Lars Rasmussen: Cofounder of Google Maps and Panathenea

0:00Lars Rasmussen:Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show presented by Deal. I'm Seb Johnson. Today we have an amazing guest. We've got Lars who's got an absolutely phenomenal career and is doing amazing things in Europe in the tech ecosystem. So Lars, can you just give us like maybe a quick minute rundown of your career to date? Because it has been varied, interesting, and you've really played a really interesting role across the European ecosystem. So take it away. Yeah, well, look, it has been a minute. So born in Denmark, I have a PhD from UC Berkeley, joined the heady startup in the dot-com days.

0:35Joel had a big bust, and then I helped create Google Maps. Still by far my biggest success. It was something I did with my brother. We started a company, tried to raise money, failed, but then instead sold it to Google right before we were ready to launch. Spent six months at Google, turned it into Google Maps instead of our Maps. And that, of course, became a huge success. Stayed at Google, ran that team for a couple of years, did a different project, Google Wave, equally spectacular failure. And then as I was switching actually to work at Facebook, I also started angel investing. And around that time, maybe 2010, 11, 12, I met the founders of what became Canva down in Australia, helped them build their first tech team.

1:18A couple of guys actually from my team at Google, Cameron Adams, who became Mel and Cliff's third co-founder, Dave Herndon, who became the CTO. And that really got me into angel investing. And I spent another four years or so at Facebook, and now I'm out being an angel investor, also helping to start a fund here in Europe, an AI-centric fund called Florent, with a couple other Danes, one in Lisbon, I'm here in Athens, and one back in Denmark. But the coolest thing I'm working on now is Panathina, which I think will become the world's biggest, best, baddest innovation festival right here in Athens every springtime.

1:58Lars Rasmussen:Well, let's touch on that first. Why have you decided to build this new festival happening in Athens? Well, look, it started when I moved to... So my wife is Greek, Elamiva, Greek goddess. She's also my co-conspirator in the angel investing world. And we moved here from New York five years ago during the pandemic. And I have to be honest, we didn't expect a lot of startup activity to be happening here. Everyone knows there was a huge economic crisis here starting in like 2008, 2009. And we were blown away when we arrived here with how much had happened. And I think actually not despite the crisis, but because of the crisis.

2:38Like I don't want that to happen to anyone. But when it does, you should definitely not let it go to waste. And the Greeks have done an incredible job. Like there's 600, 700 active startups here. The first unicorns are starting to emerge, 40 active VCs. And one of the clever things they did was that they elected the first proper VC here in Athens to now be the prime minister of the country. So there's enormous support for the government to use entrepreneurship to help the country get out of the crisis. And it's really like, it feels like springtime after a long winter. And we thought, my beloved wife and I, we thought, hey, can we help not just investing in individual startups, which we've done, I think, 10 or 12 times now here in Athens, but can we also help the whole ecosystem grow?

3:21And we traveled around and we saw how slush in particular up in Helsinki, but also Web Summit in Lisbon has helped those ecosystems when they were young and emerging, dramatically accelerate their growth by having big international, in those cases, tech festivals. And I always thought, look, there's something Greece is good at. It's hospitality. It's experience. And we had a failed attempt to try and attract a big international festival to come make Athens their European home. But instead, we decided to build Panasthenia. In fact, it started like this. We thought we should build a big thing here.

4:00And everyone knows how the Olympic Games, which is the biggest sporting festival in the world, is a modern version of an ancient Greek festival. So we went to consult with the world's greatest classical scholar, ChatGPT, I'm sure you know her, right? We were like, well, I was asking, I'm the one foreigner on the team here, was there any other popular ancient Greek festivals that we could reimagine into a modern festival of innovation here in Athens? And Charlie was like, what a great idea, Lars. And that's how we learned about Panasthenia. And so Panasthenia was the original startup conference, if you like.

4:36The original Innovation Festival lasted for a thousand years. And it covered not just tech, actually. It had tech, it had culture, music, theater, poetry. I keep wanting to say film, but I haven't quite invented that yet. And a bunch of sports all at the same time. Lasted for a thousand years. Probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest event in the ancient world. Massive party in the end, as you can imagine. And we thought, this is it. This is what we need to do. and we started advocating for this. And we actually, we picked, you know how slush in Finland is built by students?

5:09Lars Rasmussen:Yeah. And so we connected with Peter Vesterbuck, who was one of the original founders, an old timer like me, but he was one of the Finns in the ecosystem of there that had this idea of building slush 15, 18 years ago. And Peter and the slush team has really shown us here in Greece how to build non-profit organization where the entire full-time staff or students and new grads, right? So I was CEOs, 23 years old, crazy talented. And last year with a team of just five, 22-year-olds, in just five months, they built the first modern Panathina, focused on tech, 3 ,000 people came. The Canva founders, actually my old friends from Australia, were our headline speakers.

5:52We had OpenAI, we had Google DeepMind, we had Hugging Face, we had Lemon Labs. And then because we want to make this a festival about innovation in all human endeavors, not just in tech, we also had some cultural icons came and joined us, like Kesha, the American pop singer, you know, her TikTok song. And she came, she's actually starting a tech company for musicians called Smash, which we're super excited about. And she came and talked about that. Oscar-nominated actress Normie Harris came from London, also starting a tech company. She came to talk about that. And so look, our original motivation to get back to your question was to help the Greek ecosystem grow.

6:35But the more we work on this, the more I think Greece really has an opportunity to build something meaningful for all of Europe. You know how there's a lot of soul searching in Europe. I think, well, the serve, how can we get better at innovation compared to America and China? And I think one of the components should be an annual gathering point, or maybe two actually, where I think I'm slush. is already serving that purpose. But because things move so fast now that you really need these to happen twice a day. And so we put Panathena on exactly six months after slush. So you can think of it as the tech component of slush.

7:11And so the tech component of Panathena is the slush of the south. But this year, so we're going to hold it this year at the last week of May, right here in Athens, in a park not far from where I'm sitting, right below the Parthenon. and we're going to have a startup component of course think six to eight thousand people will come from all over the world for this part crazy lineup of speakers already signed up but then we're also going to start an arts component for the first time which will be a little smaller this year but i think we'll actually outgrow the tech component by far in the next five or ten years

7:44Lars Rasmussen:amazing and it seems like this year is going to be significantly bigger than last year yes i mean it seems like last year was almost like a pilot and it seemed to go really well and was successful this year it's going to be a big bang and everybody's talking about it and i think it's really interesting that you've done it exactly six months before and after slush and also there's going to be like the hot slush right it's going to be the hot summery spring version compared to the cold dark wintry version helsinki which i think is going to be amazing i love slush but it's going to be it's going to add a whole new dimension to it yes yeah look i mean we love slush And I feel like just going to Slush and learning how it was built.

8:20I mean, you go there, right? It's called Slush, as you know, because you walk through slushy snow in the dark to get into the venue. And then it's one big party. It was like the most fun. I mean, seriously, you know, and really, really serious thing happening. But it feels like it's one big party. And I love it. Everyone loves it. And we realized that the Finnish have built such a delightful experience exactly because they asked the youngest members of the ecosystem, students in New Grand Civilian. So we have adopted this idea. We're totally in love with it. We'll see if we can make that stick for a thing that also covers arts and sports.

8:56And so far, it looks super promising. And, you know, it blows my mind. Like you're saying, everyone's talking about it. And it's only our second year. And I think there's this perfect storm that's coming together that gives Greece and Panathina this potential to become one of the world's, if not the world's, most important and impactful and beloved festivals of innovation. I mean, one is this incredibly powerful bit of history that Greece had the original such festival for a thousand years where people came from all over the world back then. and um and and the other thing is look i can say this because i'm not greek myself but greece is just really good at hospitality and i don't just mean in terms of the kind of capacity of the hotels and the airport and all this like greece is one of the small one of the few countries in the world that welcomes more visitors every year than they have citizens and by quite like it's a factor of four or so right but it's more it's more that about hospitality is so deeply ingrained in every Greek's DNA.

10:00And in fact, when we did our surveys after last year's Panicinia, everything got tons of praise. But like the thing that consistently got the top praise was just the quality of the Greeks and in particular the young volunteers. You know how you get a bunch of students, I think we had 150 students, came and managed the actual event on the day, right? And how warm and welcoming and well-organized

10:27Lars Rasmussen:and knowledgeable those young Greeks were. That's what really blew everyone's mind the most, to be honest. And so that's what the Greece's strength and hospitality makes this an obvious thing to build here, right? And then springtime Athens, let's be honest, it's just like a delightful place to visit, right? That it's not too hot yet. The trees are going to be blooming. We're going to be mostly outdoors. It's going to be right below the Parthenon you can see behind me. And then, of course, so this year the festival is from Wednesday to Friday, day, but then everyone can go play on the islands afterwards.

10:59I'm so I'm going to actually go organize a kite trip with my friends from Actai, a couple hours drive from Athens on the weekend after. And it's just like a phenomenal package, uh, packet. And then the other thing is that I think I feel like Europe needs this a lot. Honestly, it was not like our original motivation was to help Greece's ecosystem grow even faster. It's already growing super fast. Right. But I think this could actually be a meaningful contribution by Greece, my beloved adopted home country, to Europe and to the project of making Europe better and innovation. And you can probably tell I'm having a lot of fun.

11:37Yeah. It's one of the most exciting things I've worked on for a long time. And it's kind of weird because this is not what I do. Like, yeah, I'm an introverted geek. And as my wife will attest, I've never even put together a successful birthday party for her. And so this idea that I'm suddenly working on this project and, and part of what is working is of course, that I'm not actually on the team. Right. So, so the actual team and the executive decisions lie with our young team of students, right? They're all in their early twenties that are working like madly. It feels like a proper startup. And then old timers like me, we get to help us mentors.

12:15with connections, with advice, where often the young people have better ideas than we can come up with. But actually, one of the indications that this project is going to take on a life of its own is that already in the second year, our mentorship pool is starting to include some of the top people in the field internationally. So Peter Vesterbacca, of course, who was one of the founders of Slush, he's a very engaged mentor. Hugh Forrest, I don't know if you know him. He ran South by Southwest for decades. And he retired from that last year. And he'd heard about what we're doing. And he actually came, spoke at our stage, loved what our young team is building.

12:53And he's a very engaged mentor. Carolyn Dawson, who runs Founders Forum and Live London Tech Week. And last year, we had a great partnership with them where they hosted our speaker's dinner. And it just goes, Anastasia, who runs Brilliant Minds Open in Sweden, she is one of our mentors. And so it's really struck a nerve in the world. This idea that Greece is reimagining the ancient, the original innovation festival. It's doing it the slush way, not-for-profit, student-run, entirely focused on the founders. And then there's this arts component that's going to start this year that I think will outgrow in size, the tech component.

13:34And I think next year we'll start adding sports back into it. And it's interesting. So this idea of being not just about tech is something Plato, who was a contemporary of the ancient festival, I mean, it ran for his entire life. He made this observation of bringing the best and the brightest together from all human endeavors, created this very deep environment that inspired people to have the deep conversations about the future. And that's really what we're about. This is our contribution to helping the world advance human excellence, to invent the future, to make everything better for all of us.

14:16And I think that will be better done if we all get together, not just tech over here and arts over here, but we actually all come together. Also make for some really good parties in the end.

14:26Lars Rasmussen:Yeah, well, that's definitely on the party side. I went to a party last week, bro. There was a similar thing. There's a lot of European tech, but also a lot of musicians and artists. And it creates a really fun atmosphere. You know, you have different conversations, you meet different people and you really do get to be introduced to new ideas, which I think is really powerful. Can I ask about the ecosystem on the ground in Athens, right? I mean, part of what you mentioned, and there's a big European thing here, but also about lifting up the Athenian ecosystem, the Greek tech ecosystem. You mentioned that you've done a bunch of investments in the city, the startups around there.

14:57Lars Rasmussen:Can you talk a bit about the ecosystem? Like what kind of startups are there? What kind of talent is there? What are people building? And how is it growing? Yes. Well, so, yes, I've done maybe 10 or 12 investments here. And actually in a much wider set of startups than I normally deal with. You know, when I'm in a big city, like I lived in London, New York, of course, in Silicon Valley, people tend to come to me who have something to do with maps because that's what I'm best known for. But here in Greece, much younger ecosystem. And although it's growing super fast, there is not that many angel investors here.

15:29So everyone comes to me and so I've invested in a company that I think has a good shot. curing Alzheimer's. It's a biotech company with a drug discovery platform made from genetically modified E. coli bacteria. And I get to learn crazy stuff like this. I've invested in a company that's building a 3D printer that prints with human tissue. It blew my mind that this thing even exists. It turns out that's a thing in the world, but I think this little Greek company is going to be the first to get an actual surgical procedure approved using a machine like this. and they're just about to start human trials.

16:04They're finished in preclinical trials. I mean, this is just like super exciting. And I think there's a ton of deep, deep research things in Greek universities where they're just starting to form a tradition for spinning it out, making startups, commercializing this. And then I think by any kind of objective measure, the amount of talent available, of course, in AI here is just huge. And the country's just made a deal with OpenAI, started an accelerator here run by Endeavor, which is one of the top organizations in town promoting entrepreneurship. And so there's not, like, you might imagine a relatively small country with a young ecosystem of startups would, like, focus on, it could be shipping or hospitality that are the big old-school industries.

16:50But that's not the case. Like, I see startups as wide as you can imagine here. I see talent in all kinds of fields. And I see like hunger, right? Because it's, again, I think it's a function of this quite intense economic crisis that the country suffered. And actually it cost a lot of talent to leave the country. I think 500 ,000 or so professionals left the country and many of them are coming back. And my wife is one of them, in fact, right? She's coming back. And many of them are bringing connections. They're bringing experience from abroad. But there is some of them even bringing spouses and partners who then immediately fall in love with Athens and this vibrant atmosphere.

17:33And so I think it's a super exciting time to be investing in Greece. It's, you know, high risk, high reward. I'm pretty sure that the first decagorn that will come out of Greece has already been started. I hope they're in my portfolio. But that's where I feel the ecosystem is at. that the first unicorns are starting to emerge like Brewground and Flexcar and Scrooge and Viva Wallet and so on. But I think something even bigger, like something really world-changing, industry disrupting, has already been started, which I haven't seen it quite grow to that level yet. And yeah, that's where it's at.

18:13Lars Rasmussen:And where do you, you know, I guess like last year was obviously a success. This year's going bigger and better. You're building something that's going to last a long time. What would you like to see come out of the back of this? Maybe in five years, maybe in 10 years. What are your measures of like, okay, we did this and it was great and it was a success? So there's a couple of things. There's from the point of view of what quality do we want from the event itself. And we aspire, we're not short of ambition here, we aspire to make it one of the world's most coveted stages. But if you feel like you have something to say, this is where you'd most like to say it.

18:50it's a panacea on our keynote stage. And this, ideally, it doesn't matter which field you're in. If you're a startup person, if you're an ecosystem person, if you're an investor, if you're a sports person, if you're a singer, a filmmaker, an actor, a theater person, right? That this becomes the place where you want to come. And then as a side effect of that, right? This becomes the best place to network. And by the way, one of the fun challenges we have, we think this will actually go quite big in size. And as you know, size can be the enemy of community it can be the enemy of connection and so we we have a a very simple formula for where a person can go speak to a big audience kind of in the morning but then go and have small intimate experiences with just the right people in the afternoon and then of course great parties at night and and we want to like we want to like collect stories that come out of this of sort of planned serendipity, meetings, connections, conversations that happen here at Panathina that then turns into something really big and world-changing afterwards.

19:55And we're starting to see those, of course. I can tell you a few that I was part of myself, and that's what it's all about. If you look at my original motivation again to help the Greek ecosystem, right? So I think we will see that this will at least help the already super fast growing Greek ecosystem grow even faster. And this, there are people measuring that. And I think the good folks in Helsinki and in Lisbon are both like, have tons of stories of how hosting these big international festivals really help the local ecosystem. And mind you, it's important to understand that Panasinia is not about the Athenian ecosystem.

20:40The idea is that the best and the brightest wants to come together once a year and have the deep discussions about the most pressing international issues. And it just happens to be hosted here in Greece. But then, of course, the Greek ecosystem will be overrepresented as a natural fact that it happens here, right? And lots of international connection will be made, investments will be made. In fact, we're starting to see Athens becoming a magnet for talent. which is very exciting. You know how, like when I lived in New York and before then in London, both cities for a long time have just like one neighborhood.

21:20Typically, maybe a little rundown, lots of industrial stock warehouses. And it starts with the artist picking that neighborhood to move into, typically in part because they can afford big studio spaces. And then around the artist comes cool galleries and then the good coffee shops move there and then startup people come in, right? And it used to be Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Now it's moved one neighborhood over to Bushwick. But that's where all the cool stuff happens in both art and tech. And it becomes a super vibrant, bohemian neighborhood. And I feel like Athens is the Bushwick of Europe, is the shortage of Europe right now.

21:57We are here from many different places that artists are starting to move here at a meaningful scale. In fact, I was just in Los Angeles for the Grammys to try and sell to cool kids there to come to Panathina this year. And everyone loved the storyline. This I expected because I have yet to find anyone anywhere in the world who doesn't like the storyline of ancient Panathina. But what surprised me positively was that many people in Los Angeles have picked up the fact that artists in Europe are starting to move to Athens. And that, I think, is super exciting. That wave is going to help fuel Panathina, and Panathina is going to help accelerate that wave as well.

22:37Lars Rasmussen:That's super interesting. Yeah, I didn't realize that that was a trend that was happening. You mentioned at the beginning you've got some great speakers coming, some headliners. Can you touch on who we can expect to be there? Yeah, I mean, so we are starting to announce them. And so we have, I mean, a crazy line of speakers, honestly. like shuo from deal is coming from from san francisco at the cto of runway is coming from new york um we had the neil reimer is coming who was one of the founders of index vendors and in fact all the top vcs are coming from europe excel sequoia um we we have visionaries judy data she's a personal favorite i'm a big fan of her blog data log yes and i'm hoping she'll She'll come and give a live edition of that.

23:24I think she's one of the continent's top thinkers right now, and it's super exciting that she found the time to come. She's also the most sought-after speaker, of course. And there are many more that we're having conversations with that haven't quite confirmed yet. And honestly, it's crazy the quality of the speakers we're going to get in just the second year, just like in the first year. Yeah. It was crazy that that young festival can attract.

23:51Lars Rasmussen:speakers of that nature well it doesn't surprise me i think you know because there's been a lot of momentum a lot of noise about it and because of this the place where european tech is at the moment i think there's there's so much excitement about i think people are desperate to come and i think judith is amazing i sat down with her for a long interview because i completely agree she's she's she's becoming a real voice for european tech in a way that is really european you know she's got like a really interesting angle and a real thoughtfulness about her and i agree that Deadlocks is a great newsletter.

24:18Lars Rasmussen:Well, we're out of time, but I'm super excited to be there. I can't wait to come. And thank you so much for joining me. It was a pleasure. Thanks so much for taking the time and congrats again on your new edition.