Upside
This week's happenings in startup and investing land. Getting underneath VC, and discussing how to better support the European startup eco-system.
Every week we share what's been on our mind and get under the skin of VC, investing, startups and founder psychology.
From the team behind SuperSeed who invest in technical teams solving difficult business problems.
The network is run on LinkedIn so join me there - https://www.linkedin.com/in/danbowyer/
With full interview audio and video uploaded to all major outlets.
Love to hear from you - dan@superseed.com
Upside
It's a Recession. Europe Smashes. London Maxes.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Every week we dig into the news affecting European venture, startups and investing.
This week, Trump may have speed-run a global recession. Europe is having a moment. Cursor might be toast. And Jensen Huang promises a chip that will "surprise the world."
00:00 — The Oil Shock: Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, 20M barrels/day offline, IEA buffer lasts ~20 days. Dan calls it: we're in recession territory.
01:37 — Europe's Energy Crisis 2.0: Gas storage down 40%, prices doubled, the post-2022 diversification strategy is broken.
03:00 — Silver linings: UK nuclear push, EU Industrial Accelerator Act, sovereignty becoming investable.
04:54 — Defence Tech & Drone Economics: Ukraine is the Silicon Valley of drone warfare. $20K Shahed drones are taking out $300M US radar bases.
07:00 — The $3.6M Tomahawk problem: US firing missiles faster than it orders them. George Bush quote of the week involving a camel.
08:38 — AI in warfare: school tragedy raises hard questions about AI-guided targeting and accountability gaps.
11:08 — Poland rejects €44B EU defence loan for political reasons. Polish Iron Dome: €3.5B. US Golden Dome: $1T. "It's gold. It's Trump."
13:03 — Europe's Big Week: AMI Labs raises $1B seed (Europe's first Instacorn), Revolut gets UK licence, Alan hits €800M ARR, #LondonMaxing trends.
15:29 — World Models vs LLMs: LeCun thinks current AI is the wrong path to AGI. Mads agrees — you can't have general intelligence if you can't cross a room.
25:19 — Cursor at $50B? 20x in a year, but it's a middleman. Claude Code killed the IDE. The Jasper parallel is not flattering.
30:00 — AI & Chips: Meta building its own inference chips. Custom ASICs growing 3x faster than GPUs. Nvidia's moat showing cracks. GTC next week.
33:30 — Atlassian & Oracle cutting jobs. AI as cover for a general RIF?
34:18 — Deal of the Week: UForce (Ukrainian defence, UK-based), $1B valuation, $50M raise.
34:53 — Week Ahead: Fed holds, rate cuts pushed to September, ECB meeting, 42% chance of a 2026 rate hike.
36:00 — Hot Take: AI pendants and wearable mics — Dan's not buying it.
🔥 BEST LINES
"I don't know anybody who is a leading thinker on coding who writes their own code."
"Computer science seems to be largely a solved problem."
"Of course it's gold. It's Trump!”
