufacture commercial quantum computers
11:03 Swedish startup wants to ‘stream energy like music’ on electric roads to charge cars as they drive
18:21 10x more money goes to VC funds owned by all-male vs all-female teams

This week we discuss:

02:26 Web Summit announces former Wikimedia boss as new CEO
04:16 More unions sign up to Klarna strike on Nov 7
06:36 Benetton scion moves into tech investing with new €30m fund
09:40 How a “miracle” weight-loss drug created Europe’s most valuable company, and a startup investment machine
17:23 UK gears up to major AI summit under the shadow of its own lack of regulation

This week we discuss:

02:05 French early-stage startups get a €500m funding boost in 2024 budget
04:33 Northvolt’s $20bn listing in Stockholm — a win for European stock exchanges
07:20 Solar energy storage breakthrough could make European households self-sufficient
12:30 Quantum computing is not a threat to national security. So why can't Europe work together?
20:35 Founder to reality TV star — a shortcut to startup success?

This podcast is brought to you by Harper James, a national full-service law firm designed to support ambitious businesses. Having supported over 3,500 businesses, Harper James isn’t a run-of-the-mill law firm. It has transformed the traditional law firm model through unique price plans, smart technology and teams of almost exclusively senior lawyers — giving you affordable, commercial and high quality legal advice.

If this sounds too good to be true, then head over to harperjames.co.uk and see for yourself. While you’re there, you’ll find 100s of resources to help your journey from startup to scaleup and beyond.

This week we discuss:

00:59 Germany is about to legalise cannabis. What does it mean for startups?
03:49 Payments fintech Modulr agrees with regulator to stop onboarding new customers
05:32 German fund La Famiglia merges with General Catalyst
09:29 Northvolt founder’s heat pump startup secures €87m
17:24 The rise — and fall — of Babylon

Link to subscribe to the Sifted Fintech newsletter: https://sifted.eu/newsletters

This podcast is brought to you by Harper James, a national full-service law firm designed to support ambitious businesses. Having supported over 3,500 businesses, Harper James isn’t a run-of-the-mill law firm. It has transformed the traditional law firm model through unique price plans, smart technology and teams of almost exclusively senior lawyers — giving you affordable, commercial and high quality legal advice.

If this sounds too good to be true, then head over to harperjames.co.uk and see for yourself. While you’re there, you’ll find 100s of resources to help your journey from startup to scaleup and beyond.

This week on the podcast we’re joined by Alex Kendall, CEO of self-driving car company Wayve, for a long-form interview on the challenges of getting autonomous vehicles onto our roads. Alex discusses how to win public trust for this technology, how he sees a future world filled with “embodied AI” and about how Elon Musk followed Wayve’s approach to self-driving tech.

This podcast is brought to you by Harper James, a national full-service law firm designed to support ambitious businesses. Having supported over 3,500 businesses, Harper James isn’t a run-of-the-mill law firm. It has transformed the traditional law firm model through unique price plans, smart technology and teams of almost exclusively senior lawyers — giving you affordable, commercial and high quality legal advice.

If this sounds too good to be true, then head over to harperjames.co.uk and see for yourself. While you’re there, you’ll find 100s of resources to help your journey from startup to scaleup and beyond.

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 include Ember, a Scottish intercity transport startup; Monta, an app connecting charge point owners and electric car drivers; and Climate X, a platform which helps businesses analyse their exposure to and risks associated with climate change.

On this episode of the pod, we discuss what types of climate tech company Lindvall doesn’t need to see any more of, how Europe can compete with the US and how to balance VC investing with having two newborn babies.

This week we are live from the Sifted Summit — our annual event bringing together the best of European tech and startups.

Today on the pod you’ll hear from Stripe cofounder John Collison, AI startup sensation Mistral cofounder Arthur Mensch and digital bank Monzo COO Sujata Bhatia.

*And, if you want to learn how to live into your 100s, here's a write up of the top tips from longevity investor Christian Angermayer.

This podcast is brought to you by Harper James, a national full-service law firm designed to support ambitious businesses. Having supported over 3,500 businesses, Harper James isn’t a run-of-the-mill law firm. It has transformed the traditional law firm model through unique price plans, smart technology and teams of almost exclusively senior lawyers — giving you affordable, commercial and high quality legal advice.

If this sounds too good to be true, then head over to harperjames.co.uk and see for yourself. While you’re there, you’ll find 100s of resources to help your journey from startup to scaleup and beyond.

This week we discuss:

02:07 — Improbable’s refocus on the metaverse sees big reduction in losses
04:46 — ‘The economics of trading equity for compute are not great’ — Mistral releases its first model
07:15 — Dutch arm of vertical farming startup Infarm declared bankrupt
11:22 — US eyes British startups in chip sovereignty bid
13:50 — UK-France AI rivalry heats up with dual summits
14:48 — Why is applying for EU funding such a nightmare?

Get yourself a ticket to the Sifted Summit here.

This week it’s a long form interview with Reshma Sohoni. In 2007 she cofounded the London-based venture fund Seedcamp, which has backed leading European tech companies like UIPath, Wise and Revolut. Reshma sat down remotely with Sifted’s Amy Lewin to share her thoughts on what she’s seeing in the market today, and lessons learnt from more than a decade and a half of investing in startups.

This week we discuss:

01:24 Getir valuation reduced 4x in new $500m funding round
02:14 The big French fire sale: record numbers of startups are selling at big discounts
05:51 German HR tech Personio opens New York office, plans to double US workforce
07:33  Smart chatbot maker DRUID raises $30m to double down on US business
14:48 Want to capitalise off America’s $369bn climate bill? Here’s how

Get yourself a ticket to the Sifted Summit here.

This week, Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast is joined by Sachin Duggal, founder and CEO of Builder.AI, a company that uses AI to help customers build software applications more easily. He sat down with Eleanor in the studio to talk about competition for talent, building culture and the future of software development.

This week we discuss:

02:55 US AI startup Poolside raises $126m seed round and relocates to France
05:50 Klarna cuts losses and sees “huge opportunity” in generative AI
08:10 N26 CPO Gilles BianRosa steps down, becomes supervisory board member
08:42 Babylon finds buyer for its UK business (and GP at Hand service)
10:02 Dutch VC PhotonVentures bets all on photonic chips with new €100m fund
16:23 Hackers are watching your startup. Not many are prepared for the attack

This week we discuss:

02:25  Weight-loss drug mania reaches Europe: Denmark’s Embla raises €10m
06:47 Getir cuts 10% of staff in latest sign of speedy grocery industry's struggles
08:30 Northvolt raises $1.2bn convertible note from BlackRock
10:33 Scottish startup ENOUGH raises €40m for its alternative meat
13:12 NatureMetrics raises £10m as biodiversity moves up the ESG agenda
23:13 How is the global run on AI hardware affecting startups?

This week we're talking about a single story that Sifted reported this week: serious allegations of workplace misconduct at one of Europe’s leading VC firms.

 Seven people who worked at DN Capital — an investor in Shazam, Remitly and Auto1 — allege that its founder Nenad Marovac sexually harassed and bullied colleagues, creating a culture of misogyny at the fund.

Marovac has denied all the allegations. DN Capital has opened an independent investigation into the allegations, which it said do not reflect its culture.

Read the story here.

This week we discuss:

01:10 How much RingCentral paid for those Hopin assets
              Was Hopin really such a failure?
03:41 Dutch startup Meatable raises $35m to scale cultivated pork products
07:58 Build-a-bot workshop: deepset.ai raises $30m for personalised AI models
10:58 Who's going to buy Babylon?
19:20 The machines have eyes: How GenAI is giving warehouse robots vision

This week we discuss:

01:07 Johnny Boufarhat steps down as CEO of Hopin
04:55 Prima Materia makes third startup investment — into longevity
08:31 European VCs see exodus of women investors
11:58 The ‘crazy’ £20bn subsea cable to bring Moroccan solar power to the UK
22:38 Can French startups overcome their elitist image?

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” including Zendesk, Nikkei, Coursera and Deutsche Bahn. Kutylowski sat down with Sifted editor Amy Lewin to talk about DeepL’s technology, how it’s built an AI business with comparatively little VC funding and about how the craze around large language models is creating a new type of competition.

This week we discuss:

Getir calls on staff to go door-to-door with goodie bags as cashflow problems persist (1:36)
Eurazeo's growth team quits to start new fund (5:31)
VanMoof: What happened to VCs' favourite bike? (8:42)
Are Oura rings and executive coaches the answer to founder burnout? (12:46)

We're back with another longer form interview and this week we're joined by Eileen Burbidge, cofounder of London-based, early-stage VC firm Passion Capital and director at reproductive healthcare company Fertifa. She came into the studio to reflect on the differences between Silicon Valley and London, her time at Monzo and how she wants to fix reproductive healthcare in Europe.

This week we discuss:

02:00 UK government unveils plan to direct £75bn from pension funds to startups
05:30  5 key questions that the Mansion House Compact doesn’t answer
07:34 The startup creating AI jobs for humans: Prolific raises £25m
10:39 Causaly raises $60m Series B to give scientists instant access to 'all of biology'
13:15 Aphea.Bio raises €70m Series C
24:00 Paris is burning (VC investor cash on AI startups) — Link coming soon

Our competition to win a ticket for the Sifted Summit has now closed, thanks for entering if you took part! We're still keen to learn more about who listens to the podcast,  please take this five-question survey if you have a minute to spare: https://ftx.typeform.com/to/L2ai27Fu

This week we discuss:

02:14 Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s Neko Health raises €60m Series A amid European expansion plans
06:38 'An inkjet printer for the periodic table' — VSParticle raises €14.5m
09:14 Arrival loses key finance lifelines as troubles mount
13:47 Britishvolt cofounder pins new hope on Italian gigafactory
20:11 I am a successful founder — and it’s the worst job I’ve ever had

Our competition to win a ticket for the Sifted Summit has now closed, thanks for entering if you took part! We're still keen to learn more about who listens to the podcast,  please take this five-question survey if you have a minute to spare: https://ftx.typeform.com/to/L2ai27Fu

This week we discuss:

01:51 Data roaming outside the EU still sucks — but the AUTO1 founder’s new startup wants to fix it
06:31 The German spacetech planning to fire stem cell 'organoids' into orbit
10:31 Babylon shareholders wiped out as healthtech agrees to delist
12:55 Startup boards are still a boys' club — 45% have no female representation
17:58 'The G-spot of Europe': how Vilnius is trying to attract international tech talent

Our competition to win a ticket for the Sifted Summit has now closed, thanks for entering if you took part! We're still keen to learn more about who listens to the podcast,  please take this five-question survey if you have a minute to spare: https://ftx.typeform.com/to/L2ai27Fu

This week we discuss: 

See the pitch memo that raised €105m for four-week-old startup Mistral

A Human Genome Project for the nervous system? BIOS Health raises fresh funding

Nato launches tech accelerator to bring Silicon Valley ethos to Europe’s armies

Where to find Europe’s best AI engineers

Tony Blair thinks AI will save Britain, he’s just not quite sure how it should work

This week we sat down with Chloe Smith, the UK's acting secretary of state for Science, Innovation & Technology — the government minister tasked with supporting the growth of the country’s tech and startup sector.

She told us about what the UK is doing to attract talent to its shores, and about how the country plans to unlock pension funds to invest in high-growth tech companies.

This week we discuss:

Infarm quits Europe as vertical farming withers on the vine
Checkout.com cuts internal valuation by another 15%
EIF to set up a €200m fund for European defence tech
Can e-fuel make flying green? Startups are trying
An unknown Swedish startup’s €3bn bid to build a green rival to AWS

This week we discuss:

01:06 Monzo narrows losses slightly as lending book triples
04:06 Inside GetYourGuide: Germany’s $2bn travel experiences platform
07:41 US giant NEA backs Stockholm AI company Sana Labs
09:45 Did US hustle mentality ruin Typeform?
14:36 SaaS won’t save the planet, but a hardware-software duo just might
20:16 An OpenAI alum is building a robot butler for your home

This week it’s another longer form interview. We’re joined by Ophelia Brown, managing partner of Blossom Capital, a VC fund that’s backed the likes of payments company Checkout.com, crypto exchange Moonpay and HR platform Localize. She sat down with Sifted’s Amy Lewin to make her case for a crypto comeback, as well as giving some harsh words on the political mismanagement of the UK tech sector.

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 supplier Bulb which went bust in 2022. 

On this month's episode of Startup Europe — the Sifted Podcast, we dig into what Martin has learnt from his time helping some of Europe's startup success stories scale, and some of the less fortunate company stories.

We hear about what he believes makes a great founder, improving stock options at European startups and why Revolut would probably IPO in the US.

This week we discuss:

02:55 Mobility giant Bolt likely to acquire rival Tier in weeks
05:00 Northvolt to build German and US factories
10:13 ETH spinout ANYbotics raises $50m for AI-led robo workforce
13:54 Startup valuations continue to plummet in 2023
17:52 It’s not just the CFO who’s quit: Meet the people left with power at Revolut
23:26 A taster of the foods of the future

Listen to Sifted's new podcast series sponsored by EQT Ventures: "Downturn Survival Guide."

This week we discuss:

01:30 German startup Blinkist acquired by Australian content company Go1
05:39 Proposed EU net neutrality 'paywall' for internet access spooks founders
09:55 Micro-ticket investment platform Odin raises $3m following public launch
13:45 Outperforming doctors and dealing with hallucinations — how GenAI will transform healthtech
18:37 What the 'Father of Alexa' did next

Listen to Sifted's new podcast series sponsored by EQT Ventures: "Downturn Survival Guide"

This week we discuss:

01:20 Investors say new UK listing rules might not be enough to entice tech companies
05:24 German startup Prematch raises €2.4m to build 'Fifa for amateur football'
09:22 Mental health therapeutics startup HelloBetter raises €7m for further US expansion
14:17 Can France save the metaverse?

This week we discuss:

01:27 Northvolt to confirm US expansion plans within weeks, cofounder says
04:07 Leaked deck raises questions over Stability AI's Series A pitch to investors
08:16 The call for a CERN-like AI supercomputer
11:16 This startup has raised $31m to turn wood into glass
14:10 IV infusions and blood purification: Inside one of Europe’s first longevity clinics
20:30  Meet the startup sending scientists around the world to build a database of all life

Listen to Sifted's new podcast series sponsored by EQT Ventures: "Downturn Survival Guide"

This week we discuss:

Shareholder upheaval and a $630m debt burden: end of the road for Cazoo?
How a corruption scandal has left dozens of Polish startups facing bankruptcy
The Family Files: Inside France’s ugliest startup fight
Toxic bosses and unhealthy cultures: Why Europe’s VCs are tired and burnt out

This week we discuss:

01:18 Checkout.com faces exec team exodus and makes layoffs ‘by stealth’
05:30 ‘Mini-revolt’ as TravelPerk U-turns on remote work
08:26 Founders had to wait ‘far too long’ for EIC Fund cash, admits chair
11:09 YC alum SolarMente raises for subscription solar panel service
17:57 Coworking retreats and hiking holidays: Inside the biggest startup community you’ve never heard of