Campus To Capital

Goldman Sachs. McKinsey. Still the dream jobs?Our new episode with Henri Bekeris is out.From studying at Mannheim and scouting for Picus Capital to running Reonic’s sales organisation across Europe within two years, Henri took a different route. Today, he’s building Quota, a network connecting go-to-market talent with European startups.His take? The careers ambitious business students should be chasing are changing.We talked about why he believes tech sales can beat banking and consulting on earnings, responsibility and learning and whether spending two years collecting a prestigious name on your CV still makes sense.At Reonic, Henri went from cold calls and customer demos to building a sales team. Hiring also gave him the idea for Quota: the best introductions kept coming from people they already trusted. What if you could build that into a network across Europe?We also got into choosing the right startup, how AI is changing sales, and what founders actually need from investors beyond a cheque.If you already know you want to build in tech, what are you waiting for?Thanks a lot Henri for joining us!!EP37 is live everywhere now!

What does one of the world’s leading computer vision researchers think comes after ChatGPT?Our new episode with Prof. Dr. Daniel Cremers is out.Daniel holds the Chair of Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence at TU Munich, has received Germany’s most prestigious research award, the Leibniz Prize, and his work has been cited more than 90,000 times.We talked about spatial intelligence, why navigating the physical world remains such a difficult challenge for AI, and what it takes to build machines that can actually understand their surroundings.Through his work with Artisense and SE3 Labs, Daniel also knows what happens when research meets customers. His advice to technical founders: don’t fall in love with your technology before understanding what someone is willing to buy.And why does he believe Munich can produce a $100 billion physical AI company?We got into that too.Thanks a lot Daniel for joining us!!EP36 of Campus To Capital is out now. Watch or listen to the full conversation.

#35 Douglas Solberg - How Much of a Hotel Can AI Actually Run? Inside the YC-Backed Startup ZaplarOur new episode with Douglas Solberg is out.Douglas and his team are building Zaplar, a full-stack AI solution to rethink the software hotels run on, from bookings to guest communication and housekeeping.We talked about his story of getting into YC, how he met his co-founders, and what it takes to turn a team full of technical talent into a business. How do you figure out the business model, win your first customers and convince hotel owners to take a chance on you?We also got into his background, the difficult decisions along the way and finding people you want to build with for the long term.Thanks a lot Douglas for joining us!!EP35 is live everywhere now!

What if you could download someone’s expertise as easily as you add a song to your playlist?Our new episode with Fede de Ponte is out.Fede joined us to talk about Getedge and the idea behind it: packaging human expertise into skills that AI agents can use, with creators getting paid when their knowledge helps someone else.Which would have been useful before Julius spent six hours teaching an agent how to edit our interviews.We talked about what these skills actually look like, how Fede uses them in his own work, and where handing things over to an agent starts to get uncomfortable. From editing a podcast to handling your messages, how much would you trust it to do?We also got into his path through BCG, knowing when to move on from a company, and the difference between talking about building in San Francisco and actually going.His answer to how he made the move: “Very simple. I booked a flight.”Thanks a lot Fede for joining us!!EP34 is live everywhere now!

Six weeks for a prototype?“What the f*** are you talking about?”Our new episode with Falco Schneider is out.When an experienced engineer told him a prototyping iteration would take six weeks, Falco’s response was simple: “I know nothing about this and I made this in one week.”That pretty much sets the tone for this conversation.We talked about teaching yourself to build, what AI changes about hardware development, and why Falco believes experience can sometimes make you underestimate how fast things can move.We also got into his time at the Merantix Hacker Room, building in San Francisco, what might come after keyboards and screens and why you shouldn’t take every founder’s fundraising story at face value.And yes, there’s a “F*** all that” moment. Followed by a point worth hearing: build something you actually want to exist, instead of copying whatever the person next to you is building.Thanks a lot Falco for joining us!!EP33 is live everywhere now!

Can you sell a used electric car across Europe without the buyer ever seeing it?Our new episode with Florian Reister, Founder & CEO of Aampere, is out.Aampere is building a European marketplace for used electric cars, connecting private sellers with dealers across borders. Since starting in 2022, the company has grown to several thousand cars sold per year and recently raised €4.2m.We talked about how you actually price a used EV, why battery data matters and why a car sitting in Germany might be worth significantly more to a dealer somewhere else in Europe.We also got into Aampere’s early days, including selling €50k worth of cars per month through WhatsApp before they had a proper platform, how Florian thinks about competing with players like AUTO1, mobile.de and AutoScout24, and why he believes technical moats are disappearing in the age of AI.Thanks a lot Florian for joining us!!EP32 is live everywhere now!PS: For everyone tuning in on YouTube: we’ve started adding fact checks and visuals to our episodes and are working on improving the production quality step by step. Let us know what you think!

What if every VC had access to the same deals? Evertrace is building the infrastructure to make that increasingly close to reality.For episode 31 we sat down with Jacob Houlberg, Co-Founder of Evertrace, the Copenhagen-based startup helping early-stage investors detect founders and companies before they show up in traditional startup databases.Evertrace monitors signals across trade registries, GitHub, patents, research grants, domains and more to identify potentially VC-backable companies as early as possible. Today, more than 250 VC funds use the platform.But the conversation went far beyond sourcing.We talked about:> Why Jacob believes sourcing should not be a competitive advantage in VC and what happens when access to deals becomes table stakes> How Evertrace processes thousands of signals every week to find companies before they become obvious> Why company formation remains one of the strongest signals of founder intentionality> Building Evertrace with a team of just three, while acquiring and integrating multiple competitors along the way> Why fully automated VC investing is much harder than quant investing in public markets> Media, data or track record: what actually gets a fund into the best pre-seed rounds?– Why Evertrace is increasingly moving toward APIs and MCP and why Jacob would be perfectly happy if nobody used their interface in a few years> What systematically tracking stealth founders taught him after moving from investor to operatorA conversation about what happens when finding companies becomes infrastructure, and VCs are forced to compete on what comes next: judgment, reputation and actually helping founders.Thanks a lot, Jacob, for joining us!

In EP 30, we sit down with Philipp Baumanns, Co-Founder & COO at Telli, the YC-backed company rethinking how businesses run customer-facing operations.The idea started from a very practical problem. While helping build Enpal’s heat pump business, Philipp and his co-founder saw teams repeat the same qualification, booking, and follow-up calls thousands of times. Most of the surrounding workflow had already been digitized. The actual customer conversation had not.We discuss how Telli went from a few early pilot customers to serving large enterprises, why the team initially focused on outbound use cases, and what it takes to build infrastructure that can handle thousands of calls at scale.Philipp also explains where Telli sees its real moat beyond the underlying voice models, why time-to-value matters as much as model quality, and why the long-term opportunity goes far beyond phone calls. The bigger ambition is to become the layer through which companies manage customer interactions across voice, WhatsApp, SMS, and eventually even personal agents.We also talk about Telli’s internal tech stack, why coding tools are becoming a major cost line next to engineering salaries, how the company thinks about outcome-based pricing, what high-agency hiring actually looks like, and which conversations Philipp still believes should remain human.A conversation about building from lived pain, scaling into a crowded market, and how the interface between companies and consumers may change over the next few years.

What does it take to identify exceptional founders before the numbers exist, and win the right to back them in an increasingly competitive venture market?In Episode 29, we sit down with Christian Meermann, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures .Christian shares how scaling Zalando across Europe shaped his view on growth, brand, distribution, and company building. We discuss how Cherry evaluates more than 10,000 startups each year, why team remains one of the most important investment criterion, and what separates genuine resilience from a strong-looking CV.We also explore Cherry’s operator-led approach and how the fund supports founders with hiring, communications, fundraising, and execution.The conversation covers Europe’s AI opportunity, sovereign infrastructure, hypergrowth valuations, technical founders, and why business graduates need deeper technical understanding in an AI-native world.Many thanks to Christian for such an insightful conversation!!

What does it take to outpace a wave of well-funded competitors and build one of the fastest-growing AI startups?In Episode 28, we sit down with Dennis May, former Associate at Lakestar and now Chief of Staff at Peec AI, one of Germany’s fastest-growing AI startups.Dennis shares why he left venture capital to join the operator side, what convinced him to bet on Peec, and what the Chief of Staff role looks like inside a company scaling at exceptional speed. We discuss Peec’s journey from zero to €10 million ARR, its expansion into New York, and how the company is helping brands understand and improve their visibility across AI search engines.We also explore the shift from traditional SEO to Generative Engine Optimization, the defensibility of AI application-layer companies, AI-native workflows, hiring at hypergrowth startups, and the reality behind Peec’s high-intensity culture.Dennis also reflects on what he learned moving from investor to operator and shares his advice for founders trying to build something truly ambitious.Many thanks to Dennis for joining us.