Atomico

It's not a technical challenge anymore, right? It's a question of whether the human beings want to change behavior and just use technology to hire, even if it is driven by AI, rather than actually talk to someone about it and rather than be taken down the pub on a Thursday afternoon.

I think the Atomico State of Tech report is going to be out soon, kind of September, October.

And they led the round in Jack and Jill, I think.

So maybe we'll see a little bit of insight because I'm sure they'll be singing the bullish praises of HR tech in there maybe.

43.

$43 million from Atomico, Balderton.

Where are you now? Can you tell us a little bit, I don't know, growth numbers, but can you tell us where you are and which stage you are now and

what's the plan for

So what's going on in Stockholm? Is this Nordic ecosystem shifting into a new gear? To help us unpack it, I'm joined by Sophia Bendz, a partner at Cherry Ventures and longtime fixture in Europe's startup ecosystem.

Sophia spent seven years as a global marketing director at Spotify, has made more than 40 angel investments, and previously built Atomico's angel program.

[upbeat music] Sophia, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I mean, I think it has matured significantly the last, you know, four or five years.

Uh, but I think it has been kinda a long time in the making.

And, you know, for just my sort of time here, I feel like I've seen, you know, um, and had the pleasure to work closely with Niklas Zennström at Skype and then Daniel at Spotify and then invested into companies such as Klarna with Atomico, et cetera, and seen kinda generations of founders.

And I think one thing that strikes me is that it's a small place.

... aging.

Yeah, you were at Accel, and you were at their very nice offices, and I was at, just joined Atomico, I think.

Mm-hmm.

And we were both, like, very young and we were like, "Wow, it worked." [laughs]

Ah.

Ah.

[laughs] I think mine would be Nick Laster at Atomico.

Oh, really?

European capital markets have matured significantly over the past decade.

The rise of specialized European tech investors, such as Atomico, Accel Europe, Balderton, Eurasio, and others, improved regulatory frameworks, including ELTIFs and Capital Markets Union initiatives, and growing liquidity on major European exchanges have started to narrow the gap with US markets.

Companies like Adyen, a Dutch fintech listed in Amsterdam, Teamviewer, German software listed in Frankfurt, and others have demonstrated that European companies can achieve substantial scale and valuation through European listings.

The European ecosystem increasingly supports growth stage companies through IPO and beyond.