Pod Insights Equity Podcast Why European founders are winning (and it’s not about working less) About this episode Europe's startup scene is having a moment, with European unicorns multiplying and American VCs setting up shop across the pond. But while European funding dominates the early stages, late-stage capital still flows primarily from the U. S. So what does this mean for European founders, and how is the continent carving out its own identity in an increasingly AI-driven world?
Today on Equity, we were joined by Shamillah Bankiya, newly appointed Partner at Dawn Capital, to talk through it all. She and Dominic-Madori Davis discuss AI's impact on European startups, the regulatory landscape, and her journey from Uganda to venture capital.
Listen to the full episode to hear about:
Why European companies still IPO in the U. S. and what needs to change
Bankiya’s marketplace startup and lessons for founders
Whether businesses actually need venture funding (spoiler: not all do)
Why American investors are suddenly flocking to Europe
The EU AI Act and its real impact on startups
Talent retention challenges and which founders are choosing to stay in Europe versus relocating to Silicon Valley
Equity will be back Friday with our weekly news roundup, so stay tuned.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 This episode of Equity is brought to you by Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric, advancing energy tech.
0:17 Speaker 01 Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. I'm Dominic Midori Davis, stepping in for Rebecca Bellan, and this is the episode where we bring on industry experts to dive deep into tech world trends. Europe's startup scene is having a moment with more than 10 European startups hitting unicorn status this year. But while European funding is dominating the early stages with a laser focus on local innovation, late-stage capital is still flowing primarily from the US. So what does this mean for European founders and how is the continent carving out its own identity in an increasingly AI-driven world? To talk through it all, we're joined by Shamillah Bankiya, newly appointed partner at Dawn Capital. She's going to talk to us today about, of course, AI, Europe's growing landscape, and her own journey into the space. Shamillah, welcome to the show.
0:59 Speaker 02 Thank you. Thank you so much.
1:01 Speaker 01 Well, first of all, you just became partner. That's amazing. Congratulations.
1:05 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:06 Speaker 01 I definitely want to talk a little bit, before we dive into our conversation, about you, your rise in this industry, becoming partner, what you're excited about in this new partner role. Let's talk about that.
1:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. We can start with me, if you'd like.
1:20 Speaker 01 Tell us, was venture capital always something you wanted to be? Like, did you grow up wanting to be a venture capitalist?
1:27 Speaker 02 So I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. I come from a super poor country in Uganda, which is in the middle of Africa. Everyone kind of has to work. So I started my first business when I was 10, selling extra snacks to my friends at school. I know, not very generous, but I was very obsessed with the idea of actually like not wasting anything and creating value in some sense. And so I always knew I'd do something entrepreneurial. I always wanted to be at the heart of either starting businesses or being a part of their founding stories. And I remember when I went to Yale to study economics, I was still excited by that idea. I just didn't yet know fully how I'd apply myself to that problem. And I remember doing a whole bunch of internships. Back in the day, it was cool to work at Morgan Stanley and at Bain Consulting and do-
2:10 Speaker 02 A whole bunch of those and everyone basically asking what I wanted to do and me saying, well, I just think it's really, really sad that there are a whole bunch of small companies in the world. And they have great ideas. It would just be amazing to help them tell their stories to other big companies that could help them grow bigger. And every single person I talked to looked at me and said, well, it sounds like you want to be an investor. And I was like, well, that sounds spot on. So I've actually been on this journey and career path for the last fifteen, twenty years. I know it's quite unusual. Most people kind of happen upon investing, but I've been wanting this for a very long time, in part because the idea of being a small part of someone's story as they change the world in some way is super impactful to me. And that's kind of why I wake up and do the job. And also because it's one of the few jobs in the world, I think, that you can wake up and learn something new every day.
2:53 Speaker 02 And that's actually like an additive thing. I think I have an immense affection for learning new things. And so venture lends itself to that extremely well. So in some ways, yes, like for the last twenty years, I wanted to be an investor of some sort. Started in growth investing at SoftBank Vision Fund. I was one of the people who started off their London office and I've been at Dawn for almost six years now. So the how has changed, but the what is actually very much the same.
3:18 Speaker 01 And you also had a B two B startup, right? You had your own startup.
3:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:23 Speaker 01 What are some of the lessons that you've learned having your own startup that you've taken with you and like applied to being an investor?
3:29 Speaker 02 I did have my own startup. It was really, really hard. So in between leaving SoftBank and joining Dawn, I was like, oh, let me just start a business because I'm obsessed with marketplaces. I think they're super complex and super challenging. And as it turns out, my sister is a caretaker nurse. And so we thought that we could actually create this platform that matches the supply of the nurses that we had from our community with the demand during COVID times from the NHS. And we kind of started out and I was like, oh my goodness, this is super, super hard. And I think the hardest thing is that there wasn't success on a day to day basis. There weren't like micro successes you could kind of sink your teeth into. It was like, okay, another day of like calling up fifteen more nurses, another day of calling up two more hospitals, another day of getting lots of no's constantly, constantly getting no's and kind of finding the resilience to pick yourself up and do it again.
4:14 Speaker 02 And I actually decided it was too hard. I think it gives you a lot of empathy for founders, right? Because I'm like, listen, like, at the end of the day, you're in the nitty gritty. You're literally trying to figure out how to break through with your product, with your market, with your hiring. You're in the business of getting told not all the time. And I think it's given me a lot of empathy for that. And the resilience founders need to have to do that, which I think is helpful. And just changes the questions I think you ask a founder, right? Because from a place of empathy in some sense. And I think it also changes how I show up at my boards. Because I understand that founders are just stretched, right? Every single person that we've backed is super ambitious. They really believe that they can build something large. And so the question I always ask myself is what can I take off their plate?
4:54 Speaker 02 What is the largest, most strategic topic that I can take off their plate that I can actually help them execute on? So going from what's the problem to like, literally here is the answer to the problem. And whether that's finding you two new customers to help you get to your quota, whether that's diving into hiring and helping you win candidates over, or using Dawn to help you find new candidates. Whether that's helping with new strategy, I've literally done called for one of my founders fifty of their customers to basically understand, like, you know, where the product is today, what more they could be doing. And that's just stuff that I enjoy doing, in part because I get to be a part of their story in some way. But also because I have a lot of empathy for the fact that they're stretched thin and, you know, I'm an extra pair of pants they can use in whichever way they need.
5:39 Speaker 02 And when you had your own company, how long did that last, by the way? Literally six months. I was out in six months. I was like, this is too hard. My sister actually kept going. She's been successful. She kept running it. She built like a nice little business. It's very tough to scale. We built it extremely manually. It was really like matching demand and supply constantly. There wasn't a digital element, so I think it would have been hard to expand, but she's done well for herself. Did you try to find investors? Did you try fundraising? No, I did not. This is a little controversial, but I think there are businesses that require venture funding and businesses that don't. And I think founders need to know which business they're building. And so if you're thinking of building like a local, literally marketplace for carers
6:21 Speaker 02 in central England, T B C, like, why do you need venture funding for that, right? Like, literally, you get paid by the hospitals. And then you give the money to the carers or the nurses. So like, why do you need venture capital? That wasn't a venture marketable business. I would say that if you wanna go big, right? And you're thinking to yourself, I wanna build something that's gonna be five, ten, a hundred billion dollar company. It's super hard to do that with venture capital. It's super tough to think about the capital that you need, the support you need, that the talent you need to attract, the customers you need to win over. I think venture is just almost a necessary part of that journey.
6:57 Speaker 01 I mean, I guess, speaking of the types of businesses, the UK, let's talk about the UK and the European landscape right now. There's been a lot of cool unicorns popping out of Europe. I'm adding the UK within the Europe conversation.
7:09 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
7:10 Speaker 01 I know that it's become kind of an exciting hotspot of talent and ideas. First question, just can you give us like a brief overview of what the ecosystem is?
7:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think you are absolutely right. But I think it's been exciting for a long time.
7:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:24 Speaker 02 To be completely honest. And I think what's probably changed is like the increasing amount of American interest in European venture-backed companies. That's changed a lot, I would say, over the last, you know, five years. When I joined Softbank Vision Fund, we were the only fund that could write a check of more than seventy, eighty million dollars in Europe. Now, literally every single US growth fund, you know, Iconic, Sequoia, I V P, Best, like, every single person has basically set up shop here because they've realized there's a huge amount of incredible founder stories coming out of Europe. And that's, that's super exciting. I think A I has definitely put Europe perhaps even more central to that conversation. There's just a bunch of really, really exciting companies coming out of here. And I think it all kind of just ties down to, I think, two things.
8:09 Speaker 02 One is just a core belief that I have, which is that ideas don't have a juggler fee. I suppose, yeah, like. As a black woman, I strongly believe that anyone can be amazing. And so it shouldn't be surprising to us that European founders are building amazing things. Like one of my founders is literally, it's two Estonian guys who like built a bot mitigation solution. That's now become a super, super large business and they distribute it mostly in Europe. The other company, again, a Greek founder that started a business in another land and is ex Uber, building, you know, a BTP wholesale marketplace. So I, I don't think ideas have a geography, which is I think one thing that perhaps we had forgotten over the last few years.
8:45 Speaker 02 And I think the second thing is just that, I must say, I, I spent lots of time in the US as you know, Dom, there's just an amazing amount of technical and AI talent coming out of universities here in Europe. I think it meant that when L L Ms came out, a lot of people had the unique skill set to actually productize that. And that's then delivered an amazing set of, of unicorns, right? For the last couple of years. So AI is definitely very, very hot and exciting. And then there's some things that I would say are quite specific to the UK. If I think about fintech, we do a lot of fintech investing here at Dawn and the financial regulatory environment is actually fantastic from that perspective. And we've been very, very successful at helping European founders scale their fintech businesses across Europe.
9:30 Speaker 02 And by the way, I think it's the same in law. I learned the other day that some of Harvey's first customers were in the UK. So I think there's a great combination of just people who are talented, people who have the right skills and actually buyers who are huge, huge consumers of software.
9:46 Speaker 01 Well, I have two follow-ups to that. First, you spoke about how there's been like increasing interest from American investors. And I know you said that they're realizing that talent, there is no like geography to talent. But was there another like catalyst as to why so many American investors are suddenly really interested in European talent? Was it because of AI or was there something before that that happened that all of a sudden everyone was like, oh yeah, let's open offices?
10:09 Speaker 02 I think AI definitely helps. I think to be completely honest as well, the period between like twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two, there was just an incredible amount. Like, we literally have like eleven unicorns in the portfolio just out of European founders. This is just one fund in the entire, uh, we manage three billion, so we're huge, but we're certainly not the entirety of the market. And we've had amazing success and stories. I think one part was just beginning to see the, the returns that people were able to generate by backing founders out of Europe fifteen years ago, and then actually coming to fruition. Then I think the second thing, I think you're very right, was COVID, right? It, it actually did change, I think, the expectation of how you have a conversation with an investor.
10:51 Speaker 02 I know it doesn't sound that long ago, but before COVID, you literally would fly, right? To see a founder before giving him a term sheet. Like, you would spend, and we still do that at Dawn. Like, it's a huge, for us, that personal relationship has always been what we hugely value. So we still do that, but COVID meant that people weren't doing that. And so if people don't have to fly somewhere to like hand out term sheets, you can hand a term sheet from anywhere, from anywhere. So I think that actually changed like the core expectation between European founders and US investors around the amount of legwork you had to have on the ground. And then I think them having more calls within real is actually a huge amount of talent, right? That, that actually underpinned European venture success.
11:30 Speaker 01 My second follow-up question was, sometimes when I talk to a lot of like investors and founders, there's always a conversation have like a lot of European companies coming to the US and then staying in the US. How is the conversation right now of keeping European talent within the European ecosystem so that you guys can reap the benefits of this success?
11:49 Speaker 02 It's a really, really good question. For the most part, it's undeniable that if you want to build a big software business, you have to start with the US. That's literally like a, you just have to, right? If I think about all of our big businesses, you know, the Saiku, Quintexa, Kalibra, Black, they literally all have US revenue. Interestingly, it's not like it's eighty percent US revenue. It's probably like sixty percent US revenue, maybe fifty percent US revenue. There's also a huge amount of European revenue that's actually a huge part of that piece and very often increasingly a huge amount of APAC revenue with Japan, Australia, et cetera, actually contributing more and more to SaaS. And so I think you've got to have a US strategy in general. And so when founders say they want to move to the US, I'm like, well, that makes sense to me, that you would have a part of your organization in the US that's helping you
12:33 Speaker 02 ultimately get to revenue goals that you have. You're not going to IPO without having some US revenue, basically, right? If you're a software business. And then the question is, how do you do that? And I I do think there's different house around that. You know, going back to Europe's strengths around talent, a lot of our companies have managed to keep a huge amount of R and D here in Europe. And that's actually a huge advantage because they've been able to scale much more efficiently than some of their US peers. Again, same reasons, great talent closer to the founders who are very, very often here. And that makes a huge difference into how quickly they can build amazing product. And then the question is, in a co-founding team, what's the right combination of who stays here in in Europe? Focusing on product versus who goes to the US often to drive go-to-market. We have had some companies move a lot of operations to the US.
13:16 Speaker 02 And I think in some instances, you just have to be forthright about where your customers are. Like, if you literally tell me that a hundred percent of your customers are in Silicon Valley, as a European founder, you need to go to your customers. So figure out a way to actually get a huge amount closer to them. I think we can't walk away from the fact that companies exist across continents, right? Even if we think about all the biggest SaaS companies in the world, they have massive European teams. This idea that you kind of have to be constrained to one specific geography because you were born there doesn't make any sense to me. And so the question is, how do you effectively distribute your company to allow you to scale and become a big business?
13:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, because I was mostly thinking about like the IPO market and how a lot of European founders choose to IPO in like New York. Why are they choosing to IPO in New York? I mean, like, I know why, but like, how do you get them to say like, oh, I want to IPO in my own country?
14:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think there we we have work to do, right? The first IPO out of Jordan was Mimecast. That was what, like, ten years ago? It was, I think, on the on the NASDAQ. Klarna IPOed last week on the New York Stock Exchange. There, I think there's more regulatory work to do. I think a part of it is just the regulation around investing culture. And that needs to change significantly. I think there's more that can be done in terms of incentivizing people to actually think about investing in public markets. Seriously, in the US, it's a huge, huge, the the depth of liquidity you get in the US is unmatched versus Europe, right? In addition to the US being a single consolidated market across all America and the world, because it's kind of, you know, has that. From a liquidity perspective, plus the fact that Europe is a bunch of
14:52 Speaker 02 large, but yeah, disaggregated exchanges, I think creates an imbalance that we probably need to solution on. I think a part of it is regulation, like IRAs are super, super huge in the US. ISAs are increasingly common in the UK. I think we just need to do a lot more regulation around that. And then there is a question, I think, as well as to how governments can incentivize pension funds to invest even more aggressively in some of these all your stage companies, right? So the fundamental issue, I think, is one of disaggregation, which I think is difficult to solve, i.e. we have our own exchange here in London, you know, there's, there's one in Stockholm, that definitely dilutes the amount of liquidity available. I don't think we're gonna have one. So the question then is like, how do you incentivize within your local markets from a regulatory perspective,
15:35 Speaker 02 how that changes. But founders are doing what they do best. They know that they'll get the best prices in the US for an IPO, because ultimately, there's just more liquidity there. But we can definitely do more from a regulatory perspective to change that.
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16:21 Speaker 01 I definitely want to talk about regulation.
16:23 Speaker 02 Yes, I thought you would.
16:26 Speaker 01 Just want to touch on regulation just a bit, because every time, I feel like, I don't know, it's become a meme about how much regulation is in Europe. And so, I mean, I know you're in the UK, but like, I still feel that you guys have probably a little bit more regulation than we do in certain areas. And so, I know that irritates a lot of founders. I interviewed someone who was very upset about it on stage and went on a whole rant about it. And I was like, okay, go off, girl. But I wanted to ask you, do you think that there is, it's really broad, because there's a lot of regulations, a lot of things, like, is there too much that's hindering a lot of startups growing in that ecosystem? What are your thoughts about how much regulation is in Europe right now regarding tech and innovation?
17:06 Speaker 02 I think there is a bit of a difference as to the the high level compositions that are happening now that would impact what companies look like if they're past versus what's happening today. Today, on the ground, I don't see any impact. Don't see a bunch of founders basically say that they can't start their AI business because they're being over regulated by the EU. What I'm consistently hearing is we have a whole bunch of really exciting tools coming out and we can build fantastic applications, let's get going. So that's the first thing, I don't think we've really seen an impact at the earlier stages yet in terms of that happening. In the medium to long run, there is a question that we need to contend with around regulation. So I think some of the promotion is good, right? For example, banks should be regulated because they're holding people's whole life savings and therefore need to have regulation around that. I think that's positive regulation that incentivizes good behavior.
17:51 Speaker 02 And I think we need to model future regulation around that. Like, what's the specific thing we want to incentivize? How does it create value for society from a very, very specific perspective? And therefore, what's the regulation that that ties around? I think there's a lot of pushback on the EU AI, the Dragon Act, it's being called, because it's quite broad reaching, right? And so I think we can do a lot more specificity around AI regulation to make sure people aren't concerned about building businesses. Because I think the risk is not so much that if you're building a business now, you're affected. The risk is if you're building a business six months from now, you decide not to build here and to build as well. So I think communicating around that is is important. But at the same time, I don't think we should accept that we should live in a world that's regulation free, as I do think it helps incentivize strong behaviors that help balance out capitalism.
18:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was actually gonna ask, is the UK also taking part in the EU AI Act?
18:41 Speaker 02 We don't have to anymore.
18:42 Speaker 01 What, I was gonna say, like, are you guys, like, still gonna do it, or you're just like, I'm just gonna do our own thing?
18:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's it's not anymore. However, like this, you know, a huge part of European companies, you know, we think about ourselves, UK and Europe, you know, all together in in one in one happy family. It does affect, for example, almost all of my companies sold to more than the UK. So if you're selling to outside of the UK, what's happening around you really, really matters in the same way that it will matter as well for US companies, right? As they begin to think about scaling outside the US, which they all eventually do.
19:12 Speaker 01 Do you think that there's like a disconnect between people who work in policy and like regulators and what startup people and tech people want? Cause I was thinking about kind of even the controversy between the UK age verification law. And talking to a lot of people in the tech space who are like, they're like, interesting idea, but awkward execution. Do you think that there's kind of a disconnect in terms of how to implement a lot of regulation and also just what people want?
19:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, a hundred percent. I think because we're operating on different scales. Like I'm as a venture investor, I'm thinking about investing in fantastic companies and thinking about founders. I'm thinking about making sure that my investors, i.e. all the pension funds that gave money to me will actually make a return because I want to help them as well. That's kind of what I'm thinking about. Thinking about like, how do I generate a massive outcome? And that's tech forward often, and it's not thinking about voters, right? Not always, right? Whereas if your government, like ultimately your key audience is the voting base. And there's, I think there's work to be done on making sure that the two sides are having more proactive conversations. We had a couple of people from government in last week and this was a consistent theme, which is that while we're all moving towards one shared goal of actually helping the world be better, we're coming in from different places.
20:22 Speaker 02 So there's more to be done, I think, in the intersection of those two things and finding solutions that work. Execution is non-trivial for many reasons, in part because of like who matters, like who are you optimizing for? It's very hard to make a decision that works for everyone. And because we're all focusing on different components, I can see us getting to different outcomes.
20:40 Speaker 01 So I definitely want to ask a few more questions about AI, of course. What excites you, but also makes you nervous about AI? Like, what are you seeing?
20:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, what excites me is that LLMs have begun to add understanding to a whole bunch of data that we couldn't understand before. I think it's expanded the reach of software. Software can do much, much more than it used to be able to do with AI, and I think that's super exciting. And I'm excited I get to be a partner in this era of AI doing more. I think that it will create lots more companies and make existing companies a lot more valuable. So that's exciting. There is a lot of value, I think, to be gained from people who are focusing on extremely specific deep problems where they have knowledge or data that allows them to actually build something that's a 10x better experience versus what existed in the past.
21:32 Speaker 02 I think what makes me nervous about A I is two things. One, everything's going super fast. It's kind of breaking the rules of like what traditional venture used to look like. Things used to grow like five X and you're like, oh, that's great. And now it's like, well, isn't it supposed to be twenty X? I think that's changing and we have no idea yet. We're just still too early in the circle to actually really, really know whether those changes then create lasting impact for enterprises, which is where we spend most of my time at Dawn. So we're still, I think, very, very early in figuring that out. I think we're all navigating our way through it. What's giving me comfort a little bit is the fact that people are beginning to have a very, very candid conversation about the return on investment that they're making. So I spent a lot of time talking to enterprises just to get a sense of like, where are they on their A I journey?
22:17 Speaker 02 And what are they hearing and seeing? And there was this crazy M I T study that came out that I think like, I was like, this is exactly what I'm hearing. And they were all saying literally perhaps five percent of our D N A projects are going into production and being successful. And I was like, this is a very low number, which like looks like a bad thing. But actually what it means is that people can then begin to go away and define for themselves. What are the really, really high value use cases that startups can solve? And we can then get to a position of a much, much more exciting outcome from an A I perspective. So I think it is an issue, but also a big opportunity as people better define what good looks like. But this, I think, perhaps the next is the software time, right?
22:55 Speaker 01 Is there a different way that you've seen European versus American founders approach building an A I company?
23:01 Speaker 02 I think it's exactly the same because you kind of need to have a great team and a great idea and be solving a real problem. And that's the same across the board. I haven't really seen a significant difference there. And I think honestly, a lot of our big software winners have had to compete against U S companies. And there's just like, in the end, no difference in terms of what wins, i.e. the best team with the best product in an exciting market. I think there's a lot of talk about European summer and like, I was gonna bring that up. Yeah, you know, like everyone is on holiday. Honestly, Dom, like, I wish I could show you my WhatsApp. I work with six founders and between the hours of like seven P M, eleven P M at night and during the weekend, I'm getting messages about what they're doing.
23:45 Speaker 02 So I think there is a complete misconception about how hard people are working and how committed people are to building really, really big businesses. Just because I'm not posting about how hard I'm working doesn't mean I'm not working hard. But the great thing is the proof is all in the pudding, right? It's all in the the products that they're building, the love that they're getting from their customers and how fast they're growing. So hopefully, some of the the noise around this will be shown in in outcomes.
24:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, because my next question was gonna be about like, there's obviously a stereotype of different work habits in both of our ecosystems. What does that mean when it comes to building and winning in this game? Have you noticed maybe like a difference or an evolving work culture in the U K and other European startups? As the ecosystem grows and matures, have you seen more people saying like, no, we're actually gonna do like sixty, seventy hours in the office? Rather than like, we're gonna, I don't know, adhere a little bit more to employment law and like, you know, vacation time and all these things. Have you seen more of a push and a grind culture being adopted?
24:40 Speaker 02 To say my pushback, people have been grinding, like, people have been, like, people have been grinding, you know? Like, literally, if I think about like every single, all of our biggest companies, the C E Os are working themselves to the bone to get this thing going. And, you know, I think that it's super hard to lead, if not by example. And because they're pushing super, super hard, the companies are pushing super, super hard. The world has become much more competitive. There's a huge amount of value to be grabbed. I think any single person who's ambitious realizes this and is gonna put in the hard yards to win. So I am not seeing that in my portfolio, um, to be honest with you. It doesn't present in the same way, I E. like, if I go to the office on Sunday at nine A M and stay until six P M, until eleven I bought it.
25:23 Speaker 02 That that actually isn't that different from me sitting down at my desk from, you know, I don't know, six P M to three A M on said same Sunday, doing a lot of deep thinking. So and I think it's a little noise around that, but again, we will see the outcome proof in the cells, right? Like, we're gonna see this interesting pattern of amazing European companies coming out and winning globally as they've always won. Like, literally, you know, they've always had a shot at winning, they will keep winning. We're gonna see more of that and that, I think, will help die down this conversation around Europeans not doing nine nine six.
25:55 Speaker 01 I know European summer is all over Instagram.
25:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, literally. I was like, come on.
26:00 Speaker 01 I'm trying to get in touch with my European investor and they're away until like October. And then they're going on vacation again in December. It's like, oh my gosh, that's so funny.
26:11 Speaker 01 I'm trying to remember. So within like the UK and in Europe, are there a lot of late-stage funds?
26:20 Speaker 02 Local or international?
26:21 Speaker 01 Local.
26:22 Speaker 02 There's a handful, actually. There are a handful of late-stage funds. If I think about like a companies who raise capital, they probably raise maybe thirty percent. Don't quote me on that number, I'm making that up, but just from a gut feel, there's definitely a fair representation of growth funds.
26:36 Speaker 01 Do you see more late-stage local funds popping up? What needs to happen in order to help that come about?
26:44 Speaker 02 There've been a couple of big announcements on on late-stage capital. So I think the interesting ones like Eurasia came out and raised a few billion dollars, obviously Badass and raised a significant amount of money for growth. Atomic Co did the same. So I think we're seeing a lot of local players increasingly expand to growth. We focus on seed to series C at dawn. So actually, like, I'm quite agnostic as to where growth capital comes from. I think what matters is the value that founders get out of it. And I think different people often have different playbooks, right? If I think about the playbook for European growth funds, a lot of it is, again, to this idea that revenue is split very often across Europe and the US for the most part. I think a lot of them actually offer a significant amount of value when it comes to introductions and relationships.
27:27 Speaker 02 They've seen success often, and if you're maintaining a huge local team, it's a helpful person to have on board. And then the US funds literally offer the same product, just in the US. So I think from my perspective, all growth capital is good. What's super hard actually is all the stage capital, right? That's where I think, you know, to make sure we're continuing to support all the like local seed funds, right? That have to cover the entire European market. It's a super disaggregated market. You know, you were in Copenhagen when we met, like, what, a hundred funds? Well, we're there and that's just one, literally one country in the Nordics. You've got to figure out how to continue to support the ecosystem across that entirety. And that's where I think we need to see more investment and that's why we, you know, we try to do stuff to support the localism, try to co-host events.
28:07 Speaker 02 We try to like support their companies as well, but I see more white space there than in growth. I think growth is, yeah, busy.
28:13 Speaker 01 Busy.
28:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:15 Speaker 01 Busy. What companies do you have an eye on in terms of who's possibly going to be like the next unicorn or maybe the next IPO?
28:22 Speaker 02 That's such an unfair question because I'm just gonna mention all my companies.
28:27 Speaker 01 I know, I know. I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask this anyway.
28:30 Speaker 02 I'm gonna mention all my companies because I'm excited about, uh, but more seriously, I am gonna mention my company. I think let this series be of a company called Blackwall. That's this Estonian-based hosting company when they're just doing phenomenally well, growing incredibly well. Figured out a channel that I literally haven't ever seen someone do a channel strategy, i.e. work with someone to help them get to their end customers so successfully. So I think that's super exciting. I think that we do a Kogita. It's a B2B wholesale marketplace that basically matches retailers with wholesalers. They make sure that you have the lowest price possible, but also add a significant amount of value for you in terms of fulfillment and delivery, and also actually enable suppliers to reach a whole bunch of new retailers.
29:13 Speaker 02 That's also humongous and growing very fast in a $50 trillion market, which is absurd. For Noah, which is like a tax automation platform that provides indirect tax services to literally every single logo that you ever thought of as as important. It's quite interesting because I work with the whole bunch of companies and I look at them and I'm like, you know what, like all this could be really successful. So it'll be interesting to see because venture is a long career. It's like 15 years and you never know. You never really know if you're successful until the very end, right? So let's see.
29:43 Speaker 01 And I think my last question is, if you had to say like, what do I want? Like the UK and the European ecosystem to be known for? What is the niche? What is the carve out? Like, what is the identity of the ecosystem? The US ecosystem is a stereotype of being like hustle culture, no breaks, no nothing. What do you think makes Europe different and the UK different in terms of who you are and what you build and what's to come?
30:07 Speaker 02 I've never thought about that question. So perhaps starting with the question you had around what is what is Europe known for? We punch way above our weight in terms of product, but perhaps much less so in terms of noise. So would love for that to be calibrated in some way and for there not to be a stereotype around European founders not being able to do particular things. I think there's a lot of strength that comes from diversity of countries, of languages. I think founders very, very often have to build a business that can work in very, very many different settings. And I think that's a strength on product that, you know, hopefully translates into market leadership. If I think about a lot of the founders that I work with, I must say, like, the teams that they build and
30:51 Speaker 02 the, you know, almost emotional attachment that the people that work for them have is powerful as well. I'm not sure that's like different in the US. I can't really compare, having only lived there for just a decade. But I think that those things will, will, there is strength in having to deal with complexity extremely early on. There is strength in having to hire teams from different places and there's a lot of strength in the amount of technical and AI talent that's coming out of this ecosystem. So, yeah, looking forward to seeing that translating. But in a nutshell, the summary sentence would be, listen, like we're on a level playing field. I'm not sure why you think it's different, right?
31:26 Speaker 01 Yes. Thank you so much for a fun conversation. I always love hearing what's happening across the pond. We read a lot of stories. So we're like, ooh, what's really going on? Is it really regulation and just summer all the time? And so, you know, there's a lot of good things coming out. And so I'm really excited to see what, what more happens in the ecosystem. I mean, everyone's talking about lovable and all these European companies. So really exciting things happening. We're just about out of time, but where can our listeners connect with you or find more about Dawn and the companies you invest in?
31:57 Speaker 02 LinkedIn is unfortunately where I live. Twitter is my, my second home. So yeah, just find me on LinkedIn, Shamillah Bankiya, or send me an email. It's just first name, last name, doncapital.com. Twitter handle is @bankia. And our website is www.dawncapital.com. It's hard to miss. Thank you so much for chatting to me, Dom.
32:17 Speaker 01 Thank you so much again for joining us on the show. And to our listeners, you can find me, follow me on Instagram. I'm at Dominic Madori. Please follow me on Instagram. And you can also follow Equity on X at EquityPod and Threads. See you next time.
32:33 Speaker 03 Equity is produced by Teresa Locan Solo with editing by Cal. We'd also like to thank TechCrunch's audience development team. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.
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