The post Weekly funding round-up! All of the European startup funding rounds we tracked this week (May 11–May 15) appeared first on EU-Startups.

The fund announces a first close at €128.9 million ($150 million) and plans to hold a second and final close in December, with indicated investor interest exceeding the fund’s €171.9 million ($200 million) cap. 

The fund is anchored by British Business Bank, Aviva Investors, and Lloyds Banking Group, with additional backing from Lansdowne Investors and internal partners’ capital. 

“The UK has at least as much intellectual property per capita as any country in the world. Yet too often, the companies built around those ideas struggle to access the capital needed to scale globally. By backing a concentrated set of exceptional businesses with substantial capital and disciplined strategic guidance, we aim to help them realise their potential to be global leaders and drive domestic economic growth while delivering strong returns for our investors,” said Peter Davies, partner and head of Developed Markets at Lansdowne Partners.

Founded in 1998, Lansdowne Partners claims to manage assets on behalf of some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. It is among the earliest investors in key innovation platforms, including Oxford Science Enterprises, IP Group, Entrepreneur First, Cambridge Innovation Capital, and Northern Gritstone. 

It also noted that several scale-ups in which Lansdowne Partners was a key early investor have now reached unicorn status. These include Oxford Science Enterprises, Oxford Nanopore, Raspberry Pi, Oxford Ionics, TechMet, and Helsing. The firm has also provided financial and strategic support to Tungsten West. 

Lansdowne Partners stated that the fund aims to bridge the gap between early-stage innovation and global commercial success. The firm strongly believes that this strategy offers exceptional potential returns, given that UK IP is often significantly undervalued relative to international peers. 

To accomplish this, Lansdowne Partners will collaborate closely with founders to develop their ideas ambitiously, all while maintaining strict financial discipline.

“The UK has one of the world’s largest venture capital markets, but there remains a significant opportunity to increase participation from domestic institutional investors. We are now seeing tangible momentum behind the Mansion House agenda, with pension funds and insurers increasingly looking at how they can access the growth potential of UK companies. Lansdowne’s first close is a strong example of progress in the mobilisation of UK institutional capital into the UK’s innovation economy,” said Christine Hockley, MD and Co-head of Funds at British Business Bank.

The firm aims to invest in future-oriented industries with the new fund, such as healthcare data, quantum computing, natural capital, advanced materials, semiconductors, and defence technology. It will also focus on related sectors where secure supply chains and domestic capabilities are increasingly critical.

The post Lansdowne Partners unveils new VC fund to turn UK university IP into global companies, hits €128.9 million first close appeared first on EU-Startups.

Yes, Europe has struggled to produce tech giants at American scale. It has relied heavily on US infrastructure, from cloud providers to social platforms. That much is fair.

But to reduce the continent to a punchline is to ignore the companies that have already broken through: Spotify, Revolut, Klarna, Oura, Mistral, Helsing, Lovable. These aren’t flukes. They’re proof that European founders can build globally relevant technology companies, even if the surrounding ecosystem hasn’t always made it easy.

And right now, the ecosystem is shifting fast.

The geopolitical catalyst

The war in Ukraine kick-started a reintegration of the European continent that had stalled for decades. It forced hard conversations about energy independence, defence production, and strategic autonomy. And then, just as Europe began moving, its biggest ally started acting like an adversary. There is nothing rational about Donald Trump’s attacks on European allies in his pursuit of Greenland. But irrationality is contagious, and Europe is catching it in a good way.

This matters for founders because irrationality is the requirement for ambition. It’s irrational to invest money in most startups, but somebody has to do this.

Previously, building European AI infrastructure, defence technology, or sovereign hardware seemed like a fool’s errand. Who would buy it, other than a handful of national government apparatuses? Now these categories are suddenly urgent. Governments are writing checks. Enterprises adjust their purchasing. The market for European-built critical technology has shifted from “nice to have” to “strategic necessity” almost overnight.

The categories that struggled to attract funding and attention just a few years ago now have both. And the talent is there. Europe produces world-class engineers, researchers, and operators. What it has historically lacked is the narrative permission to build big and think strategically. That permission is now being granted, not by investors or institutions, but by geopolitics itself.

Stop seeking validation from Silicon Valley

European founders are operating in a hostile communications environment, especially online. The dominant tech discourse is American, and it’s increasingly polarised against Europe. Both sides of the Atlantic are becoming more radical in how they talk about each other. Just browse any discussion thread.

The instinct for many European founders is still to seek validation from Silicon Valley. Chase US media coverage, get noticed by American influencers and measure themselves against YC benchmarks. But the playbook that worked for consumer social and SaaS apps doesn’t apply to defence tech or critical infrastructure. American VCs and tech influencers are optimising for outcomes that have little to do with European strategic needs.

Your audience is not Silicon Valley. Your audience is European users, customers, enterprises, and the emerging defence and infrastructure ecosystem that’s forming right now. European founders should focus their energy there: documenting their journey, building in public selectively, and creating a narrative of European technological sovereignty that resonates domestically.

Sell the vision, not the spreadsheet

When I look at European startup decks, even at the Seed stage, I often find something closer to a private equity than a venture pitch: P&Ls, detailed business plans, competitor matrices. Meanwhile, their American counterparts lead with the product, the team’s pedigree, and the sheer vastness of the opportunity. Partly this reflects what European investors have historically demanded. But founders can shape this dynamic rather than just respond to it.

This spreadsheet-first mentality then bleeds into how founders talk about their companies publicly. I’ve seen unicorn exits built by the archetypal “engineer” founder who’d rather code than sell, so it’s not a hard blocker. But it makes it much harder to compete against ambitious Americans who lead with vision, raise the most capital, hire the best people, and scale aggressively. The good news is that the tide seems to be shifting. In the last year or two, I’m seeing more and more European founders state wildly ambitious goals without qualifying them with a disclaimer. I hope this continues.

The goal is to find the balance between outrageous and possible, and build your entire story around that. 

Power the flywheel

Once you have the story, you need to feed it constantly. This means shipping and sharing: finding the most exciting thing that happened in the past week and putting it out immediately. Product updates, new customers, partnerships, and user testimonials. You need a steady stream of these to keep shaping your narrative and powering the flywheel of attention, credibility, and momentum.

Share everywhere. Start with the channels where you already have an audience, but don’t limit yourself. Long-form opinions belong on Substack. Product demos belong on X and LinkedIn. Founder reflections belong on podcasts. The point is not to pick one channel but to match the right format to the right venue and be relentlessly consistent.

This means engaging the local media ecosystem, both traditional outlets and the new wave of podcasts, newsletters, and live shows that are hungry for authentic founder stories. Give them access. Share your wins. You’re building something together.

Pick your fights wisely

European founders shouldn’t be afraid to attack the true relics holding the continent back. German notaries require physical presence for routine business filings. GDPR implementations are so complex that only Google and Meta can navigate them through armies of expensive lawyers. These are real obstacles, and calling them out is fair game. 

But stop apologising for the regulations that actually work in Europe’s favour. The Digital Markets Act is forcing American Big Tech to open its products and enable local competition. That’s industrial strategy. China’s Great Firewall, for all its problems, enabled the country to build an independent tech ecosystem worth hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of high-paying jobs. Europe doesn’t need a firewall, but it does need founders who understand that regulatory leverage is a competitive tool, not something to be embarrassed about.

The founders who spend all their energy complaining about European regulation on X are performing for the wrong audience. The founders who learn to use regulation as a strategic advantage will build the companies that matter.

Look at what Andreas Klinger has done with EU Inc. He almost single-handedly willed a simplified pan-European business entity into existence by rallying founders and investors around a shared cause. That’s what it looks like when a founder turns frustration into a movement.

Europe’s Sputnik moment

The realignment happening right now is creating a window for European tech that may not stay open forever.  The founders who recognise that geopolitics matters more than X discourse, build for European customers, seed their own narratives, and stop waiting for recognition from Sand Hill Road have a chance to define the next era of European technology.

The post The anti-Silicon Valley playbook European founders need right now appeared first on EU-Startups.

The round was led by EnBW New Ventures and Wepa, with participation from business angels from Flix, home24 SE, SB21, Ventic Ventures and topi.

“Elephant addresses one of the core challenges of modern organisations: knowledge loss at a time of rising efficiency pressure. With deeply embedded AI agents, learning becomes process-near, personalised, and available right at the point of need,” said Pascal Beckers-Jaleta, principal, EnBW New Ventures.

Founded in 2022, Elephant is an AI-powered training platform designed for the frontline teams, streamlining knowledge transfer and communication directly in the field. 

The company states that more than 70% of the global workforce consists of deskless workers. Nonetheless, frontline employees currently have limited access to digital tools and often feel alienated from their office-based colleagues. 

Elephant seeks to close this divide by connecting frontline teams and decision-makers, enabling them to collaborate more effectively and work toward common objectives. 

It provides an end-to-end training and communication platform for the frontline team, including a Field App, AI assistant, AI Coursebuilder, and Elephant Hub, which helps manage content, knowledge, teams, and learners.

“With an AI-powered course builder, teams can turn complex processes and internal know-how into interactive micro-learning in just a few clicks. The mobile app brings training into daily workflows, while an AI assistant provides context-aware answers at the point of need,” EnBW New Ventures mentioned in its LinkedIn post. 

Karlsruhe-based  EnBW New Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of EnBW. It backs European startups that make infrastructure digital and sustainable, and invests €1 to 10 million over several funding rounds.

The post Berlin-based Elephant Company raises over €5 million to bring AI-powered training to frontline workers appeared first on EU-Startups.

The funding was led by Schroders Capital, with participation from existing investors including General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, D1 Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Bond, and StepStone Group – valuing the company at €1.8 billion ($2.1 billion).

“There are companies who desperately need the benefits AI can bring. There are AI companies. What has been missing is the layer that bridges the two,” says Euan Blair, CEO and Founder of Multiverse. “This investment marks the moment Multiverse defines that category, and takes it across Europe. Getting outcomes from AI and unlocking productivity is not just a technology problem. It is a people problem. We exist to solve it.”

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves adds: “We want Britain to achieve the fastest rate of AI adoption of any country in the G7 – the productivity dividend we can get from AI will grow businesses of all shapes and sizes in the UK and ensure they stay competitive.

“Multiverse is a fantastic example of a British company helping turn that ambition into reality. This investment will support its expansion across Europe, strengthening a UK firm that is competing globally and equipping people with the skills to make AI work in practice.”

Founded in 2016, Multiverse is an EdTech upskilling platform for AI and tech adoption that helps organisations close critical skills gaps – especially in data, AI and all things tech.

They’ve already partnered with over 1,500 global organisations to transform their workforce through tech skills. The last year has seen an increasing focus on strategic alliances, with tech platforms including Microsoft, Palantir, and Databricks partnering with Multiverse. Atlas, its AI coaching platform, allegedly tripled daily active users in the last year.

Today’s funding lands amid accelerating company growth driven by UK enterprise adoption, and strategic acquisitions. Multiverse completed the acquisition of Berlin-based data and AI training company StackFuel in January 2026.

According to the company, revenue grew 50% YoY, and increased at an accelerating rate for the third consecutive year. For the first time, Multiverse had a cash-positive quarter from January to March 2026. Alongside this raise, all employees regardless of seniority have been offered equity and a long term stake in the company as a result of the funding round.

Michael Mclean, Head of Private Equity Technology Investments, Schroders Capital, says: “The evolution of AI is creating transformative opportunities to drive productivity and growth across global economies. Multiverse is a leader in enabling this shift, helping organisations capitalise on these tailwinds. With growing momentum across Europe, Multiverse puts the focus on AI adoption, enabling employers to upskill their workforces and translate technology investment into tangible outcomes.

“High-quality businesses with the potential for transformative, sustainable growth and value creation are key fundamentals we look for. We’re therefore delighted to have led this significant fundraise as Multiverse further accelerates its growth journey.”

Businesses and governments across the UK and Europe are investing heavily in AI, with AI spend doubling since last year according to BCG’s 2026 AI Radar. Yet Multiverse says that productivity gains remain elusive. According to them, the missing ingredient is not more technology tools, it is a skilled workforce capable of deploying them.

Multiverse was built to ensure workers don’t get left behind by the rapid pace of technology. Today that means closing the gap between workers and tech, in effect acting as the AI adoption layer of the technology stack.

Its platform diagnoses precise skills gaps, matching corporate goals against workforce capability to give leaders a holistic view and detailed recommendations for upskilling. Multiverse then equips workers at every level with the AI, data and digital skills to translate technology investment into measurable outcomes.

To date, the company has reportedly delivered more than €2.2 billion (£2 billion) in verified ROI for over 1,000 employers, including critical national security with Babcock and household names like The AA, Capita and Addison Lee.

With 50% revenue growth last year, driven by new customers and continued demand from existing customers the strategic investment is intended to fuel further expansion.

Louise Benford, Chief People Officer at The AA, adds: “Our work with Multiverse has supported The AA’s AI transformation, bridging the gap between new technology and the talent needed to harness it. Multiverse has enabled skills development in areas such as data and AI, and we have seen positive engagement from colleagues participating in the programmes.”

The post UK EdTech Multiverse lands €60 million funding round at €1.8 billion valuation appeared first on EU-Startups.

The round was led by Inveready, with participation from Archipiélago Next, Successful Fund, Paloma Tejada, a former BBVA executive, among others. The round was also joined by entrepreneurs from Spain and Mexico, a market where the company is preparing to expand.

“Managing people should not be an administrative burden, but today it is. Managers have to handle more teams and meet more ambitious goals with less room to manoeuvre. Booster is built to remove that friction, so that technology stops being a mere data repository and becomes a proactive copilot. The objective is clear: to scale talent management by ensuring that every manager’s action translates into success for their team and growth for the company”, says José J. Burgos, CEO of Fresh People.

Founded in 2020, Fresh People states that it combines AI and leadership to scale business growth from a people-centric approach. It claims that it helps companies grow from within: empowering their leaders, connecting people with goals, and making talent management a real business impact.

According to the company, leading well remains one of the great challenges of modern companies, and Fresh People notes that it has developed a solution that is capable of closing the distance between the strategy defined by management and what happens in the day-to-day reality of teams.

Its modus operandi includes applying proven leadership, strategy, and change methodologies that enable real and sustainable organisational transformation, and using its AI-native platform that adapts to each user and supports better, data-informed decision-making.

 It points out that its flexible technology is designed to address multiple business challenges, including leadership development, performance management, team effectiveness, and cultural transformation. It also claims to ensure every project integrates an action plan, learning initiatives, and support from its customer success team to ensure measurable results.

Booster, the company’s new AI-driven leadership system, aims to serve as a strategic copilot for managers every day. It assists them in decision-making, enhances team dynamics, and converts strategies into tangible actions that influence business outcomes. The Spanish startup highlighted that Booster has been adopted by over 2,000 managers. 

“While traditional software is limited to automating administrative tasks, Booster has been built as the first AI Native solution designed to remove the mental load of leadership. It integrates proactively into the tools that managers already use day to day to help them set goals and give feedback organically, enabling them to unlock talent and results without adding new tasks to their workload,” Fresh People mentioned in the press release. 

Its notable clients include Acciona, LaLiga and Kave Home. The startup reports that in the first years, the results have been substantial: integrating AI into business goal setting has boosted the achievement of individual and team goals by more than 45%, and has also helped reduce talent attrition by 23%.

“This new investment reflects our confidence in teams pursuing disruptive projects in high-value segments, such as how managers and executives lead their teams. Through Booster’s AI, Fresh People combines its experience and know-how in team management with the need to close a gap between corporate strategy and talent execution in many large companies,” said Aniol Brosa, Partner at Inveready.

With this funding round, Fresh People begins its definitive transition to Booster. This new stage takes shape through the company’s new digital ecosystem at booster.team, where it will centralise all its operations and value proposition.

The post Valencia-based Fresh People raises €2.6 million to scale Booster, its AI leadership copilot appeared first on EU-Startups.

The round includes €1.7 million (£1.5 million) from the UK venture capital fund and €1.7 million (£1.5 million) provided as an Innovate UK Innovation Loan. 

Tobias Sproehnle, CEO and co-founder of PANTA, said, “Producers and users of indices have been limited for too long by outdated systems. PANTA digitalises the entire value chain, helping clients innovate faster, operate more efficiently and deliver greater value to investors.”

Founded in 2024 by Sproehnle and Mark Pralle, PANTA empowers financial institutions to build and manage complex, bespoke indices and portfolios with “unprecedented scale, speed, and precision”.

According to the company, the index industry underpins over €10.4 trillion (£9.1 trillion) in UK assets under management, and more than €103 trillion ($120 trillion) globally, yet much of it still relies on manual workflows, spreadsheets and outdated systems. As demand for more flexible, data-driven index products increases, providers face pressure to innovate while still depending on legacy technology not designed for modern scale.

PANTA claims to replace legacy operations with a modern, end-to-end system that automates index design, calculation and delivery.

The company states that its technology combines front-end design tools with a scalable calculation engine. This enables clients to create, test and launch indices in minutes while automating rebalancing, reporting and compliance workflows. 

The solution caters to asset managers, index providers and data platforms, helping them reduce time-to-market, cut infrastructure costs and work more efficiently. The company has already onboarded its first live clients and established relationships with major strategic partners.

Mark Pearson, Managing Partner at Fuel Ventures, commented, “The index market is long overdue for transformation, and PANTA’s platform is bringing a level of automation and scalability it’s never seen before. With their proven track record of building and exiting high-growth businesses, we’re confident the team is well placed to lead the next wave of innovation in financial data infrastructure.”

With this fresh funding, the company plans to expand the engineering team, accelerate product development and scale commercial operations as it moves from pilot to full-scale rollout. A larger Series A funding round is also on the cards for early 2027.

The post London’s PANTA raises €3.4 million to modernise how financial indices are built and managed appeared first on EU-Startups.

It’s a mistake to wait for the quantum moment. The day of massive, fault-tolerant quantum computers running arbitrary workloads is still years away.

The potential is enormous, but the technology has yet to be perfected. In classical computing, information is stored in bits, which are always either 0 or 1. Quantum computers use qubits, which exist simultaneously in a state of both 0 and 1, a strange property called superposition. Superposition, along with the quantum mechanical phenomena of entanglement and interference, gives quantum computers their extraordinary computational power.

This allows quantum machines to tackle certain classes of problems, such as breaking encryption or simulating molecular structures, in ways that are practically impossible for classical computers. The main barrier today is stability: qubits are extremely fragile and error-prone. This engineering challenge will take years of further development.

Yet viewing quantum solely through this distant hardware lens overlooks the transformation already underway.

From hardware race to infrastructure reality

The transition has already started. It’s in the infrastructure that will make quantum practical in our world of hybrid clouds, regulated data, and mission-critical systems. It’s not about chasing more qubits in a lab. The near term lies in software, integration, error mitigation, and security upgrades. This lets enterprises leverage quantum workflows in pilots by plugging into existing cloud/HPC pipelines, without rebuilding their architecture from scratch.

Quantum doesn’t speed up everything; it can fundamentally change the economics of targeted problems like molecular simulations for drug discovery and complex optimisations for supply chains. Google’s 2025 Willow chip delivered verifiable quantum advantage on a physics-style problem. This milestone showed that teams are pushing the frontier, and yet engineering challenges persist. Current systems suffer from high error rates and fragility, and scaling with fidelity remains out of reach today.

The action lies in the ecosystems. These elements will intersect with today’s cloud environments, heterogeneous compute, regulated data requirements, and long-lived security needs. That’s why hundreds of startups are building compilers, runtimes, orchestration tools, verification systems, and cloud/HPC bridges. We’re heading toward composite compute, and the companies that make it usable at scale will define the standard. For investors, that’s an exciting prospect, both urgent and investable now.

Applications will roll out unevenly. Quantum accelerators may expand what AI can do. The near-term win is probably the other way around: using AI to improve quantum systems themselves. That means better calibration, smarter compilation, improved error mitigation, and more efficient job scheduling. On the flip side, quantum’s contribution to AI will likely stay narrow for a while, potentially helping with specific subdomains rather than replacing classical model training or inference.

Security cannot wait

Security is the urgent priority. The worry isn’t “breaking the internet”. The real threat is “harvest now, decrypt later.” Adversaries are stockpiling encrypted data today for future quantum decryption against RSA and ECC. Long-lived assets in defence, infrastructure, healthcare, finance, and IP are exposed right now.

The solution is crypto-agility: inventory cryptography, prioritise high-risk and long-lived assets, adopt NIST-standardised post-quantum cryptography, often via hybrid approaches, and address the nightmare of edge and constrained environments such as IoT, industrial control systems, vehicles, and remote sensors. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has made cryptographic discovery and inventory a cornerstone of its post-quantum migration guidance.

It has vetted a select group of firms capable of helping organisations map their cryptographic assets and assess exposure. These include large systems integrators such as IBM and Capgemini, engineering consultancies like Frazer-Nash, and specialist vendors, most notably Arqit, which stands out as the only dedicated product company in the scheme.

Governments recognise the strategic stakes. The UK’s UKRI has committed over €1.1 billion (£1 billion) to quantum through 2030, and Germany has invested approximately €2 billion since 2020. The UK’s quantum startup scene reached 207 active companies late last year, with major M&A moves such as IonQ’s €855 million-plus ($1 billion-plus) acquisition of Oxford Ionics.

The takeaway for investors is straightforward: quantum is already investable. The winners won’t be the ones waiting for hardware perfection. They’ll be the leaders turning “quantum readiness” into measurable programmes with clear ROI and risk reduction. That work is happening now.

We’re not approaching the quantum era. We’re in it. The question is whether your organisation leads the transition or plays catch-up.

The post The quantum opportunity: Investors should stop waiting for the perfect machine appeared first on EU-Startups.

The round was led by Corteva through its Corteva Catalyst platform, with participation from Calculus Capital, Pymwymic, UKI2S (managed by Future Planet Capital), SynBioVen, and AgFunder. The final closing brings Resurrect Bio’s total funding to about $12.4 million since its inception, including the 2023 Seed round.

Dr Cian Duggan, CEO of Resurrect Bio. “The strength of this raise reflects growing conviction in what we’re building: a scalable, AI-driven platform for resurrecting disease resistance in the world’s most important crops. It’s also a validation of what’s possible when you combine the UK’s world-class plant science base with commercial ambition to translate it into real-world impact. 

“We’re expanding our team, deepening our platforms, and actively seeking joint development agreements with seed companies and breeders who want to bring durable resistance traits to farmers.”

Spun out of The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, Resurrect Bio was founded in 2022 by Prof. Sophien Kamoun, Prof. Tolga Bozkurt and Dr Cian Duggan. The company is on a mission to become the world’s leading plant disease resistance company, developing both in-house traits and collaborating with leading seed companies to protect crops. 

Resurrect Bio provides the seed industry with a sustainable alternative to chemical crop protection by resurrecting complex resistance mechanisms. 

The company’s core technology is based on the idea that pathogens evolve to weaken the crop’s immune response, causing disease. The company’s approach is to resurrect the immune system, locking the pathogen out of the crop.

The funds will be deployed to scale Resurrect Bio’s three core capabilities: its FloraFold® AI in silico discovery platform, which predicts interactions between plant and pathogen proteins; its high-throughput functional biology platform, which validates those predictions at scale; and its Resurrection platform, which reactivates cryptic resistance mechanisms already present in elite germplasm.

Together, these platforms “dramatically” compress the timeline from discovery to deployment in crop.

Elizabeth Klein-Edmonds, Investment Director at Calculus Capital, said, “Crop disease remains a major and often overlooked challenge in global agriculture. Resurrect Bio’s innovative gene-editing platform, which restores native disease-resistance genes in crops, offers a promising solution by reducing dependence on chemicals and boosting yields.”

Resurrect Bio claims to be ready to engage seed companies and breeders through additional joint development agreements. Through these partnerships, it aims to bring durable disease-resistance traits to commercial pipelines faster than conventional breeding can achieve. In March 2026, the company announced its partnership with Corteva Agriscience to develop disease resistance in corn.

The post UK AgriBioTech startup Resurrect Bio closes €8.8 million Series A to develop disease-resistant crops appeared first on EU-Startups.

He 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 both an operator and investor, and how Entourage is redefining early-stage support for European founders. He also discusses the future of AI in B2B SaaS, the role of communities like Wintercircus, and what it takes for founders to stand out in today’s competitive landscape.

Key Points

• The motivations and early influences that drove Pieterjan to start building companies.
• Lessons from scaling Showpad from zero to $100 million ARR and +500 employees globally.
• How his perspective on founders has shifted after sitting on both sides of the table – as a CEO and now as an investor.
• The rationale behind combining a venture studio and VC fund at Entourage, and how the two models complement each other.
• Where Entourage fits into today’s European VC ecosystem, amid sector-specific funds and cautious capital deployment.
• The role of communities like Wintercircus in fostering collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and ambition among the next generation of founders.

The post The EU-Startups Podcast | Interview with Pieterjan Bouten, Founding and Managing Partner at Entourage appeared first on EU-Startups.