Emerging Forward Podcast Podcast Por Adi arte de portada

Emerging Forward Podcast

Emerging Forward Podcast

De: Adi
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How capital truly flows for investors and founders bridging emerging markets including Europe, MEA and APAC.

emergingforward.substack.comAdi Economía
Episodios
  • Beyond Earth, Beyond Hype: Alexandra Vidyuk on Frontier Tech That Actually Works

    Beyond Earth, Beyond Hype: Alexandra Vidyuk on Frontier Tech That Actually Works
    Apr 14 2026

    In this episode of Emerging Forward, I’m joined by Alexandra Vidyuk, CEO and Founding Partner at Beyond Earth Ventures, for a conversation on how deep tech really gets funded and scaled across global markets. We explore what physics teaches us about venture judgment, how a healthy deep-tech cap table is actually built, why geography is often overrated as an investment lens, and where the next generation of frontier companies may emerge.

    We cover:

    - Why a physics background changes how you evaluate frontier companies.

    - How deep-tech funding stacks combine grants, VC, specialists, and strategics.

    - Why Europe’s research strength still struggles to convert into aggressive venture outcomes.

    - How valuation gaps between Europe, Asia, and the US can create real alpha.

    - Why dual-use space, energy, materials, compute, and robotics remain underpriced but highly selective.

    - What LPs should really worry about: scientific, engineering, team, and geopolitical risk.

    Guest links:

    Beyond Earth Ventures: Website | LinkedIn

    Alexandra Vidyuk - LinkedIn

    Episode highlights:

    03:00 - First-principles investing and the bottleneck map.

    06:40 - Capital stacks, grants, and what deep-tech funding really looks like.

    18:30 - Why geography is not the thesis.

    29:30 - The next frontier themes worth watching.

    34:00 - The real risk stack in deep tech

    Emerging Forward : Newsletter | Spotify



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingforward.substack.com
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    41 m
  • Structured Equity, Secondaries, and the 2% Anomaly: Special investor edition with Gillian Muessig (Mastersfund)

    Structured Equity, Secondaries, and the 2% Anomaly: Special investor edition with Gillian Muessig (Mastersfund)
    Mar 30 2026
    “Women have been returning an average of 35% higher ROI for more than 30 years of data. Hedge funds go nuts for a point. We’re talking 35. And yet the money doesn’t follow the money.” – Gillian Muessig, Mastersfund​This issue is a special investor edition of Emerging Forward, a deep dive into how venture is (and isn’t) evolving for founders who don’t fit the “archetypal” mold, and for LPs/GPs who actually care about both yield and impact.1. The 2% anomaly that refuses to dieGillian starts with a statistic she can’t let go of: women receive around 2% of traditional venture equity, despite multiple decades of data showing that women‑led companies are unusually capital‑efficient and generate higher returns.​She walks through the numbers:* Women‑led companies raise about 44% of the capital that male‑led companies raise in the same industry, then exit at similar valuations.​* That translates into roughly 56% less dilution for investors: every new dollar raised dilutes existing equity, and women tend to raise fewer of those dollars on the path to exit.​* In the datasets she cites, women‑led companies exit one to two years sooner than their male‑led peers; time as both a risk factor and a cost factor.​* They generate roughly 2.5x the revenue per dollar invested. Gillian’s example: if a male‑led company makes 38 cents per dollar invested, a comparable women‑led company is closer to 76–78 cents.​* Roll all of that up and you get the killer number: about 35% higher ROI for women‑led companies over more than 30 years of data.​If these numbers sat inside any other asset class, the capital would stampede toward the anomaly. Hedge funds shift entire books for a single extra percentage point of return.In women‑led venture, 35 points of outperformance has barely moved the needle.​So Gillian and her co‑founder, Anne Kennedy, chose to treat this as an investor problem, not a motivational poster.2. Why the money doesn’t follow the moneyMastersfund’s thesis doesn’t assume the anomaly exists because women are somehow “better” founders. A big chunk of the outperformance is structural: when capital is that scarce and the needle’s eye is that tight, the companies that make it through tend to be unusually strong.​But that still leaves a question: if the anomaly is this obvious, why hasn’t the market corrected?Gillian’s answer is anthropological:* For most of human history, survival meant sticking with your own kind. The infant that cozied up to a saber‑toothed tiger didn’t survive long enough to pass on its genes.​* The same pattern shows up everywhere: flocks, herds, schools, clusters. “We’re carbon‑based life forms; we’re wired for similarity,” as she puts it.​* In today’s venture context, that instinct shows up as over‑funding of a very narrow archetype: tall, white, US‑educated, able‑bodied, youthful, baritone‑voiced men from institutions like Harvard and Stanford.​Her point is not that these founders shouldn’t be funded. It’s that the human wiring behind this pattern is “vestigial behavior”, it made sense when huddling with your own tribe improved your odds of not being eaten, but it no longer serves a planet trying to solve 21st‑century problems.​Crucially, she doesn’t believe the answer is endless shouting at Sand Hill Road:“Don’t shout at the tall white men with baritone voices in Sand Hill Road. They’re doing exactly what they’re programmed to do.”​Instead, she argues, the money must flow from different hands.At Mastersfund, that means working on the activation of women’s capital:* Women are often taught to write philanthropic checks, not to manage their own investable capital.​* They already hold and are inheriting significant wealth, but it is largely intermediated by institutions who have 101 good reasons not to move any of it into higher‑risk alternatives like venture.​* Men will often say “yeah, Joe, just write the check.” Women get run over by that logic.​The fund’s work sits at the junction of gender‑lens investing, agency over capital, and new instruments that reduce risk while preserving upside.3. Venture is not just venture equity anymoreOne thing Gillian is very clear about: “venture capital” is a broader category than “venture equity.”Founders and investors, she says, need to stop treating the classic Silicon Valley equity fund model as the default for every startup on the planet.​At the very top level, she splits the world into:* Venture equity* Venture debtUnder each, there’s a much richer toolkit than most founders (and many LPs) use:* Dividend models* Royalty agreements* Revenue‑share structures* Variants of convertible instruments and SAFEs* Hybrid models that blend equity‑like upside with debt‑like protection​Her counsel to both founders and investors:“Take a scalpel to this job, not a hatchet.”​The existence of a “...
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    41 m
  • How a Nordic Industrial-Tech Partner Actually Runs the Funnel, and What Emerging Managers Must Prove in 2026 with Sagar Chandna

    How a Nordic Industrial-Tech Partner Actually Runs the Funnel, and What Emerging Managers Must Prove in 2026 with Sagar Chandna
    Mar 27 2026

    Episode 5 - How a Nordic Industrial-Tech Partner Actually Runs the Funnel (with Sagar Chandna, RunwayFBU)

    About Sagar

    Sagar Chandna is Senior Partner and CTO at RunwayFBU, an industrial tech VC backed by one of Norway’s largest industrial groups. A Top 100 Data-Driven VC Leader, he brings experience from scaling global technology platforms and investing in deep tech companies across Europe.

    Bullet highlights:

    - Why 2025 was “one of the hardest” fundraising years for European emerging managers.

    - How RunwayFBU uses automation and AI for sourcing and evaluation instead of relying on interns and manual rubrics.

    - Why industrial tech is still stuck in the “90s” and why only around 3% of captured industrial data is used today.

    - What a credible emerging manager looks like in Sagar’s eyes: platform, ecosystem, and more than capital.

    - Regulation as safety belt and moat in industrial contexts where it helps and where it overreaches.

    - How LPs with “skin in the game” beyond capital think differently, and what this means for GP–LP relationships.

    - Thoughts on exits, AI “massacring” generic SaaS TAMs, and the future of data vs intuition in investing.

    - Why Nordic founders will increasingly look at Asia, Africa and other emerging markets as next steps beyond Europe.



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingforward.substack.com
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    28 m
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