EU-Startups Podcast

In this episode, we speak with Davide Dattoli, Founder and Executive Chairman of Talent Garden, about building one of Europe’s largest digital skills and EdTech platforms — from its launch in 2011 as a coworking experiment in Italy to a pan-European education group operating across 12 markets in Europe, Brazil, and Singapore.

Today, Talent Garden trains 25,000 professionals and students annually, connects 4,500 startups and tech professionals, and attracts more than 500,000 campus visitors each year.

We also discuss Davide’s role as Venture Founder at Italian Founders Fund, Italy’s founder-backed VC supporting pre-seed and seed startups, as well as his broader involvement in the European tech ecosystem.

The conversation explores how the EdTech sector is evolving amid growing AI-driven learning investment (with roughly €52.7 million disclosed in European digital-skills funding rounds in 2025–2026), why physical learning communities still matter, and what “future-proof” skills really mean beyond the buzzwords.

In this episode, we sit down with Fridtjof Berge, co-founder and Chief Business Officer at Antler, one of the world’s most active early-stage venture capital firms. Since launching in 2017, Antler has backed more than 1,650 startups globally and, according to recent data, has now made over 1,800 investments across six continents, supporting founders from day zero.

Fridtjof shares his journey from McKinsey and Harvard Business School to building a global VC platform operating in 27 cities, from San Francisco and New York to Berlin, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney. We explore how Antler scaled from deploying €5.4 million across 44 startups in 2019 to launching a €30 million Nordic fund in 2021 and a €150 million Nordic fund in 2023.

We also dive into Antler’s latest report, “The Anatomy of Greatness”, analysing a decade of unicorn creation from 2014 to 2024. The data reveals a dramatic acceleration in billion-dollar company formation, the rise of AI, shifting founder demographics, and the globalisation of innovation far beyond Silicon Valley.

From backing breakout companies like Airalo and Lovable, to shaping one of the most distributed early-stage investment models in the world, Fridtjof offers his view on what truly sets exceptional founders apart today.

Key Points:
- Antler has made over 1,800 global investments and backed more than 1,650 companies since 2018, operating in 27 cities worldwide
- Unicorn creation has surged from around 4 per year a decade ago to 148 per year, driven largely by AI
AI startups now reach unicorn status in just 4.7 years on average, faster than any other sector
- The average AI-unicorn founder age has fallen to 29 in 2024, even as overall founder age trends slightly upward
- Unicorns have expanded from 30 cities in 8 countries to 300+ cities across 45 countries, reflecting a globalisation of tech entrepreneurship

In this interview, we sit down with Tessa Clarke, co-founder and CEO of Olio, a community-powered platform built to redistribute surplus food and household items at scale.

Growing up on a dairy farm in Yorkshire, Tessa developed an early understanding of the effort behind food production and a deep aversion to waste. That mindset later collided with a very common problem: moving house with a fridge full of perfectly good food. Knocking on neighbours’ doors with a newborn and toddler in tow, she realised there had to be a better way to share surplus – and Olio was born.

Since launching in 2015, Olio has grown from a 12-person WhatsApp experiment into a global platform with over 9 million users, 135 million meals redistributed, 15 million household items rehomed, and around 300,000 tonnes of CO₂e prevented. To date, Olio has raised around €45 million in funding.

Alongside neighbour-to-neighbour sharing, Olio now works with major partners including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Pret and Compass Group to safely redistribute surplus food at scale.

In the conversation, Tessa reflects on moving from senior corporate roles at Dyson and Wonga to building a purpose-led startup, the power of volunteer-driven models, and why household food waste – which accounts for around half of global waste – remains one of the hardest challenges to solve.

Key Points
- How growing up on a dairy farm shaped Tessa Clarke’s views on food, work and waste
- The moment that sparked Olio – and how a few sweet potatoes led to a global platform
- Lessons from scaling a purpose-led startup from a WhatsApp group to millions of users
- Why household food waste is harder to tackle than supply-chain waste
- The role of community, volunteers and trust in making circular models work at scale
- Where Olio’s peer-to-peer model fits within the wider European FoodTech ecosystem

In this episode, we sit down with Hanno Renner, co-founder and CEO of Personio, Europe’s leading all-in-one HR software platform, to reflect on a decade-long journey from near-bankruptcy to building one of Europe’s most influential SaaS companies.

Hanno looks back on Personio’s earliest days, including the moment when the company had just a few hundred euros left in the bank. We explore what truly changes when a startup moves from survival mode into scale-up mode, what doesn’t scale as expected, and how founder alignment evolves as roles diverge in a company of more than 1,800 people serving over a million employees.

A central and timely part of the discussion focuses on EU Inc and the proposed 28th regime. Hanno makes a strong case for deeper European integration. His pro-European stance highlights why regulatory harmonisation, capital mobility, and a truly unified market are not abstract policy debates, but goals for Europe’s next generation of scaleups.

Beyond business, Hanno reflects on leadership lessons from his time as a yacht skipper, how those experiences shaped his approach to responsibility and decision-making, and how he thinks about long-term societal impact through the Personio Foundation, which has committed 1% of the company’s equity to climate action and education.

Key Points
- From near-zero cash to multi-billion valuation: the least visible but hardest phases of Personio’s growth
- What breaks - and what surprisingly holds - when scaling from startup to European scaleup
- Personio’s evolving role at the centre of Europe’s HRTech ecosystem
- Why EU Inc and the 28th regime are critical for Europe’s ability to build global tech champions

In this episode of the EU-Startups Podcast, recorded during Leonard’s 2026 Launch Day in Paris, we speak with Dag Wirdenius, CEO & Founder of SiteAssist, one of the startups supported by Leonard, the innovation and foresight platform of the VINCI Group.

Together with Leonard, we spotlighted selected startups from its incubation and acceleration programmes, showcasing solutions tackling real-world challenges in construction, infrastructure, energy, and mobility.

In this conversation, Dag explains how Site Assist improves day-to-day support on construction sites, focusing on efficiency, safety, and practical operational needs. We discuss the realities of innovating in complex on-site environments.

This interview is part of a five-episode Leonard series, recorded live during Launch Day, with new episodes released weekly.

Key topics discussed in this episode:
- The challenge Site Assist is addressing on construction sites
- How the platform supports on-site teams and operations
- Why construction remains a difficult sector to innovate in
- Lessons from deploying solutions in real construction environments