E616 | This Week in European Tech with Dan, Mads & Andrew

Welcome to a new episode of the EUVC podcast, where our good friends Dan Bowyer and Mads Jensen from SuperSeed in a discussion with Andrew J. Scott, Founding Partner at 7percent Ventures, cover recent news and movements in the European tech landscape 💬

They debate whether governments should backstop industrial giants, what Germany’s lithium find really means for European sovereignty, and how the venture model itself is being reimagined with AI, secondaries, and multi-product funds.

🎧 Here’s what’s covered:

• 00:10 Welcome & Quick News
  US government shutdown symbolism, Labour’s fading momentum, Apple’s backdoor standoff, OpenAI’s half-trillion valuation, and EF’s pivot to the US.

• 09:45 Entrepreneur First’s US Shift
  Why EF’s consolidation westward feels emotional for Europe — and why Lomax calls it validation of stronger European founders who still need US DNA early.

• 15:30 Germany’s Lithium Find
  A 43-million-ton discovery worth an estimated $600B could cover 50 years of EU demand — if energy costs, extraction tech, and permitting don’t stall it.

• 22:20 London’s IPO Crisis
  The UK drops to #23 globally — behind Mexico, Singapore, and Oman. How pensions, regulation, and lack of tech listings hollowed out the market, and what real fixes look like.

• 30:20 Governments, Bailouts & Moral Hazard
  JLR’s £1.5B loan guarantee and Germany’s €500B stimulus spark debate: when should governments step in, and how to ensure taxpayers get upside and discipline in return.

• 40:15 Reinventing Venture
  Dan’s bugbear topic: are new VC models emerging? RIAs, revenue-share hybrids, AI pickers, and Europe’s path to multi-product platforms.

• 50:00 Deals of the Week
  From Periodic Labs’ $300M seed to Cusp AI, legal tech’s boom, and a surge of defense and deep-tech capital — including Black Forest Labs’ $4B valuation rumor.

• 57:30 Defense Momentum
  Inside London’s Resilience Conference: NATO’s new funds, European urgency gaps, and why founders must think faster to keep pace with US counterparts.