This Week in European Tech: What should founders expect from their VCs?

Owning and operating a business can give family investors access to insights that are difficult to reproduce from the outside. The question is how to turn that knowledge into a genuine advantage for funds and founders.In this conversation from EUVC Summit 2026, ⁠Owen Reynolds⁠, Investment Director VC at ⁠Innotek⁠, shares how an active family business can bring deeper market knowledge, faster diligence and practical operating context into venture investing.Innotek is a single family office investing across venture capital, private equity and direct investments, with roots in industrial, manufacturing and technology. Owen explains how its in-house automation, robotics and engineering expertise can support investment decisions and portfolio companies in ways that go beyond capital.He also discusses why operating companies can sometimes “skip the first five slides” of a pitch deck, how continuous exposure to customers and supply chains creates an information advantage and why specialist investors risk losing some of that edge as they become professional investors.The conversation also covers how family offices can support VCs and portfolio companies more effectively, why that support needs to be specific rather than assumed and where LP expectations and established fund structures may be holding venture back.HighlightsHow operating businesses create an investment edgeWhy active operators can accelerate due diligenceHow in-house technical expertise can support venture investingWhy specialist VCs can gradually lose their specialisationHow family offices can work more effectively with VCsWhy operating support needs to be specific and credibleWhere LP structures may be restricting venture fundsHow family offices can become stronger long-term partners

What does a genuinely useful VC relationship look like, and how much should operating experience matter when investors are advising founders?In this episode of This Week in European Tech, Dan Bowyer and Mads Jensen of SuperSeed discuss what separates strong VC partnerships from weaker ones, why venture outcomes naturally follow power laws and what founders should realistically expect from the investors around their table.They also look at the UK Budget and whether it goes far enough for founders, the wider economic pressures facing younger people and what could encourage more people to build companies.The conversation then turns to AI, including Anthropic’s planned IPO, where inference may happen in the future and the growing question of whether companies can trust the models and agents operating inside their businesses.Dan and Mads also discuss technological sovereignty, the case for stronger European AI infrastructure and what Europe should prioritise rather than trying to recreate every layer of the technology stack.HighlightsWhat founders should expect from a strong VC partnershipHow much operating experience matters for investorsWhy venture capital produces power-law outcomesWhat the UK Budget means for foundersWhy entrepreneurship may have an energy problem as well as a policy problemWhat Anthropic’s planned IPO could tell us about the AI marketWhy more AI inference could move onto personal devicesThe security risks created by AI agents at scaleWhether European companies can trust foreign AI modelsWhere Europe should focus its technology sovereignty efforts

In vertical AI, choosing a narrower market can look like giving up scale, but for Corti it created the focus needed to go much deeper into healthcare and build around the accuracy, compliance and real-world complexity that clinical environments demand.Andreas Cleve, Co-Founder and CEO of Corti, joins us to explain the thinking behind that choice and what it has meant in practice. Andreas describes healthcare not as one market but as many highly specialised ones, each with its own workflows, terminology and requirements. That depth means bigger general-purpose models alone are not enough. Corti has instead had to build further down the stack and take greater control over the technology and infrastructure required to get AI into production.The trade-off becomes especially clear around accuracy. AI can perform well in a demo and still fall short in a clinical environment, where one incorrect word or detail can change the meaning entirely. Andreas explains why clinical-grade performance depends on much more than training better models, from working closely with users to adapting to individual specialties and solving the last-mile problems that appear when technology meets real workflows.The conversation also explores why Corti brought compliance in-house rather than treating regulation as something to outsource. For founders building in healthcare, legal, financial services or other high-stakes domains, the broader question is how to decide which constraints to accept, which capabilities to own and where going deeper can create an advantage that broader competitors struggle to replicate.HighlightsWhy Corti chose vertical AI over a broader horizontal approachWhat founders give up when they deliberately narrow their marketWhy bigger models do not automatically solve regulated-domain problemsWhy 90% accuracy can still fall far short in clinical environmentsHow specialisation pushes vertical AI companies deeper into the stackWhy getting AI into production requires more than model performanceWhy Corti built its compliance capability in-houseHow founders can think differently about regulation and other high-stakes constraintsTimestamps(00:00) Intro(01:45) What Corti is building(03:45) Why healthcare needs specialised AI(05:45) Why bigger models do not solve healthcare(07:40) Healthcare is not one market(09:50) The trade-offs of going vertical(11:50) Funding a capital-intensive AI company from Europe(13:15) Why Corti is doubling down on Copenhagen(16:45) Copenhagen’s talent problem(19:30) Why 90% accuracy is not enough in healthcare(23:00) Solving the last mile of healthcare AI(25:45) Where AI adoption is happening fastest in healthcare(31:20) Why regulation is not the enemy(34:40) How founders should approach compliance(37:40) What founders should understand about venture funding(42:30) Why European VCs need a GPU strategy(46:40) Europe’s growth funding gap(48:00) When should European founders move to the US?

Seed investors are often told to ride their winners. But when the best companies remain private well beyond the original fund horizon, that creates a difficult question: when should a fund start turning paper gains into cash?In this conversation from EUVC Summit 2026, Romain Lavault, General Partner at Partech, joins Joe Schorge, Founder and Managing Partner at Isomer Capital, to discuss how seed funds can manage liquidity without giving up too much of their strongest positions.Romain explains how longer company lifecycles have changed the economics of seed investing, why secondaries have become a major route to liquidity and how Partech uses a framework to decide when to sell portions of high-performing companies.They also explore LP expectations around DPI, why liquidity decisions should be planned rather than emotional and how early conversations with founders can make future secondary transactions easier.HighlightsWhy seed funds face a growing liquidity challengeHow longer company lifecycles affect fund returnsWhy secondaries have become more importantWhen to sell part of a winnerHow to balance DPI with long-term upsideWhy founders need advance notice of liquidity plansWhy funds need a liquidity model as well as a fund model

Want help sharpening your fundraising story? Request a discovery call with Denes Ban, Founder of RAISE.---Fundraising is not just about having a strong company or a compelling idea. It is also about understanding where the process breaks, how investors respond and what actually moves them to act.In this talk from EUVC Summit 2026, Denes Ban, Founder of RAISE, explains why fundraising should be treated as a measurable system rather than a matter of charisma or instinct.Drawing on his work with hundreds of founders and GPs, Denes breaks down the conversion funnel behind fundraising, why most people misdiagnose their bottleneck and how numbers, story and urgency work together.He also introduces the idea of a minimum viable story, built around five elements: how the world is changing, the problem, the solution, why you win and why now. Along the way, he explains why founders often rush too quickly to the solution and why “European resilience” on its own is not enough to raise capital.HighlightsWhy quality alone does not winHow to identify the real fundraising bottleneckWhy fundraising is a system that can be improvedThe role of numbers, story and urgencyHow to build a minimum viable storyWhy the problem should come before the solutionWhat creates urgency in an investor processWhy “European resilience” alone is not a fundraising strategy

Europe has deep pools of capital, but much of that money still fails to reach the companies and assets that could drive future growth.In this episode, Dan Bowyer and Mads Jensen of SuperSeed are joined by Karim Palant, Director of External Affairs at UK Private Capital, to discuss why domestic capital remains underrepresented in venture and private markets, and why that matters for Europe’s competitiveness.They look at pension reform, the UK’s reliance on international LPs, the incentives that keep domestic capital flowing elsewhere, and what the upcoming UK budget could mean for founders, investors, and wealth creation.The conversation also turns to AI infrastructure and cybersecurity, including whether trillion-dollar CapEx plans will actually materialise, how AI is making old cyber vulnerabilities easier to exploit, and what personal AI agents could mean for future security risks.HighlightsWhy Europe’s own capital is not backing enough of its growthWhy pension money still struggles to reach venture and private marketsThe risks of relying too heavily on international capitalWhat the UK budget could mean for founders and investorsWhether the AI infrastructure boom is starting to slowHow AI is changing cybersecurityWhat personal AI agents could mean for security

AI has transformed what is possible in language, but biology remains a much harder frontier. Oliver Vince, Co-Founder at Basecamp Research, believes one of the biggest constraints is that we still understand only a fraction of life on Earth, leaving AI models with a fundamentally incomplete picture of biology.Speaking at EUVC Summit 2026, Oliver joins Lorenzo Cerchi, Venture Capital Investor at Singular, a backer of Basecamp Research, to discuss how new biological datasets and frontier AI models could change therapeutic design, and why Europe may have an edge where AI meets deep scientific expertise.Oliver explains how Basecamp Research approaches the data problem in biology, how scaling laws could translate into better models and how those models might eventually help move from disease biology towards new medicines.The conversation also looks at the gap between European and US attitudes to risk, what it takes to finance highly ambitious deep-tech companies and why scientific talent needs room to pursue outcomes that may be uncertain but potentially enormous.They close on the longer-term possibility that AI could help tackle diseases that remain difficult or impossible to treat today, and why Oliver believes that potential is too significant to remain confined to the lab.HighlightsWhy biology is still a major data problemHow AI scaling laws could apply to therapeutic designWhere Europe has an advantage in AI and deep techWhy ambitious deep tech needs a different attitude to riskTurning scientific talent into breakthrough companiesThe path from disease biology to new medicinesWhy “prompt to cure” could become possibleTimestamps(00:00) Intro(01:10) Why biology has an AI data problem(03:20) Where Europe can win in AI(05:05) The challenge of scaling deep tech in Europe(07:10) Why ambitious venture needs a different risk mindset(09:15) Europe’s scientific talent advantage(11:05) From disease biology to generating medicines(12:35) Playing for diseases we cannot treat today(13:05) Why “prompt to cure” may be possible

Quantum computing is not simply about making today’s computers faster. For Jan Goetz, CEO & Co-Founder at IQM Quantum Computers, the opportunity lies in solving problems that conventional computing architectures may never handle efficiently enough.Speaking at EUVC Summit 2026, Jan explains how IQM grew from university research into a full-stack quantum company building its own chips, systems, manufacturing capacity and cloud infrastructure.He reflects on the practical realities of building deep tech, including operating an early quantum computer from an office with improvised cooling, raising significant capital for hardware and scaling a company before much of the surrounding infrastructure exists.The session also explores Europe’s position in quantum, why hardware is becoming a critical bottleneck and how IQM is trying to scale globally while remaining headquartered in Finland.HighlightsWhy conventional computing is approaching physical limitsWhy quantum requires a different computing modelTurning university research into a deep-tech companyBuilding hardware before the infrastructure existsWhy hardware matters as much in quantum as it does in AIEurope’s current position in quantum computingScaling a capital-intensive company from EuropeAccessing global capital without leaving EuropeTimestamps(00:00) Intro(01:05) Why some problems need a different kind of computer(03:05) Why bigger data centres are reaching their limits(04:05) How quantum computing scales differently(05:00) The energy problem behind AI compute(06:05) Building a full-stack quantum computer(07:20) From university research to building IQM(09:15) Building a quantum computer in an office(12:15) Europe’s position in quantum computing(13:25) Why hardware is becoming the bottleneck(14:05) Raising capital and planning a dual listing

Convelio’s most difficult period forced some of its most consequential decisions. After the art market contracted sharply, the company reduced its team, changed its business model and shifted its focus from top-line growth towards profitability.Host Andreas Munk Holm speaks with Edouard Gouin, CEO and Co-Founder of Convelio, about navigating that period and the decisions that ultimately helped the company reach its first fully profitable quarter.Edouard discusses the cost of delaying layoffs, bringing investors behind a new strategy, rebuilding trust and moving from a largely asset-light model towards physical operations, storage and software.He also shares the thinking behind the 65-page leadership manual he wrote during this period, the principles it codified around hiring, management and honest feedback and how Convelio is using AI to automate operational work.HighlightsMoving from growth towards profitabilityMaking difficult decisions before circumstances force themAligning investors around a new strategyRebuilding trust after layoffsMoving beyond a purely asset-light modelWriting a 65-page leadership manualHiring for strengths and giving honest feedbackUsing AI to automate operational workReaching Convelio’s first fully profitable quarterTimestamps(00:00) Intro(02:00) How Convelio started(08:00) Copycats and the art market downturn(14:00) Looking inward and shifting to profitability(17:00) Layoffs and the cost of delaying difficult decisions(21:00) Aligning investors and the board(28:00) Rebuilding trust after layoffs(31:00) From asset-light to physical operations, storage and software(39:00) Writing a 65-page leadership manual(42:00) Hiring for strengths(45:00) Mistakes, sloppiness and honest feedback(53:00) Using AI to transform operations(1:01:00) Hard decisions, easy life and reaching profitability

The AI market is moving from proving the technology works to proving who can actually capture the value.In this episode of This Week in European Tech, Dan Bowyer, Mads Jensen and Priyanka Savjani of SuperSeed discuss the pressure building across AI infrastructure, Nvidia’s growing influence as both investor and supplier and why founders need to think carefully about strategic dependency.They also explore how AI agents could reshape ecommerce and distribution, where European founders can build harder-to-copy advantages and why physical AI, manufacturing and resilient supply chains remain important opportunities for Europe.HighlightsWhy AI investors are asking who actually gets paidWhere the risks sit in AI infrastructureWhat Nvidia’s investment strategy means for foundersWhy distribution matters for AI agentsWhere European founders can build defensible advantagesEurope’s opportunity in physical AI and manufacturingHow founders should think about China in their supply chainsWhether EU Inc. can still move the needle