Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

Today on Startup Europe — the Sifted Podcast, Amy is joined by Dinika Mahtani, London-based partner at European early-stage VC Cherry Ventures. Dinika explains why she thinks deeptech is 'back', why Europe is having a moment — and what impact tariff turmoil is having on her portfolio companies. She also shares how she made the jump from general manager at Uber to angel investing and then VC — and talks us through how she ensured she made partner within just three years of joining Cherry Ventures. All of that, plus who Dinika would swap places with for a day and the most valuable piece of advice she's been given in her career to date. This podcast is brought to you by Vanta. Vanta is the fast, frictionless way for growing companies to get compliant, stay secure, and earn and maintain the trust of vendors and customers.  Head to Vanta.com/sifted to learn more.

On this episode of Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast, Amy sits down with Tom Leathes, CEO and cofounder of used car marketplace Motorway. The company, founded in 2017, has helped more than half a million people sell their cars, and has raised $273m from investors like Index, Iconiq, LocalGlobe and BMW i Ventures. Tom and his two cofounders have launched four startups before Motorway, with three resulting in successful exits, and one having to shut its doors. Tom and Amy discuss what he's learnt from that one failure, and what's now going right at Motorway, as the company takes on the formidable challenge of disrupting a huge and slow-changing automotive industry. This podcast is brought to you by Vanta.  Vanta is the fast, frictionless way for growing companies to get compliant, stay secure, and earn and maintain the trust of vendors and customers.  Head to Vanta.com/sifted to learn more.

Tomas Okmanas is no stranger to scaling a company in a highly competitive space. When he launched NordVPN in 2012, the market was crowded with competitors, but today his company has 15m users, a $3bn valuation and a consistent stream of new features and products in development. Now, as if he wasn't busy enough, Tomas is launching a new startup — Nexos.ai, a platform that helps enterprises to make the best use of AI models. On this episode of the Sifted Podcast, he tells Amy why he believes he can rise above the competition and scale a huge business in what is the frothiest market of the moment, as well as why Lithuania is a startup hub to watch and why a trip to Davos is worth it for founders.

To kick off 2025, we're talking "business angels": the people who take big bets investing their personal wealth into startups at their earliest stages, and without whom most companies would never get off the ground. So, how do you actually become an angel investor? How much money do you need to commit? How many investments should you be making? And how can the UK and Europe lay the groundwork for a more representative next generation of investors? Amy poses these questions to Jenny Tooth, a veteran angel who's also executive chair of the UK Business Angels Association, representing over 15k investors nationwide. Jenny shares insights from her work on Innovate UK’s emerging tech steering board and her new initiative, WomenInvestEU, aimed at creating a more inclusive early-stage investment landscape.

On 2024's last episode of the Sifted Podcast, Amy is joined by an entrepreneur on a very big mission. Munich-based startup Proxima Fusion is developing a nuclear fusion reactor — a technology which many hope could help solve the climate crisis by producing clean, cheap and abundant energy that could replace a lot of fossil fuel power. But the technical challenges are considerable. Nuclear fusion reactors need to remain stable at incredibly high temperatures, while confining volatile plasma with powerful and sensitive magnets. Proxima Fusion is targeting raising a billion euros to build its technology, with support from European governments and international investors. The company’s founder Francesco Sciortino sat down to discuss how his team plans to change the world with its technology, the milestones it needs to hit, by when, and to reflect on the challenges of scaling up ambitious hardware-based deeptech companies from Europe.