Krishan Weber

Europe has the talent — now it’s time to bet on ourselves. When Sandra Navidi and I met in Davos during World Economic Forum, one question kept coming back: What will it take for Europe to build global tech champions? We continued that conversation on ntvNachrichten’s BIZ & beyond podcast with Ulrich Reitz. From building Europe’s first venture studio, finleap, in Berlin to now leading early-stage investing at Motive Ventures in New York, that vantage point shapes how I see Europe’s path forward. Here’s what I believe: ▪️ Europe has great ideas — but we lack the structures, speed, and capital to scale them. ▪️Especially in later stages, we hesitate to go all in — and when capital finally comes, it’s often not European. ▪️We should learn from the U.S. — but not everything that shines is gold. ▪️Our real strengths, like quality of life and global talent, are already here. ▪️Capital matters. But culture decides. If we want to build global champions, we need belief. Belief that we can build big — and the urgency to work for it. That mindset is one of the few things Europe should take from the U.S. In short: If Europe wants to become a true tech force, the time to act is now. And it starts by betting on ourselves. A big thank you to Sandra and Ulrich for an insightful, thought-provoking discussion. And about that headline calling me “Tech-Wunderkind” — it made me smile. Feels good to be young again 😄 🎧 Listen via the link in the comments (German only). #Capital #Entrepreneurship #Europe #Leadership #Fintech

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Spoke with Brevo's Chairman of the Advisory Board. Steffen Schebesta led Brevo's M&A for 3+ years. Here's their acquisition playbook: Steffen founded Newsletter2Go back in 2011. And he kept building it for over 7 years until it became: One of the top email marketing platforms in the German-speaking market. In late 2018, Sendinblue (now Brevo) acquired them. (but it was almost like a merger) At that time, they were both figuring out how to merge the companies. And that's how Steffen became in charge of Brevo's M&A strategy: Phase 1: Geographic Consolidation (2018-2019) → Started by acquiring Newsletter2Go to crack the German market → But Europe isn't one market - each country needs localization → So they bought local players over organic expansion Phase 2: Product Extensions (2020+) After raising €140M, they shifted the strategy: → E-commerce focus: Chatra (chat), Push Owl (notifications), Metrio (analytics) → CRM expansion: Yodel (telephony), Meet Fox (scheduling), Captain Wallet (mobile) → Infrastructure: Mail Clark (email parsing) TLDR: Early on, they focused on geographic expansion through local acquisitions. When scaling, they shifted to product capability expansion. Now, they're into platform consolidation plays. And their next M&A activity? Likely after their next fundraising round. If you were leading Brevo's next acquisition strategy, what would you focus on? #acquisitions #saas #strategy

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September at WHU’s entrepreneurial ecosystem: Interesting to see an increasing number of AI startups in our monthly overviews 🥳 Here is the overview the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management investment news for September: ✔ Onconetix (US): Joseph H. Private placement $12.9M Oncology company (Nasdaq: ONCO) with FDA-approved BPH therapy and prostate-cancer diagnostics. ✔revel8 (DE): Julius M. Seed Round €7.0M GenAI simulations that train employees to resist social-engineering across email/SMS/chat/voice/video. ✔ Conduct (UK): Jan Philipp Haas Seed Round $12.0M Agentic AI that understands legacy enterprise system so teams can “chat with” their core software. ✔ Pactos (DE) Antonio Zill, Philipp Eckert Seed Round €2.7M AI-powered platform to manage the external workforce from source-to-pay with compliance built-in. ✔ MELP (LT) Robertas Saltis Šaltis Seed Round €1.25M Employee engagement & internal comms app with secure messaging and anonymous feedback. ✔ encentive GmbH (DE) Nicolàs Juhl (Boldt) Seed Round $7.4M Industrial energy-management platform that shifts usage to greener, cheaper power. ✔ Constant Energy (TH): Franck Constant Debt Financing $9.5M C&I solar developer/operator scaling renewable assets across Southeast Asia. ✔ K2 Mobility (DE): Markus Kroeger Early VC Round SaaS for charge-planning and energy management for electric trucks and buses. ✔ Easee (NL): Elly Nkya, Yves Prevoo Acquisition CE-certified online eye exam (SaMD) bringing tele-optometry to consumers and partners. ✔ betterview (CH): Michael Wendt Acquisition Laser eye-surgery provider offering advanced refractive procedures. This post was also a good excuse to play around with the new Sora2 video generation model 🙃

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