Oana Marincescu

Everyone Talks About AI – But What Is Its Real Impact? Together with manager magazin, Porsche Consulting is launching the new AI Impact Award to make the value of artificial intelligence more visible for business and society. In spring 2026, the AI Impact Award will be given for the first time to companies from the DACH region that successfully apply AI in practice and generate significant impact. AI is widely recognized as a key driver of innovation — but what about its real value? The true impact of new technologies only becomes clear when they are applied. That’s exactly what the AI Impact Award is designed to highlight: the real-world transfer from idea to impact. 🏆 Awards will be presented in three categories: ➡️ Product & Customer Experience ➡️ Production & Supply Chain ➡️ Organization & Administration Winners will be selected by an independent jury of leading personalities from academia and industry. I’m excited about this new partnership with manager magazin, and the collaboration with Deputy Editor-in-Chief Simone Salden and her team. We encourage companies from the German-speaking region to apply: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eaG7F7MH #AIImpactAward #AIIA #ArtificialIntelligence #Innovation #DigitalTransformation

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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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