Silicon Roundabout Ventures

My feed is littered with Euro-doomer and Euro-moaners. The builders raise you our middle rocket 🖕 (rocket courtesy of Christian S. and HyImpulse 🚀) There seem to be no shortage of people complaining Europe can never catch up to the US. That Europe is the worst place to build startups. That deeptech in Europe is doomed. Pay attention: they tend to be the founders that failed to build meaningful ventures, influencers, and VCs that failed to raise. Oh but we don't have companies in the top 20 most valuable. Oh but... Regulation. Oh but this founder and that founder moved to the US. Oh but China is deploying more capital. Sure. This is all true. But what's also true is that the world wouldn't compute without ASML. More and more startups are launching here, raising from everywhere including the US, and conquering frontiers from Quantum to, literally, Space. I built my fund here. I stay here. I deploy here. And even those that leave in many cases they come back and they keep R&D centers here. If you're also build European companies with global ambitions: Don't listen to the moaners. Sure criticise what's wrong. Let's fix what doesn't work. But let's stop moaning and let's keep building. ❤️🔥⚛️

You're likely over-estimating what AI is. You're probably going to see trillions evaporate very soon. The sad reality is that nothing would deter evangelists. Markets keep on going up and to the right. Entry valuations for startups and PE multiples for public companies keep on climbing. From AI wrappers with absurd metrics (like counting ARR on a rolling basis but ignoring absurdly high churn) to OpenAI hitting half a trillion in value. More than SpaceX. And of course Oracle counting on AI revenue doubling every year for this decade. Even NVIDIA, the only company really making money from this AI gold rush, is effectively bankrolling part of its revenue by investing in companies that become clients or support their's clients revenue and fundraising efforts. Worse: the capital is so concentrated in a handful of VC fund and public companies all going all-in on the AI narrative that as the failure to deliver this mythical "AGI" becomes clear, or as funding eventually runs out (even VCs or hyperscalers can't fund unprofitability forever), the hype will suddenly halt. The market will crash. Even those that make it through won't create much value because too much money, too much competition, and too high valuations got built up along the way. Did you know that: Adding just one extra sentence to a maths question can reduce AI accuracy by up to 65%, with no evidence of formal reasoning? GPT-4o scored only 19% on the ARC-II fluid intelligence benchmark, while humans scored 75%? Over half of all 2024 VC funding went to AI startups, with the top 30 US firms controlling 75% of all venture capital? The S&P CAPE Ratio now sits at 39, approaching the dot-com record of 40-42? The Mag7 tech companies now account for approx. 35% of the entire S&P 500, with concentration exceeding dot-com bubble levels? Nine US firms control half of all venture capital raised, creating a FOMO-driven gold rush with increasingly circular revenue models? But AI will kill jobs and cut costs! Except that Swedish scale-up Klarna dramatically U-turned on plans to replace staff with AI after poor results. They were not the only one. 95% of corporations gained zero measurable return on generative AI in 2025, according to an MIT study. And what's more concerning, this is a massive deja vu! We've been here before for previous bubbles and gold rushes. Sure some argue that AI will eventually create value, even if some will get hurt along the way. But that's not the point. Because it's unclear this value will go to AI companies and won't instead commoditise. Also this time around it's not a surprise. It's not a geeky niche. It's an obvious trend. Obvious never leads to alpha. At best it leads to beta value creation, and that's assuming you don't get crushed along the way. But I see HOPE. Not in the current market behavior. But in what can come out AFTERWARDS. Here is my essay on it all: https://lnkd.in/dQdRaTaE

London has probably become the focal point for the NATO Resilience Tech movement. Thanks mostly imho to the unbelievable work led by Leslie Hitchcock, Tobias S. and the Resilience Media team. Being invited for this year's edition was more than a privilege: With the Resilience conference in full swing from yesterday, it's been a true opportunity to help both my portfolio startups and fellow investors, governments and other companies who really care about the future of each and every European and NATO country. The interest I saw both from US VC juggernauts and from true military heroes including the Ukrainian forces fighting Putin's aggression in their homeland is real. It's growing. I believe there is also the clear possibility of hype but I came away thinking that people's true motivations and values are ultimately easy to spot. Tourist founders and investors looking to raise "easy funds" will probably be chastised financially. Meanwhile the dangers Dictatorial powers pose today are very real, as the recent Denmark incident show. So we do need more awareness about the space. We will need cross investor, cross Atlantic, cross country collaboration to rebuild strength for Europe and to ensure the US and its allies remain ahead of the technology game. It's not a given. And we clearly need to help more people see the issue. Branding all defence work as evil won't help you protect your homes when a rocket or a Shahed drone is heading your way. Ignoring the massive cybersecurity attacks and people's manipulation and disinformation campaigns happening right now everywhere won't protect our children. Equally, I DO believe defence investing and entrepreneurship is NOT the same as backing fintech. If you're serious about exploring the space for support or personal knowledge, whether as an LP, a VC or a founder, I'd strongly recommend you follow or contact credible, honest people of integrity like the folks at Resilience to understand both the needs and dangers of the space. Or message Ragnar and Philip to go see their work first hand with Darkstar in Kyiv. 🇺🇦 2022 pushed me into a 180 degrees stance change on defence that reverberated through my deeptech investments since. We need more people that share this vision with the right principles to look at the space seriously. Like climate investing, this is a critical sector. And like climate you need to promote business success but your fundamental aim can't be financial rewards. After this annual gathering I know many people share the right values. And this gives me the confidence to carry on supporting entrepreneurs in the space in Europe. Onwards ✊

⏰ Apply by Next Sunday 5th October: Calling all European deeptech founders! 📣 This is for you 👇⚛️🦾 This week is the last chance to apply for The Deeptech Demo Day 🚨 This is not your average pitch fest. Some of the most ground-breaking startups from all over Europe have applied: → Supported by over 110 VCs. → 3 top-notch fund General Partners + 1 Unicorn Deeptech Founder confirmed as judges. 🦄 → 10 trailblazing finalists will showcase live. Powered by Silicon Roundabout Ventures and Frontier Deep Tech ( Dr Cristina Esteban Pardo) 🚀🚀🚀 Every applicant gets exposure to all VCs involved AND anonymised feedback from the random VCs scoring. Last year, we made over 70 founder-VC introductions through the platform and many more at the live damo day. And here it's the VCs pitching for meetings to the most relevant companies! I myself ended up investing in one of the participants :) From local Europeans to global investors. From first cheque soloGPs to huge funds backing series A and beyond. This is the defining moment for European deeptech. If you're a deeptech entrepreneur, this is your stage. Time is ticking. This is the last week to apply. Don't let this opportunity slip. Whether you're actively raising or not, this is your chance to showcase your technology and brand to the world. Ready to make waves in the deeptech world? Open and free for all pre-seed to pre Series A deeptech founders in the whole of Europe. Like and tag someone who should to help founders and the ecosystem 🙏👇 Application link on the comments below and on The Deeptech Demo Day page --- Sponsored by: Mishcon de Reya LLP and PEM 🙏

Can you really spot billion $ dollar founders if you ain't one? We didn't take that chance. Announcing our final judge for The Deeptech Demo Day 🔥 Martin Frost co-founded CMR Surgical in 2014 and served as CEO until late 2019, and on its board until 2020. He took the company from inception to the commercialisation of the Versius robot, raising £250m in funding (a record for a private European medtech business) and reaching unicorn status with a valuation above $1bn. CMR has now become one of Europe's most valuable tech companies and are commercialising precision robotics surgery globally, with its latest valuation exceeding $3bn and spawning its own "mafia" of new startup founders. After CMR, Frost has chaired and invested in leading deeptech companies, including Hypervision Surgical, Nyobolt, Monumo, IQ Endoscopes Limited, Creavo Medical Technologies Ltd, and Cyted Health with a focus on robotics, medical devices, diagnostics, and energy storage. He continues to mentor founders and drive technological progress across sectors. Martin will also join the finalists and the Partners of the VC firms supporting The Deeptech Demo Day for a private event in London after the virtual competition is over, sharing how he went on to scale a deeptech company from inception to global expansion and unicorn status 🦄 Applications are still open! Drop your hat in 👇 The Deeptech Demo Day (note: if you haven't raised Series A you can still join and demo your company even if you aren't raining just now 🏋️-- build that FOMO now!) Please like and tag any founder or incubator who'd find this useful. Let's build a stronger Europe together 💪💪💪⚛️⚛️⚛️ -- Powered by Frontier Deep Tech (Dr Cristina Esteban Pardo) and Silicon Roundabout Ventures Sponsored by the very best startup lawyers in town, Mishcon de Reya LLP, and top notch tech accountants, PEM Applications close on September 30th Finals on November 25th If you'd like to watch them, head to the website and find the registration link :) 🎥

If you help me get to 1k likes, I'm betting with one of you the equivalent in $ USD cash. Elon didn't take up Gary Marcus' money wager before, so no point in asking him. The amount of $ USD Cash will be equivalent to the likes/reactions in the post, provided it's more than 1k, so it's at least fun. My side is that I bet GROK 5 won't be AGI. Comment below if you believe he will or he won't. If you care, say why. And if you believe it will be AGI and you want to be picked for the wager, add a 🤚 I'll have to put a ceiling of 10k because I've committed all my savings into my VC fund... But the way LinkedIn works, I probably won't get there anyway. So if you're curious to see if I keep my word: like and reshare, comment and see where we land. Here are the rules: 1. I bet Grok 5 won't be AGI. Since the definition is a bit blurry, I'd say it won't be AGI by most general acceptance, as GPT-5 was ultimately not defined as AGI (For example, if I search "is GPT 5 AGI?", my duckduckgo search auto-generated answer from the top wesbites says "GPT-5 is not considered Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as it does not possess the ability to continuously learn or surpass human cognitive capabilities. While it offers notable improvements over previous models, it falls short of the expectations set for achieving true AGI") 2. On the day of the release, we will see how many likes this post got and pick one random person who says GROK 5 will be instead, here in the comments (we can use a 3rd party random picker website) 3. We give it 1 calendar month for people to test the thing and them to push updates, fix bugs and fuckups etc. 4. If by then GROK 5 is AGI as per above, I will pay that person the amount of likes this post gets in $ USD to an account of their choice, we can agree to in private. It can be a charity donation. 4. If GROK 5 is not AGI, the person must do it instead, and my charity of choice is The Prison Phoenix Trust Wager on, if you like. Literally.

I must be such a loser in VC. Everyone else is going to catch several Decacorns. No, seriously, looking around at the inception valuations I see industry colleagues pay for equity, I must be the worst investor ever. I mean, surely they figured out how to hit a few unicorns and at least a fat decacorn at pre-seed / seed. Some even betting on having spotted a Trillion-dollarcorn (not sure how you'd call it). ...or maybe we are in full bubble times and sooner or later reality will catch up. 🫠 Here is what I mean: so many times I either read explicitly (or implicitly deduce from startup valuations granted) that in VC the entry price doesn't matter. It's all about catching the outlier. The argument for it is that most of the value in the industry is generated by those huge exits like Figma or Klarna. But even people like Claudio Erba who actually built and exited a unicorn aren't convinced. And thankfully Peter Walker makes it plain obvious with his data WHY this argument is wrong. Let me spell it out for you: D-I-L-U-T-I-O-N Here's is how it works. Suppose you back a company at pre-seed or an early seed. If you're lucky the founders will raise another round (only one that is but it's not always the case) before series A. Then you have all the letters. And that's not even counting bridges, extensions, and a nasty down round along the way. Which do happen sometimes even to the best companies. But let's be optimistic and take what looks average in the current data. 20% then 20% then 15% then 11% - Starting with 100% ownership and applying each dilution you get: 1. After Round 1: 100% × (1 - 0.20) = 80% 2. After Round 2: 80% × (1 - 0.20) = 64% 3. After Round 3: 64% × (1 - 0.15) = 54.4% 4. After Round 4 (11% dilution): 54.4% × (1 - 0.11) = 48.4% And that's the maths of just 4 rounds. The biggest mega exists often require many more. Figma got to Series F before IPO. But let's be simple and kind and optimistic and let's say that you DO get a decacorn (let's use the Figma $20B) and let's say you're left with 30% of your stake by then. What are you actually left with? Well, THAT depends on how much you had to start with. If you backed the company at $5-10m post, you can pop the cork 🍾 say you wrote a $500k cheque you got 10-5% of the business and are now sitting on 3-1.5%, which is 600-300m Even if dilution was stronger, you still got probably 100m And even better! Since decacorns are super rare, this pricing allows early seed backers to be ok with much smaller outcomes. Say 60% dilution on a $500m exit after 4 rounds still gets you a $20-10m payout. If you run a small fund, it's meaningful. And you should listen to Michael Kim's podcast by Turner Novak on why this is smart. BUT! If you do what seems so obvious today and your typical pre-seed is $25 to $100m post... Let's call it $50m... Then you MUST get Figma and even that is only maybe $30-60m And how many Figmas are there? Wait: your seed post was $12 billion? Ah, right...

Have you ever built 4 companies with 3 exits? Built a VC firm from scratch? Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to a Deeptech investor who did! The 2nd judge announcement for The Deeptech Demo Day is none other than one of the leaders at Hoxton Ventures as an Innovate UK council member. Isabel Fox is a legend in the VC ecosystem. ⚛️ An early stage deeptech investor, mother, wellness coach and horse breeder. She joined Hoxton from Molten Ventures. But that wasn't how she got into venture. I met Izzie when was one of just a handful of female partners in the UK as she co-founded OUTSIZED VENTURES, an early stage deep-tech fund, and invested $80m into ground-breaking founders who are daring to disrupt the status quo and improve the world we live in. Before Outsized, Isabel founded 2 corporate communications firms focused on the venture ecosystem in London, New York and San Francisco. Which she successfully exited. She also co-founded two software start-ups (one exit) and was an active angel investor in the UK and US, before moving into LP positions in emerging managers with the potential for Alpha. In short: Isabel is one of those people who build themselves up and then decide to keep on building and pushing the boundaries in the investment world. That's the caliber of people you want to look at your deeptech work! 👇 21 days left to apply. 10 finalists to run virtual pitch/demos. 1 winner. And even if you don't win, you'll still be exposed to all our investor partners. It's your time to build FOMO! 💪 --- ❗❗❗ So if you are building a deeptech startup in Europe, head to The Deeptech Demo Day website and apply now. And if you're looking to invest in the very best scientists and engineers building tech that truly matters on a global scale.... Do the same. PS: Universities, accelerators and incubators are welcome to share this with their cohorts. No startup is too early. Last year one of the finalists was a Series A and one was fresh after incorporation. It really IS about the founders and the potential! 🫵 --- See you on the other side with our co-hosts over at Frontier Deep Tech (Dr Cristina Esteban Pardo) and with a massive thank you to the sponsors that make it possible: Mishcon de Reya LLP and PEM 🔥

"Yes, it's magic! The bigger the churn and losses, the more marginal the model gains... The more we investors want in!" (At any price) I was joking the other day about more and more folks outside of tech talking about investing and AI... But if we look at who's got the biggest stake on the line, numbers paint a different story. Maybe it's financial investors who are taking inspiration from the shoe polishers this time around. 🤷 --- PS: Yes this is an AI made picture. And no I don't think it's hypocritical. The Internet was a great tech development but the hype still crashed dramatically in 2000-1.

The bartender at a tech event yesterday was surprised I didn't invest in AI. At my in-laws in Murcia (Spain) this summer, as far removed from tech and VC you can imagine, I was asked about my thoughts "as an investor" on "la inteligencia artificial". I think last time I've spoken so often with people outside of my little tech bubble about tech investment topics was Bitcoin. It was 2021.