E472 | Oliver Holle, Speedinvest: Europe's VC Momentum, Political Engagement & Global Alliances

0:00While Trump, Musk and the MAGA machine double down on a US-first tech agenda, Europe faces a deciding moment. Joining the counter-offensive is Oliver Huller, founding GP at Speedinvest, one of Europe's most active early-stage VCs, managing over 1 billion euros in capital and backing over 360 startups. As geopolitical tensions and economic realignments redefine the global order, can Europe take control of its own tech destiny or will it remain a supporting act in a U.S.-dominated world? Let's get into it. Please welcome Oliver Huller. Thank you, David. Thank you, Andreas. Really great to do this together.

0:43And the title is fun, I think. So I hope we can live up to it. So Europe's counter-offensive. Let me start with a very personal observation. I've been in venture and in startups for more than 25 years. First 10 years as a founder, now as a VC. and pretty much all my life I've looked up to the US. Why? Pretty obvious, right? That's where the pioneers are coming from. That's where the big thinkers come from. That's where the big companies come from. We all have been there. Personally, I think, I don't know how you feel. I'd love to talk to you about this. Things have changed a bit in the last couple of months, haven't they?

1:25So for me, when I think about soft power and what it actually means in terms of aligning with values, with our values, aligning actually where we want to take this industry, where we want to be, I think there is a pretty interesting shift. What is that shift? Actually, strangely, I feel so proud to be European than never before in my life. So I think that's something useful, that's something important. Why? Because it's actually very, very refreshing these days. It's very healthy. it's very positive for all of us if we think about being modest being fact driven raising our voice for democracy and actually seeking consensus that's something that was very very uncool for many many years I think nowadays we actually see the value in it and what is this?

2:13for me that's European and that actually gives us a pretty unique opportunity so don't quote me on this well I guess you do but I mean ultimately if I talk to founders I see an opening. I see founders that are actually interested to align with capital that is also aligned with the values that they seek for. And I think this is something, this is a wake-up call for us. This is an opportunity for us that we now need to go into. So let's look at the facts. Can we actually take this opportunity? Can we make it happen? The numbers, I think, are so simple, it's almost painful. It's actually so painful because there's no excuse for us not to do it.

2:57If we look at the population, if we look at total wealth, and if we look just at the capital available from insurance funds and pension funds, yes, maybe there's a little bit of a gap, but not a big gap. There is no reason why we cannot significantly increase the size of this industry. We have more people, they have a little bit less money, but plenty of money in total. European venture, 426-something billion euros or dollars AUM. So in comparison, if you just compare this to pension funds and insurance money, it's still a tiny fraction, it's less than 2%. So obviously, just looking at these capital pools, there's tons and tons of room to grow.

3:46Side note, we are ready to exit our industry. We often forget this. Everybody still talks about, we love to talk about the crisis of European venture and how slow we are. We actually outpaced the US significantly, more than double in terms of growth of this industry. We have grown from tiny, tiny 43 billion in 2015 to, yeah, more than 400 billion last year. So that's a 10x. That's something that we actually look for our founders to do. So I think that's an ambition that is quite interesting. So what do we do? Let's just do it again, right? So if we take the$426 billion and 10x that again, then actually we're in a very, very meaningful dimension.

4:36How? Okay, let's first look at the money. Where does the money come from? The first way to look at it, again, is at our own markets. If you look at, and let me quickly guide you through the thought experiment, it's very simple. Again, let's look at the$426 billion that we have currently in the bank. So that's roughly 1.6. I know we don't have only pension insurance money in Europe, obviously, but it's a good benchmark. U.S., a lot bigger,$3 ,000 billion, 10.3 % of pension insurance money. If, and let's say if we would 10x that amount, 4.2 trillion in venture capital AUM, that would still be, if we assume a modest growth in terms of increasing the AUM for pension insurance money, it would still be at the equivalent percentage of capital in relationship to pension funds and insurance.

5:38So even if we 10x our industry, we would still be at US level. So there is no reason that our industry, our continent cannot do it. The only reason we shouldn't, we are not there yet, is us and to some degree our politics. So let's be clear about this. but obviously there's not only European capital there's a lot of other capital pools and that brings me to a second point I wanted to make because I saw it myself in the last two or three years and it's very very interesting let's speak about new alliances again coming back to the gentleman that actually I think is the biggest force of good for European venture Mr.

6:17Trump there there are a lot of people that are currently reshifting focus. They are reshifting in their ways to look for new partners, look for new partners' innovation, and Europe is perfectly positioned to be this partner. We can look at GCC and Africa, very, very close markets. I mean, the time zone difference is almost nothing. It's growing markets. There's a lot of capital to deploy, and there are a lot of people there that actually are very, very keen to engage with us, diversifying away from an unreliable partner overseas. Similarly, Asia, Southeast Asia, a lot of players, and we've seen it ourselves, are now looking to Europe to engage, diversifying away their asset allocations.

7:06The amount of capital that is available there to be invested in Europe is gigantic. So in total, I think we have a unique opportunity that actually was served to us on a silver platter, so we just have to make use of it. So what's stopping us? I guess the last point I want to make is let's look at ourselves. Obviously the capital is there, obviously the opportunity is there, so maybe there's something missing. Personally, I think we also need to get our act together. I would not say that the venture community, especially the group here in the room, is lacking or is relaxing. We're all working really, really hard.

7:46but I think it needs a bit of a mindset change. Why? Because if we're serious about 10xing our industry it will not be done as lifestyle businesses. And that is a point I want to stress. I want to also stress that my very best friends run lifestyle businesses and there are many, many reasons why doing that is actually very good for yourself, for your family, for your health and also for your personal finances but it's not what we need to get this community and to get this industry and our continent to the next level. We need to move on. We need to build at scale. And we don't need more fragmentation in Europe that we already have.

8:27What does this mean? For me, it means a couple of things. We need to build. We need to move away from a mindset that is only investor-focused, we as investors, we as being the best investors in the world, to actually being builders. We need to be entrepreneurs, just as we have the people that we work with on a daily basis, and to really think like a founder. That also means, by the way, reinvesting the fees that we get into the firm, into our business, expanding our teams, not contracting them, and actually investing in the future in a vision of 10xing this industry. What it also means, I think, is consolidation.

9:08I've been saying this for a while and I still believe it will happen dramatically we need to consolidate there is no need to have thousands of small seed funds in Europe we need to consolidate and the one thing that stops many of us is ego there is this vision or this perspective that one firm can only tolerate one ego, one big mind one smartest person in the world I don't think so, I think we can build firms we can build companies that can accommodate many, many, many of these people and that can actually become scalable operations. And lastly, we need to collaborate. There is a lot of things to be done on the political side.

9:49I think we all have been too silent, including myself. We should actually, despite all the competition that we do on a daily basis, really work together and actually put joint pressure on all those big players that actually have huge amounts of leverage with the capital and the regulation that we need to move on. So I think that's very clear what needs to happen. Let's build. I think we have a very good reference point with all the founders that we ask to build and to invest and to spend their time. So I guess we really have to ask ourselves, what is the response from us, from this industry? I think if you're honest about it, we know that we are very, very, so to say, we need to, if we look at our kids and we need our society in Europe, we actually need to do it.

10:40Otherwise, other people will do it. The Americans will do it. I don't think that should be the future that we want for us. So let's do it together. Let's build. Let's look at our founders and take reference from them and do it together. Thank you.

10:56down this wall. It's more than just an ally. This is a union of values. Let's start acting. This show is not investment advice and the hosts of this episode may be invested in the funds and companies featured. Oliver Hollett, welcome to the European VC podcast coming fresh off the EUVC summit where you gave a big talk about the state of European tech, how we need to respond to the U.S. tech agenda. And I want to first and foremost, thank you for joining us. Thank you for being a supporter of the ecosystem, jumping right into the debate and the fray. I really think that's important. So Oliver, thank you so much for that.

11:42Yeah, thank you for having me here again. And And it's really great what you do. Oliver, you're talking in a couple of days or so at Guytex as well, where you're going to talk about the need for alliances in Europe and how they're shaping up and everything. So that's obviously also going to be a part of this conversation. But let me just start this conversation with the three main questions that you posed to us all at the summit, which was, where are we in Europe? Where are we in venture? and where do you want to play? Yeah, thank you. Thanks for opening up the room with these questions. Fundamentally, we are at the end of a cycle and we are at the same time at the beginning of a new cycle in venture in Europe.

12:29It's very exciting. It's a bit scary, I think, for many of us, especially when you think about liquidity and fundraising and all of these aspects. But of course, this is a cycle that is moving upwards and actually pretty steeply upwards. So we should not forget that. I think especially when you read European newspapers and you're in your own little bubble, it's easy to see all the scary things. But ultimately, if you take a step back, actually Europe looks quite healthy. It looks quite exciting. And we should just always remind ourselves of this. when I started this venture roughly 14-15 years ago we did not have repeat founders we did not have a level of sophistication in the teams and overall in the different ecosystems that we have now it's a very very different game we have experienced executives we have top level academics that understand and know how to launch a spin out or how to go and move to the commercial side And the level of ambitions are very, very different from anything we've seen back then.

13:36So that's a massive change. We are pretty much on par at that level with the U.S. Maybe we don't have the thickness of talent or the thickness of entrepreneurial experience, but we definitely have a sufficient particular size of very, very ambitious, very skilled people here. So that's amazing. we see a wave of innovation that I personally believe plays very much into the hands of Europe. If you think about network effects, if you think about consumer markets, very tough to launch a huge global B2C case out of Europe. The topics that we're talking about now, deep tech, biotech, climate, that all these topics are much, much more close to the core DNA of European industrialism, of European engineering spirits than the next social lab.

14:32So that helps us. That gives us opportunity that is very close to what our universities have been doing research in for many years. It's also very close to our industrial core and the large corporate basis that we have in Europe. So in this sense, the shift of the last couple of years to these new themes are actually very, very good for us and puts us in a good position to create renewable leases. Not something we've been doing in the last couple of years. And lastly, on the fundraising side, on the funding side, yes, of course, there is a gap. We all know it. But if we look at the really good companies, the successful companies, they do get funding and they get sufficient funding.

15:15It's not the case anymore that the very best European founding teams have to sell or want to sell for a couple hundred million. They are building big companies. There are syndicates coming up that are interesting, sometimes weird, with family offices and public markets putting together syndicated rounds, especially in deep tech. But they are happening. And we see very few excellent companies or strong companies that struggle on that part. So in that sense, I think we can be quite happy. So that's Europe. That's Europe. Can you help me and some in the audience that might be listening a lot on X, seeing what is that in the States, listening to podcasts like The All In, where you have thought leaders saying things like Europe is uninvestable and so on.

16:07Can you help those that are easily swayed by well-talking, very eloquent podcasters in the States to think that Europe is not in as good a place as it actually is? Why do you think we see this? I think there is a perception of Europe that gets a couple of things fundamentally wrong. the first one to start with is that the perception is that European startups built for Europe that's fundamentally wrong if you look let's like the most successful company in the recent year's Scottish side I mean obviously they're global companies you look at many of the successful European incumbents all of them are global champions and we all know if you want to invest in venture and you want to be a successful venture capitalist you need to be global champions That also means the US market and pretty much all of the big European companies have eventually become global players and global winners.

17:09So it's completely irrelevant if the European markets are too small to scale or if the capital base is completely irrelevant. The relevant question is, do these companies have a chance to break out into a certain level of scale at which point they are global investable companies? and then they are work there anyway attracting global capital and anyway competing in global markets. So what we're talking about is first five to seven years. That's where we need to have a level playing field and everything else is then up for the entrepreneurial talent of the founders, of the executives who run this company.

17:47So this whole thing of limiting yourself to your content, this is weird and they don't do it for themselves either. So I would just forget about that. And I think there's another very important point, which is Europe cannot be one from one destination, meaning you need boots on the ground and you don't just need boots on the ground in London. You need boots on the ground across Europe. And yes, OK, if you're Sequoia, maybe you can get away staying more or less in London because any good founder will get to you because they're thinking about Sequoia. But if you're anyone but them, almost, it will not get you.

18:29And if you're then thinking that you can apply the U.S. way of thinking about, well, everything is Silicon Valley, thus also Europe can be capturable just by visiting here once a year or looking in from the outside, you completely understand everything. And what is more, we have a fundamental disadvantage when it comes to telling our story. It's not something we're good at in Europe. It's not something that both because of the language barrier, but also just because we don't do it the same way. Many of the very best companies in Europe come out of Eastern Europe where it's an even more prevalent issue.

19:08If you're then applying what one might call a U.S. perspective or lens to things that everyone should be the greatest pitcher in the world, everyone should be able to sway anyone during an elevator ride, then you're fundamentally going to get Europe wrong. And I just think that that is what we're seeing a lot because I honestly have not seen anyone who have spent real time in Europe restating the things that you hear on Twitter or the US podcast. So I really think it's important to hammer this point home that that is what's going on when you're listening to US podcasters. That's one. And you know what?

19:51You know, the one person that is doing the biggest advertising for Europe these days is the U.S. president. Because exactly that kind of attention-grabbing, headline-seeking mentality where everything is about being bold and being all over the top, that's exactly the opposite of what Europe is. And personally, I think this is becoming highly infashioned these days. So I think the European way of being nuanced, of being differentiated, of a little bit less boldness, but more reality and more subtlety is actually very, very much appreciated by the world, also outside of the US. and this actually can become suddenly a soft power that we can bring to the table.

20:40If I look at politicians, and I know this is not a political podcast, but if I look at politicians, I'm much rather side with European politicians than with US politicians these days. And ultimately, if the venture ecosystem goes down in a similar route where we can say, okay, look, we may not have the trillions of capital behind us, but we actually spend a lot of time with you and we actually listen to you and we're not listening to ourselves, advertising, that is also a nice position that could really pass the way forward for a very different kind of conversation where we're not always thinking that we are in defense because we are not.

21:18I don't think we are. I just had a recent conversation with a friend from the SVC community. And if I talk to him about the fundraising climate in the US for VCDs today, it's terrible. It's actually really, really bad. I'm very happy that I'm in Europe these days. You made a comment that you said this is not a political podcast. And it is obviously not. However, a pet peeve of mine is trying to get the European VC ecosystem more involved in politics. I love your take on this. Obviously, given the title of this conversation being the European response to the U.S. tech agenda. And obviously, there is a very important political dimension to this.

22:06But I'd love to ask you how you think about this, how you're also getting involved in politics, whether you're not or whether you are. And I'm deliberately here using the word politics and not just policy. There is actually an important distinction, which is policy. we tend to over-index on being honestly nuanced and best practice minded rather than actually taking a side. And I think that there is a strength to leaning in and also putting your neck out, risking that you are hated by some. But honestly, when I look at the states and I see the power that the tech sector has been able to accumulate by leveraging everything that's around tech and the future and investing and backing startup founders and all the good energy that's here from society, I think they've been able to do something that is way above the AUM mark of just startups and venture capitalists.

23:07So I'm very curious to hear how you think about this for VCs in Europe. I had this conversation in my round, in my own little bubble, in my private personal bubble for a while, I have friends that are in politics and they look at me and they look at my friends and they tell me, you are the lost generation. Like, there are people like myself and we are very engaged, right? We lean into it. But we never leaned in into politics. And that is a mistake on a generational level. A lot of friends, including myself, decided at some point to not go down that route and not spend significant time. And I think the results are seen in the politics we have.

23:55And that was an easy way out for us. We were much better to build our own companies or build the VC firm and did something else that is easier and more satisfying. But it's a problem. It's a problem. And I think both on the startup founder level and on the VC level, we need to rectify this. The problem here, of course, is that the logical, so to say, scope of work, if you think about politics, is the national level, unfortunately. The national level is so frustrating, especially when you work, when you come out of a small country like Austria, because the leverage is very small, but the work to get people educated, to get your voice heard, etc., is just as hard as in a bigger market.

24:40so for me the route is europe the route is to to create these kind of networks of influence in europe and and ultimately leverage the access to capital that we have by now together to make a voice for it because all the wonderful things about building you building out europe and european tech without massive investment will not will not work and we need for this both the public side and the private side, and that's the leverage we have. And I'm very self-aware that it needs more efforts here. I have an informal announcement to make, which is we are going to do a tech policy summit in Brussels.

25:24We are right now putting together the, shall we call it, the syndicate, the Ravel Alliance to do that. Because I think exactly what you're saying, we need to rally together. We need to both come together as an industry, both tech founders and VCs, and talk about this, figure out how can we approach it, talk to the people that have been successful, have someone like Andreas Klinger with EU Inc. Come and talk about the playbook, inspire others. I did an episode with him recently where he laid out basically the three fundamental things that he thinks are important to get right if you want to move an agenda forward in Brussels.

26:03And I really think that that is one part, getting us together. But then it's also equally important. And I hear this from the people in Brussels all the time. You need, as an industry, to make sure that the politicians and the policymakers in Brussels don't just have an ICP of a farmer with two children that he needs to feed, but rather also have a startup founder. Because right now, when they're doing policy, it's the farmer that's in their mind. We need to make sure that we transplant a European founder in there. And Andy is a great example. And he's a startup founder. He always had his energy.

26:43I know him for many, many years. And when he does something, he does it with everything he has, right? And now I decided to spend, hopefully for a long time, his energy on this. It makes such a difference, right? It's night and day. So this one person can make a huge impact and make a big difference. and we need 10 Indies and we should probably count ourselves into that crowd. Our story is so easy. I mean, I think the farmer stories are much harder to sell because you're actually benefiting much fewer people than we are. So we should be aware of this. We have a massive responsibility, but also massive impact if we believe that the next 50 years in Europe will be driven by technology, then we are mainstream.

27:33We're not fringe in that sense. I say that the most important force changing society today is technology. And for that reason, the people that are creating that technology have a huge responsibility to be involved. I'd love to ask you, Oliver, one reason that I, in personal conversations, conversations, private conversations with very renowned and respected VCs when talking about tech policy and whether you lean in or out. One pushback that I tend to get or hesitation that I tend to hear is, and they don't always say it as clearly, but I think this is what's at play. We have very private LPs behind us.

28:18They're not interested in backing someone who goes out and publicly declares their support for whoever or leans in heavily to an agenda that they don't agree with. Great example. It comes at a great cost to those that supported Trump or Kamala from anyone who is on the opposite spectrum of that. If you are a VC, it comes at great cost to that GP because probably he's not going to get that family office money next time, or maybe the endowment would prefer that don't get mixed up in this. How do you think about this? You have a big giant LP base behind you. How do you think about leaning into this as the managing partner of Speedinvest?

29:03It is a trade-off. It is a question that we have to ask ourselves. Otherwise, we would be not honest or not thinking through this. I think there is so much you can do in pushing the agenda for tech in Europe without going out and then really being extremely proactive, extremely confrontational. I mean, what we are all saying here is mainstream, no-nonsense, fundamental economics, right? That we need to push tech forward. Every study out there, every research out there confirms that. So you can stay very much within the lanes of not pissing off anybody and still push things forward. and honestly if I am losing a few LPs because I say I'm very fundamentally against the far right in Europe then I'm happy to do that and I've been saying that in Austria for years everybody knows it that's fine I think and if this is the ethical trade-off I think we all many many of us will be okay do we need to become a politician and and then deliver lives in creating awareness with a foundation?

30:17No, we don't. I think that's not the case. But do we need to hide? Not either. So, yeah. But I'm very clearly against political extremism, mainly on the right these days. That's just where we see the face of it. Right now, there's not that strong left. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, sure, sure. If we would have a massive communist movement in Europe, I would also be speaking public entities, but it's not that problem at all. No. And I think that the EU Inc. initiative, to me at least, has shown you can create a very powerful movement around a single point issue. So you don't have to go and be broad. As we've seen in the States, the tech ecosystem has gotten very involved in many things that maybe don't have much to do with them.