I am Associate Editor at Sifted, a Financial Times-backed media covering European tech. I lead on UK tech, as well as investigations.

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Susie is a Managing Director at DTCP Growth Equity, a $450m fund focused on mission-critical software, and AI-native solutions, Defense, DeepTech, Physical AI / Robotics, Infrastructure.
Susie has over a decade of experience in technology transactions and investments: Prior to joining DTCP, Susie spent 7 years as venture capital investor across London, Paris, and Munich.
Susie is a Kauffman Fellow, the prestigious US-based VC program (Class 28), a 10x Fellow (Angel Investment Program), as well as a close friend to the universities HEC & LSE, where she is teaching a variety of sessions around Venture / Entrepreneurship.

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A multi-stage technology investor with over seven years backing founders from seed through Series B. As Principal at Partech, I focus on B2B software, having previously led fintech investing across stages at Lakestar. I hold a Master’s in Economics alongside two Bachelor’s degrees in Linguistics and Logistics, and am fluent in English, Polish, German, and Swedish.

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Daniela is a Vice President at JSL Health Capital, a venture firm investing at the intersection of AI and healthcare. Before joining JSL, she spent more than six years at Palantir Technologies leading federal health capture efforts and, prior to that, worked to advance reproductive health in the non-profit sector. Daniela holds degrees in Biology and Gender Studies from Swarthmore College and is based in Brooklyn.

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Investment Principal at Asabys Partners, focused on sourcing, executing, and managing healthtech investments. I combine a strong financial background with hands-on operating experience founding and scaling digital health companies. Beyond investing, I actively contribute to the firm’s strategic initiatives, including fundraising, new fund development, and corporate activities.

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Angela is an Investor at Felix Capital. She works closely with many of Felix's consumer investments, including the likes of HOLY, LANCH, Filu, PerfectTed, Lassie, and many more.

Angela joined Felix Capital in 2020 from Facebook, where she was a Product Marketing Manager for Facebook’s first SaaS product, Workplace. Prior to Facebook, Angela was a Marketplace Strategy Manager at eBay UK. Angela started her career at McKinsey & Company’s Taipei and London offices, where she served numerous consumer, food & beverage and packaging companies on a multitude of marketing & sales topics.

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Yanhuan Wang is an Investment Manager at Sofina, a €10bn Belgian family-controlled investment holding company, where she focuses on consumer investments and has board-level experience across Europe and Asia. Her portfolio includes companies such as Vivobarefoot, Cerealis, Petkit, Laifen, Moody, Mamaearth, and Skillmatics, among others. Prior to Sofina, Yanhuan worked at Tiger Global and Macquarie. She holds a degree from Columbia University. Outside of work, she is a violinist and a globe-trotter.

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Sarah is Principal with M Ventures, the corporate VC of Merck. She holds a Ph.D. from MIT in chemistry, and worked previously in business strategy consulting as well as in startups in the nanotechnology and energy & sustainability sectors. Sarah currently sits on 5 Boards and is focused on new investments in semiconductors and sustainability.

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Talia Rafaeli is a founding partner of Kompas VC, an early-stage European venture capital fund investing in the future of industrial technologies that focus on resilience, productivity and digital transformation across the entire spectrum of technologies - software, hardware and materials. Currently, Kompas is investing out of its second early stage fund, Kompas II (EUR 160M). For the past fifteen years, she has held both early stage investing and operational roles in leading venture capital firms focusing on verticals including enterprise software, mobility and Industry 4.0.

Prior to launching Kompas, Talia was director of investments at Porsche AG’s flagship venture fund, Porsche Ventures, with a focus on deep-tech deals in mobility innovation, sustainability solutions, software architecture and emerging automotive technologies.

Talia launched her career as an investment banker at both Goldman Sachs and Barclays Capital in New York and London, respectively, covering the retail and technology sectors. She also spent several years working at Accenture as an IT infrastructure consultant in Madrid and Tel Aviv. She holds an MBA from the Columbia Business School at Columbia University in New York and a dual bachelors degree in Economics and Computer Science from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Mia is a biomedical engineer and former professional snowboarder turned deep tech investor, combining resilience, technical depth, and entrepreneurial experience. She started as a co-founder and CEO of Fiki Labs, developing carbon-negative plastics from microalgae, before moving into biomedical engineering research and innovation roles across Europe.

She has played an active role in building early-stage ecosystems, from leading programmes at Trinity Portal Hub and EIT Health and serving as a Board Member of the EIT Health Innovators Community, to supporting high-growth late-stage deeptech companies at Atlantic Bridge Venture Capital. Alongside this, she has mentored founders and investors across Europe through initiatives such as Techstars Startup Weekend, the Irish Venture Capital Association (IVCA) and Enterprise Ireland Female Founders programmes, and the Trinity LaunchBox Accelerator. She has also coached national winning teams for the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC), supporting them through to international finals.

Today, Mia is an Investor at Matterwave Ventures, where she invests in industrial, climate, and deeptech startups and serves as a board observer, working closely with portfolio companies on strategy and growth. With experience spanning founder, operator, mentor, and investor roles, she brings a full-stack perspective on building and scaling breakthrough technologies.

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Heidi Lindvall is General Partner at Pale blue dot, a pre-seed and seed fund backing startups in Europe and US. A former startup founder with a background in human rights, she has spent her career building programs that enable great people to solve big problems with technology. She co-founded Pale blue dot in 2020.

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Early-stage investor commercializing and scaling innovations with Europe's best scientists and engineers.

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Beth leads Cathay Innovation’s activities in Spain, focusing on investing in high-growth technology companies and supporting entrepreneurs in creating long-term value.

She joined Cathay in June 2026, bringing more than 10 years of experience that combines deep local market expertise with strategic and operational experience across international environments.

Prior to joining Cathay Innovation, Beth spent 6 years as a technology investor at Notion Capital in London and Seaya Ventures in Madrid, where she led investment opportunities and portfolio value-creation initiatives. Earlier in her career, she worked as a strategy consultant at Deloitte.

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Nina is a Principal at Earlybird in Berlin, backing early-stage FinTech and enterprise AI companies across Europe, including Upvest, finmid, Flanks, Voyfai, and Hakuna. She previously worked at Celonis and Forto, and holds an LL.M. in IT Law from King's College London.

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Patricia Pastor is one of Spain’s most influential figures in the venture capital sector, with a unique focus on building communities, driving tech startups, and championing AI as a transformative force for change.

She founded Next Tier Ventures, an investment fund focused exclusively on AI startups. This venture represents a natural evolution in her career, blending her expertise in disruptive technologies with strategic investment.

As a serial entrepreneur herself, Patricia has founded several successful companies and is now an active angel investor in the Spanish ecosystem. She is also a passionate advocate for women in investment as ambassador of WeInvest, a global community of female investors worldwide. Her involvement underscores her commitment to inclusion and empowering women in the investment and innovation industries.

Previously, Patricia served as CEO of GoHub, the corporate fund of Global Omnium, where she led a period of significant growth. Under her leadership, GoHub established itself as a international leader in deep tech, investing in AI startups. Her strategic direction helped position the fund as an internationally recognized entity, attracting high-impact tech projects.

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Alexa is an investor at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), where she focuses on early-stage investments in applied AI (including consumer, prosumer, and enterprise applications) and fintech. Previously, she was an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners and ICONIQ. Alexa graduated summa cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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Marina Davidova is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Davidovs Venture Collective (DVC), VC investor, community builder, and co-founder of a community-powered venture fund backed by 200+ tech founders and engineers from leading AI companies.

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Rita's practice focuses on M&A, cross-border transactions, emerging companies, and other complex corporate matters. Rita advises both public and private clients across technology, life sciences and other innovation industries.

She has advised on some of the most complex cross-border tech and life sciences M&A transactions in Europe, and has played a key role in establishing Cooley in London as a destination firm for such deals.

Rita is fluent in English, Portuguese and Spanish, and proficient in German.

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Founding GP & CEO TheVentureCity

Laura was Facebook's first hire in Spain. Before that, she co-founded a startup in 2000 when most people thought the internet was a fad. Before the term "operator-turned-investor" existed, she was already one.

Today she runs TheVentureCity, the VC firm she built from scratch to back product-obsessed founders across the US, Europe, and Latin America from seed to Series A. Over 120 companies. A proprietary AI operating stack. And a firm thesis: talent has no zip code.

She spent years at Silicon Valley leading Growth, Mobile & Partnerships across Latin America for Facebook, and passed through eBay, Siemens, and Ogilvy before that. She's a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a member of the European Innovation Council, she sits on the boards of Tiny Health, RecargaPay, Clip and Caixabank

Her edge isn't a sector bet. It's a product mindset applied to capital: she built GrowthScanner, TheWatchList AI, and AHA to analyze companies the way founders think, not the way spreadsheets do.

She invests in what's next. She sees it early. And she does it differently, on purpose.

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Rocío Alcocer Magirena is the Managing Director of Norrsken Barcelona, Europe’s largest hub for tech and impact. With +14 years experience at the crossroads of sustainability, entrepreneurship, and innovation, she has co-founded and scaled several impact ventures, such as TAPP Water, Muoki and Barrabes Earth, and advised corporate organizations on their impact strategies (incl. Deloitte, Barclays and Fundacion Telefonica among others). Rocío holds an MSc in Sustainability & Social Innovation from HEC Paris, a Double BA in Global Business by DCU and ICADE, and is passionate about leveraging business and technology to drive positive global change.

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Bailey Morrow leads the Deep Tech, Climate Tech and Consumer Internet sectors at HSBC Innovation Banking, supporting high growth companies across the UK with banking and lending solutions. She previously worked at Silicon Valley Bank, beginning her career in Silicon Valley before moving to London.

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Caroline Vaughan is Managing Director, Investor Coverage at HSBC Innovation Banking, leading coverage of venture capital funds and technology firms across EMEA. She brings a decade in fintech, and began her career in sales at Bloomberg in New York and London.

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Angela is an Investor at Felix Capital. She works closely with many of Felix's consumer investments, including the likes of HOLY, LANCH, Filu, PerfectTed, Lassie, and many more.

Angela joined Felix Capital in 2020 from Facebook, where she was a Product Marketing Manager for Facebook’s first SaaS product, Workplace. Prior to Facebook, Angela was a Marketplace Strategy Manager at eBay UK. Angela started her career at McKinsey & Company’s Taipei and London offices, where she served numerous consumer, food & beverage and packaging companies on a multitude of marketing & sales topics.

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Gabrielle is an investor at Aldea VC, where she backs fund managers and their breakout companies across Europe. Her LP perspective is shaped by prior experience as a COO in early-stage startups across climate, edTech, future of work sectors both in London and Barcelona.

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Nadya is an Investment Manager at the EIF, where she focuses on investments in (deep) technology VC funds across Europe.

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Neetu is based in London and leads private markets investing for the Cooper family office. The family office invests primarily in funds across both private and public markets, including venture capital and growth equity.

Prior to joining the family office four years ago, Neetu was an early-stage investor at Alumni Ventures Group and has also served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Techstars. Outside of investing, Neetu enjoys travelling, is currently pursuing her sommelier qualifications, and can often be found hiking in her spare time.

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Eleanor Warnock is a writer, journalist, and communications expert based in London who has worked for The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times-backed Sifted. She is currently an advisor to Bek Ventures, which was ranked the top-performing VC firm globally since 2010 by HEC-Dow Jones, and managing editor at the Reid Hoffman-backed AI company Every. She has an MBA from INSEAD.

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Isabel Woodford is an independent journalist who writes for the Financial Times, the BBC, and other leading outlets, covering the intersection of tech, business, and money. She previously reported for Reuters and Sifted, where she spent several years covering European startups and VCs.

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Olga Sakka is Head of AI Transformation at Avon, leading the company’s global AI agenda across governance, adoption, and measurable business value. With 25+ years across commercial analytics, sales strategy, field activation, and transformation, she now builds and ships the tools she asks the business to use. Her work focuses on practical AI adoption, business-led tool building, and proving how AI can amplify people, accelerate workflows, and unlock enterprise value.

She is a “vibe coder” and Lovable Diamond builder who believes in shipping fast and solving real problems. As co-founder of CONGs, she helps businesses turn AI ambition and messy data into measurable commercial value.

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Whitney is a Community Manager at Lovable, where she runs a 165,000+-member Discord community and leads SheBuilds, an application-based 48-hour hackathon open to anyone who identifies as a woman.

She comes from a counseling psychology background, not traditional tech, and it shapes how she builds community: elevating members as the real leaders, and pushing builders to ship in public because it not only helps them grow, it also inspires others.

Her mission has always been the same: remove the barriers, and watch people build what they never thought possible.

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Heidi Lindvall is General Partner at Pale blue dot, a pre-seed and seed fund backing startups in Europe and US. A former startup founder with a background in human rights, she has spent her career building programs that enable great people to solve big problems with technology. She co-founded Pale blue dot in 2020.

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Iwona Anna Biernat leads the community effort behind EU-Inc, one of Europe’s leading startup policy initiatives, now advancing with the European Commission. She previously worked at Entrepreneur First, a global talent-first investor, where as the first legal hire she built and scaled its global legal operations.

She is currently COO of Project Europe, supporting top European talent and advising GPs on operations and strategy.

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Emily is a Vice President at Jordan Park, where she focuses on private market impact investing, leads ESG integration, and advises clients on ways to align their capital with their values across asset classes. Emily began her career as an operator across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors in Indonesia, Kenya, and Armenia. In Armenia, her work supporting women entrepreneurs who struggled to access financing inspired her move to the allocator side of the table to help address inequities in global capital flows. Emily has since worked across the impact investment ecosystem, including at a single family office, in corporate sustainability, alternative energy private equity, and investment facilitation in underserved markets. She now lives in San Francisco with her husband and two cute but high-maintenance rescue dogs.

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Mélody Violton is an Investment Manager at F Capital, the early-stage investment arm of Jeremy Coller’s Family Office. Based in London, she focuses on Pre-Seed to Series A investments across Europe and the US, with a particular interest in AI-native software and infrastructure, fintech, pension-tech, ad-tech and retail-tech. Mélody is involved across the full investment lifecycle, from sourcing and due diligence through to execution and portfolio support, and works closely with founders and the European VC ecosystem.

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Marie Outtier is a General Partner at OVNI Capital, a €60M deeptech seed fund, and founder of aiden.ai, an AI marketing platform acquired by Twitter in 2019. A memoirist (EXIT, Plon 2025) and active angel investor with 30+ startups backed, she's now host and founder of Bold Souls, a new Youtube show on ambition and reinvention, launching October 2026.

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Cristina Vila Vives is the Founder and CEO of Cledara, the software management platform that helps finance and IT teams discover, buy, manage and optimise their software and AI stack. Since founding the company in 2018, she has led Cledara's growth to serve more than 1,000 customers across 32 countries, helping organisations gain greater control over software spend and operations.
Before founding Cledara, Cristina spent over a decade leading operations and transformation initiatives in financial services. She has been recognised by Forbes as one of the business leaders changing Spain through her work with Cledara and is passionate about building technology that empowers people and helps businesses work more effectively.

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Freddie Birley is a performance and leadership coach for entrepreneurs, investors and outliers. Over the past decade, she has supported more than 80 VC investors and over 100 VC-backed founders to develop the self-awareness, resilience and leadership needed to perform at their best, find deeper purpose in their work, and enjoy the ride.

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Dama Sathianathan (she/her) is a partner and Head of Origination at Bethnal Green Ventures (BGV), Europe's leading early-stage tech for good VC. BGV backs ambitious founders using tech to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges at scale. At BGV, she leads on deal flow, community, and networks, driving BGV's efforts to act with integrity on diversity, equity, and inclusion and fuel the broader tech for good movement across the UK.
Dama previously worked for international NGOs advocating for better human rights practices in global development and humanitarian responses, and has a background in international relations and human rights.

Dama sits on the steering committee of Reframe Venture, the world's largest community of VCs and LPs stewarding better-shared learning and practices to integrate ESG and impact at the fund level and beyond and is an active member of ImpactVC.

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Pauline Paquet is a Partner at XAnge, where she leads Operations with a focus on portfolio value creation, exits, and firm-wide strategic development. She brings over a decade of experience in the European tech ecosystem, spanning entrepreneurship, consulting at Wavestone, and startup support at Paris&Co, France’s leading incubator, where she worked with over 1,000 startups.

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Rabab Nasrallah is Partner at Earlybird Health and brings a therapeutics and platform-led investment perspective with a strong record of execution, having closed several transactions across Earlybird Health I & II.

Since joining Earlybird in 2020, she has executed deals end-to-end and co-developed the firm's biotech investment strategy with clear value-inflection plans and capital discipline. Rabab maintains a deep network across VC and strategic pharma in Europe and the US, using those relationships to build high-quality syndicates and partnerships to support companies with breakthrough technologies.

She serves on the boards of HAYA Therapeutics, Greywolf Therapeutics, and Portal Biotech, and is a board observer at GEMMABio, Priothera, ImCheck Therapeutics, and Prothea Technologies. Beyond investing, she engages with stakeholders to understand how platform scale in biotech can be realized and valued alongside individual assets.

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Leading content, partnerships and community events at Harmonic to help investors and founders connect and build the future together.

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I started in banking, then embraced the startup roller-coaster in a CFO role, and joined VC 4 years ago as investor. At Serena, I lead the corporate practice, meaning I invest at seed/seriesA stage from single-LP funds that are custom for each corporate (size, terms, thesis, stage).

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Klara is Value Add Director at Rosberg Ventures, the Monaco-based venture capital fund of funds led by F1 World Champion Nico Rosberg. In her role since July 2024, she focuses on connecting German and European corporates with global startups to drive joint success.
A self-described matchmaker, Klara is passionate about connecting ideas, organisations, and people — bridging the European corporate world with the global startup ecosystem to create win-win partnerships where both sides fuel each other's growth.
Before joining Rosberg Ventures, she was a Local Partner at PwC Legal and served as Co-Head of PwC's CVC Center of Excellence in Berlin, where she spent a decade advising on corporate–startup partnerships and innovation.

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Mahim is an Investment Manager for a global Media & Entertainment company based in London (ITV plc) supporting across Corporate Venture Capital investments primarily in Series A-Series D ConsumerTech & Consumer Product, and supporting on Corporate Innovation activities across the Broadcasting & Television studios business.

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As Director of Open Innovation/Corporate Venture Capital and Startup Studio at Mango, Marta drives innovation by connecting corporate strategy with startup ecosystems, with a special focus on Sustainability and AI.

Before joining Mango, Marta was Global Creative & Innovation Strategy Lead at Meta, where she spent almost 10 years working on the democratization of creativity for businesses.

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Helen is a partner in Cooley’s emerging companies and venture capital practice. She advises startups and emerging growth companies, as well as institutional and strategic investors, on venture capital and growth financings and mergers and acquisitions. Helen works with clients in cutting-edge industries across a broad range of technology verticals.

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Senior investment profile with +12 years VC experience focusing on European Resiliance, Impact and Defence.

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Sitar is a Managing Partner at Connect Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm partnering with exceptional product founders at pre-seed and seed stage across the UK and Europe since 2012. Connect invests in AI, deep tech, data & infrastructure, fintech, and health - all united by a core focus on product-driven differentiation and defensibility. Portfolio companies include Aikido, TrueLayer, Molecular Glue Labs, Deepstash, Hopkins and ai-Coustics.

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Kate Cornell is a General Partner at Acurio Ventures, where she focuses on backing ambitious founders and helping early-stage companies scale into category leaders across Europe.

Prior to joining Acurio in 2022, she was the UK CEO of Jobandtalent, one of Spain’s leading unicorns, where she grew revenue 80x in four years to €40M per month while leading a team of over 500 people.

Before that, Kate built extensive operational experience across multiple sectors. She served as CEO of Glossybox UK, helping launch and scale the business for Rocket Internet, co-founded the food hospitality company The Continental Pantry, and worked as Head of Strategy at fashion company Jaeger while partnering with the VC fund Better Capital.

She began her career after graduating from Oxford as an Investment Analyst in Goldman Sachs’ private equity team in London, later joining Credit Suisse in Zurich within wealth management.

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Eleanor Warnock is a writer, journalist, and communications expert based in London who has worked for The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times-backed Sifted. She is currently an advisor to Bek Ventures, which was ranked the top-performing VC firm globally since 2010 by HEC-Dow Jones, and managing editor at the Reid Hoffman-backed AI company Every. She has an MBA from INSEAD.

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Itxaso Del Palacio is a General Partner at Notion Capital, a leading European B2B SaaS focused VC which has invested in companies such as GoCardless, CurrencyCloud and Paddle, among others. Prior to that, Itxaso was the Investment Partner for M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures) in Europe. Some of the most recent investments led by Itxaso include Naboo (AI-native event planning), Yulife (new life insurance provider), Orus (insurance for SMEs), Onfido (identity verification platform), and Beamery (recruitment CRM).

On the academic side, Itxaso is an Assistant Professor in Entrepreneurship at UCL (University College London). For more than a decade, Itxaso has taught entrepreneurship at UCL, Imperial College and the Royal College of Arts in London. She is passionate about helping university entrepreneurs build their businesses.

Itxaso serves on the board of Kauffman Fellows and is very well connected to the global network of fellow investors. By background, Itxaso is an engineer with a PhD in entrepreneurship and venture capital.

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Jemma is a growth leader and category builder operating at the intersection of brand, product and revenue. She builds companies that are changing how the world works.

She's spent 15 years leading brand, product and revenue strategy across global icons and venture-backed startups, from Nike and the Sydney Opera House to building the AFL Women’s League into a history-making cultural moment for global sport. Today she is Chief Growth Officer and a founding executive at tem, where we’re building AI-native infrastructure for the energy transition and have raised $75M in our latest series B.

She is most energised by AI, climate solutions and backing ambitious women building the future.

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Yvonne Bajela is Founding Partner of Evertrue Capital where she brings over 15 years of experience across venture and finance, from Goldman Sachs, entrepreneurship, and her prior role as Investment Partner at LocalGlobe, Europe’s leading investment fund with 29 unicorns backed.

Yvonne has a proven track record investing in some of the most transformational companies, having invested early in unicorns such as Wise, Moove, and Marshmallow. She was a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and is an advocate for women-led businesses, recognised by Forbes and various other publications.

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Melina is a VC and angel investor based in Berlin, most recently at AENU, a leading early-stage climate tech fund. Earlier she founded a fund backed by the Alfred Landecker Foundation. She holds a BA from Yale, an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, and an MBA from Tuck.

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Deborah Li is the Founder and Managing Partner of Alta One, an early-stage venture capital fund investing in Europe's most ambitious student and recent-graduate founders. Prior to Alta One, Deborah was a Principal at Mundi Ventures (€1.5B AUM), where she invested in mission-driven technology companies globally. Earlier in her career, she invested at StarVest Partners and First Round Capital's Dorm Room Fund, the first student-run venture fund, and held operating leadership roles at high-growth SaaS companies, expanding them across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Alongside investing, Deborah is an Adjunct Professor and Academic Coordinator for the MBA Startup Lab at IE University, where she works with hundreds of founders each year. She is also an Impact Ambassador at Patio Campus and a founding member of Calafia Iberia. She holds a bachelor's degree and an MBA from Columbia University.

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Judene Small is a partner on the Cultural Leadership Fund where she focuses on strategic partnerships and community engagement.

Prior to joining a16z, Judene co-founded CHIENET, a marketing and operations company, and RootsxWings, a digital media company focused on highlighting the stories of nonbinary youth. Before that, Judene served as chief strategy officer of BAM Communications where she launched the company's venture and startup marketing practice and served as director of operations for uBeam (now Sonic Energy), helping the company raise over $30 million in funding.

A professional dancer by training, Judene holds dual-bachelor degrees in Theatre & Dance and Sociology from Trinity College, a MFA in choreography and performance from Mills College, where she also served as an adjunct professor, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School (go Tar Heels!). She currently volunteers as a member of the All Raise Los Angeles Steering committee and is a board member of the Los Angeles Chapter of Best Buddies.

Judene is a proud Jamaican immigrant and Brooklyn native that lives by a simple mission: to do all she can to create, improve, and sustain positive generational changes for her community. She is travel-obsessed, an art enthusiast, and loves spending time with her family, biological and chosen.

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I am Associate Editor at Sifted, a Financial Times-backed media covering European tech. I lead on UK tech, as well as investigations.

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Claudia is a career investor that joined Balderton’s investment team in 2022. She primarily focuses on growth-stage investments.

Prior to Balderton, Claudia worked at Activant Capital where she focused on growth-stage fintech and e-commerce investments globally, including Current, Deliverr, Hydrow, Settle, and Kargo. Claudia began her career in New York City at Goldman Sachs in the Firmwide Strategy and M&A team, and later joined Pine Brook’s Financial Services Growth Equity team.

Claudia holds a BBA in Finance and International Business from Emory University.

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Paz Guzmán is Senior Economic Advisor at the European Investment Bank (EIB). Previously, she served as Senior Economic Advisor at the Representation of the European Commission in Spain. She was part of the European Commission’s Recovery and Resilience Task Force, where she participated in the negotiation and approval of Spain’s €110 billion Recovery and Resilience Plan, leading work on financial instruments and research and innovation, and overseeing the first disbursements to Spain.
Earlier in her career, she worked at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs during the euro crisis, contributing to the design of the EU’s economic governance framework. She was also Senior Policy Associate at J-PAL (MIT), promoting evidence-based public policy under the leadership of Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, and has advised governments and international institutions including the World Bank.
She holds a degree from the Autonomous University of Madrid and a Master in International Relations and Public Policy from Harvard University, where she received the Donald K. Price Award for academic merit and leadership. She sits on several advisory and non-profit boards, including ISEAK, Ethosphera, and ESADE EcPol. Born in Bilbao, she is married and has four children.

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Based in London, Courtney advises late-stage, non-US companies seeking to access US investors and the US capital markets, including navigating a listing on a US securities exchange. Courtney is a market leader in complex cross-border capital markets transactions, guiding issuers, banks and investors through the legal, regulatory and commercial challenges of global fundraising. In addition to structuring and executing international deals, Courtney has substantial experience in foreign private issuer (FPI) matters and securities law compliance, counseling clients on U.S. investor expectations and evolving market trends. She co-leads the firm’s global life sciences thought leadership, shaping strategic insights and convening leaders across the firm and the broader industry.

Prior to joining Cooley London in 2024, she spent the prior decade traveling between Boston, New York and Europe, playing a central role in building Cooley’s capital markets practice to be #1 for issuer-side offerings and overall offerings for US listings by European companies (Deal Point Data). Over the past six years, Courtney has advised 50+ IPOs and follow-on offerings, with an aggregate value of more than $4.5 billion. A client described her as “an outstanding lawyer,” who “can advise quickly and clearly.”

Courtney is a passionate advocate for the advancement of women founders, executives and investors across the healthcare, life sciences and technology sectors. She plays an active role in supporting the Biotech CEO Sisterhood and Breaking 7% initiatives in the life sciences community, contributing to trusted peer networks and venture communities that supports senior women leaders through mentorship, visibility and shared leadership.

Courtney is a consistent host and sponsor of women-focused biotech events, creating high-impact forums that elevate underrepresented voices, foster meaningful connections, and drive tangible opportunities for women across the industry. These events including co-hosting the annual Leading Women in Biopharma Dinner with Jefferies LLC, quarterly dinners with women in venture capital and an annual women in life sciences industry event. She also hosts a webinar series called “Biotech + Breaking Glass: Leading Women in Life Sciences” featuring women in the life sciences industry sharing and celebrating their stories, obstacles and milestones.

Courtney also represents and advocates for women founders and investors globally, representing an impressive portfolio of women-led companies including AviadoBio, Immunocore, iOnctura, Sensorion and Jeito Capital, the first-women led life sciences-focused venture capital fund. She also represents and helped to form the Women’s Health Fund, a fund of funds developed to spur investment in medical innovations that would improve women’s health. Her focus is to help amplify international perspectives and expand access to capital and strategic networks. Through these events, Courtney is known as a community builder, and has helped build connections between investors and operators at critical stages of company growth and capital-raising.

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Do you have on file from last year?

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Investing in vertical AI at Dawn. Former operator, at Capital on Tap and former consultant at McKinsey

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Sarra joined Hedosophia in May 2023 from Global Founders Capital (GFC) as a Partner. She leads the early-stage fintech investments in Europe.
Previously, she was a Partner at GFC based in the U.S. where she led the firm’s early-stage investments in Pacaso, TaxBit, Universal Hydrogen and others.
Before that, Sarra was a venture capital investor at Greycroft in New York.
Prior to Greycroft, Sarra also worked at Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, where she focused on private equity and venture capital fund commitments and co-investments.
Sarra started her career in investment banking at Nomura in London.
Sarra was educated at HEC Paris and Harvard Business School.

LinkedIn

Mónica Casañas is a Board Director, Limited Partner and angel investor who helps fast growth international companies raise capital, scale, and prepare for IPOs and
exits. She has proven success as a director at Airbnb and in start-ups in
marketplaces, travel and eCommerce industries as well as a background as an
investment banker and private equity executive.

LinkedIn

Cate Lawrence is an Australian Berlin-based tech journalist specialising in emerging and deep technologies, exploring their impact on individuals, cities, and society, and the evolving digital landscape.
Her work has been featured in various publications, including TNW, DZone, Codemotion, Intelligent Mobility Experience, and Read Write Web.

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Michelle Coventry is VP of Talent at Creandum, a leading global early-stage venture firm with European roots and hubs in Stockholm, San Francisco, Berlin, and London.
An ex-founder and two-time Operator who has scaled companies from early stages through to exit, Michelle brings deep expertise in building high-performance teams and people operations.
In her role at Creandum, Michelle advises founders and operators across the US and Europe, working closely with some of the most exciting companies in the portfolio including Lovable, BlackForest Labs, Modal, Klarna,Trade Republic, Spotify, Maisa.ai, Sereact, Depop, Pleo, Bolt, and many more.
With a rare combination of operator experience and venture-backed perspective, Michelle is a trusted partner to founders navigating critical human challenges.

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Polly Barnes is an Operating Partner at EQT and the author of The Founder Six. Leveraging behavioural science, she helps founders navigate the demands of fast growth. At EQT, Polly leads the early-stage talent team and has met thousands of founders from companies such as Wellhub, Lovable, Harvey and Vinted, giving her deep insight into what drives high-performing teams. Her work translates this pattern recognition into practical tools that help founders scale their organisations with greater predictability and speed.

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Chloe is an LP at Isomer Capital, investing in early stage VC funds across Europe.

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Fatou is a Managing Partner of Bootstrap 4F, a female-led fund-of-funds managing the £130M "Women Backing Women" fund to channel capital into female-led and mixed investment teams across the UK.
Fatou is a cofounder and managing partner of Bootstrap Europe, a Growth Debt fund investing in Technology and Life Sciences, mainly in Europe and the US.
Fatou is from Senegal, lives in Zurich with her husband and 3 kids who teach her patience and creativity every day!

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Caroline De Wit is an investment professional at Sofina, where she covers consumer-focused venture and growth investments alongside a global fund investment programme spanning seed-to-growth managers across Europe, Asia, and the United States. She holds a degree in Economics from KU Leuven and a Finance degree from Vlerick Business School, and previously worked at Cobepa, the Brussels and New York-based private equity firm. Caroline serves as a board member of Dott, the European shared micromobility operator, and everdrop, the German sustainable cleaning brand.

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Deepali co-leads Speedinvest's emerging market practice as well as their MicroGP practice.

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Over a 20-year career at the intersection of alternative investments and institutional capital raising, I have built a strong and repeatable track record across some of the most demanding fundraising environments, including anchoring Left Lane Capital's $1.4bn second fund raise, generating over $2bn for a systematic hedge fund manager post spin-off, and raising $2bn+ for Asian equity strategies across European institutional channels within three years of launch.

I have a particular strength in opening new markets and building institutional relationships from scratch, having successfully established coverage across continental Europe, the Middle East, and more recently Singapore, Mexico and Brazil, where I have developed meaningful networks within the venture and growth investor community.

My coverage is deepest in continental Europe, where I maintain long-standing relationships with alternative investment decision-makers at tier-one pension funds, private banks, family offices and insurance companies, complemented by a strong Middle East sovereign wealth fund network.

What sets me apart is the combination of genuine technical fluency in infrastructure and city systems, grounded in a civil engineering background and hands-on experience at Macquarie, with the cultural range and language capability to operate without friction across markets. For an infrastructure tech manager looking to build or accelerate institutional distribution, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, I offer a rare profile: someone who understands the asset class from first principles and can open, develop and close relationships at the highest level.

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Azahara Espejo is the Director of HearstLab International, where she leads investment and portfolio strategy across Europe, the Middle East and Japan, supporting female-founded startups with capital and access to Hearst’s global network. Azahara specializes in inclusive investment and alternative finance, with over 10 years of experience across different investment platforms. She has also led and supported several projects in the microfinance sector in Mexico and Rwanda.

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Doreen Huber is an experienced startup founder and venture capital investor. She was a General Partner at EQT Ventures, a EUR 1 billion fund and one of Europe’s largest early-stage investors.

She was part of the founding team and COO of Delivery Hero and Founder & CEO of LEMONCAT, which she successfully scaled and exited.

Today, she is an active angel investor with a focus on AI, and serves on the boards of public companies.

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Sonia has over 20 years of experience leading digital businesses. She joined Kibo in 2016 and has since invested in verticals ranging from edtech, health tech, AI, media and mobility.

Sonia is a former entrepreneur MercadoLibre, and has managed digital businesses Match.com, Specific Media. Sonia started her career in investment banking at Lehman Brothers in London and New York.

Sonia holds a BA degree in Business from ICADE (Spain) and an MBA from Stanford. Sonia has published two books on networking and holds the Stanford Associate Award. Sonia is the chair of Level20 Spain and is member of the International Women Forum.

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Investor at byFounders, investing in early-stage tech companies in the New Nordics. Former software engineer at GitHub & management consultant at BCG working with AI strategy.

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Eleanor Warnock is a writer, journalist, and communications expert based in London who has worked for The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times-backed Sifted. She is currently an advisor to Bek Ventures, which was ranked the top-performing VC firm globally since 2010 by HEC-Dow Jones, and managing editor at the Reid Hoffman-backed AI company Every. She has an MBA from INSEAD.

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Spent the past 3.5 years in the VC ecosystem at Norrsken—moving from hands-on operations to investing in early-stage startups that are building a more sustainable future. Passionate about scaling mission-driven teams and accelerating tech that matters.

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Noelia is a tech entrepreneur and AI strategy advisor recognized for building profitable global digital businesses at the intersection of artificial intelligence, programmatic advertising and mobile innovation. As Founder and CEO of Mediasmart, she built an AI-driven SaaS business from the ground up and led it to the successful acquisition by publicly traded Affle Group. She previously led international expansion for Palm/HP, hi5 Networks and the Buongiorno Group, pioneering technological shifts such as micropayments, mobile services, social networks, and AI-led advertising in a 25+ year career across five continents.

As Managing Partner of NODEOM, she advises enterprises on human-centric AI strategy, helping senior leaders navigate AI governance, ethical frameworks, and adoption in a way that turns Human + AI collaboration into the biggest competitive advantage for their organization. A Fulbright Scholar and Fellow of the Aspen Institute in Spain, she holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a BS in Physics from Santiago de Compostela University.

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Paloma is the co-founder of EqualityLab, a consultancy focused on helping organisations build workplaces rooted in belonging, equity, and wellbeing; work she's been doing for over a decade as an inclusive cultures strategist, communications specialist and researcher.

Back in her natal Mexico, she also co-founded a human rights collective, using publications, events, and advocacy to elevate voices pushing back against systemic inequality.

What drives her, across all of it, is creating spaces for people to actually make a positive change: in a workshop, on an advisory team, or on the ground.

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I lead the Sifted's mission to define and champion the European tech and startup ecosystem.

My career has been built around one discipline: turning commercial ambition into results. As Chief Revenue Officer at Wayvia (formerly PriceSpider), I led a full commercial turnaround across Sales, Customer Success and Marketing, repositioning a business for sustainable growth in a crowded and demanding market. That experience, and the roles that preceded it across SaaS, services and media, taught me that strategy only matters if it survives contact with execution.

Over the course of my career, I have scaled global accounts, built go to market models from the ground up, and led teams through the kind of change that tests an organisation's real character.

None of it happens without people. I have come to believe that the quality of a business is, in the end, a reflection of the quality of its leadership, and I hold myself to a high standard on that front: clarity in how I communicate, trust in how I delegate, and rigour in what I expect.

Beyond my executive work, I advise founders and leadership teams on commercial structure and performance, and I co-founded Unfazed, a platform for women navigating leadership and reinvention.

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Farrah Hamid is a strategy and operations leader with over fifteen years of experience spanning venture capital, consumer tech and early-stage startups.
Most recently, Farrah served as Chief of Staff at Felix Capital, a $1.2bn VC fund backing founders at the intersection of technology and creativity. Prior to Felix, Farrah was Director of Marketing Operations at Deliveroo. She has also co-founded two consumer technology startups in London. Farrah holds an MBA from London Business School and a BA in English from Mount Holyoke College.

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Cathy has shared the stories of some of Europe’s biggest scaleups and VCs for over a decade. From Index Ventures to BACKED and Wise to Monese, her experience spans startups from pre-seed to IPO and many sectors, including DeepTech, FinTech, HealthTech, AI, and more. In addition to working in agency roles, she worked in-house at Seedcamp and Tech Nation, two of Europe’s most well-respected startup institutions. She founded CEW Communications in 2016, an agency built for European scaleups, VCs, and founders from day one.

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Freddie Birley is a performance and leadership coach for entrepreneurs, investors and outliers. Over the past decade, she has supported more than 80 VC investors and over 100 VC-backed founders to develop the self-awareness, resilience and leadership needed to perform at their best, find deeper purpose in their work, and enjoy the ride.

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Deepali co-leads Speedinvest's emerging market practice as well as their MicroGP practice.

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Based in Amsterdam, investing at Endeit Capital, a European software investor focused on late Series A and B across fintech, cybersecurity, future of work, and climate & energy tech. Passionate about new technologies happening in climate and energy tech.

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Nuria is the Hub Manager of Barcelona Finance Hub by Aticco, where she connects startups, investors and financial institutions to drive collaboration across the fintech ecosystem.

With over seven years of experience in innovation and entrepreneurship, she specialises in building communities, developing strategic partnerships and designing programmes that support founders.

Alongside her work at the Hub, she teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at business schools and regularly moderates conversations with founders, investors and industry leaders.

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Growth equity investor at Lightrock ($6b AUM) with experience across a wide range of deal types — secondaries (Vinted), primaries (Sensorfact) and complex joint ventures (Vodafone). Focused on consumer, B2B software and AI and digital infrastructure, through time at CDC, Blume and Lightrock. Board observer for multiple companies. Early AI learnings with an investment into Ultromics. So far - one successful exit from deals sourced and two IPOs in the portfolio supported.

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I'm a early/growth stage investor at Norrsken VC. Chinese-Canadian by background and with a passion for impact.

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