Podcasts about taavet hinrikus

Welcome to the Pursuit of Scrappiness Tech Brief. A monthly discussion on topics we find relevant to highlight, discuss and share with you to help you become a scrappier and better version of yourself. On this episode we talk about:

Show Notes: Patterns in the ChaosDon't be a VictimMay 2, 2025Show Notes: Patterns in the ChaosOverviewThis week's newsletter “Patterns in the Chaos” explores how individuals and organizations can move from passive observers to active agents of change. In an era defined by conflicting signals—tech giants under legal fire, explosive AI adoption, and lofty visions of abundance—the key is to identify cross-cutting patterns and choose which future you want to build.Our content spans court battles over monopolies, the rise of agentic AI in enterprises, evolving capital markets, debates over human value in an automated world, and strategic adaptation in turbulent times. Listeners will gain insights into how these forces interconnect and shape the next chapter of technology, policy, and society.Key Trend 1: The Rise of Agentic AI in EnterpriseSignificance: AI is shifting from a research topic to a mission-critical operational layer. Organizations are embedding autonomous software agents into R&D, go-to-market, and everyday workflows.Talking Point 1: Widespread Agentic AI AdoptionTalking Point 1: Nine in ten R&D teams plan to implement agentic AI this year, signaling a transition from experimentation to production.“91% of R&D Respondents have implemented or are planning to implement agentic AI” (David Poole, Georgian & NewtonX – https://georgian.io/agentic-ai-adoption-insights-from-600-executives/)This momentum underscores that AI planning, reasoning, and execution capabilities are now viewed as essential for competitive R&D.Talking Point 2: Re-Architecting Infrastructure for AgentsTalking Point 2: Companies are considering the web browser as the next OS-level platform for AI agents.“We need to build an OS-level agent, and a browser is essentially a containerized operating system” (Aravind Srinivas, on Spyglass – https://spyglass.org/ai-web-browser/)To avoid catastrophic misinterpretations, teams must also cultivate robust semantic layers that feed agents the context they lack.“Teams will become cultivators of a constantly evolving collection of cross-domain semantic layers” (Tom Tunguz – https://www.tomtunguz.com/semantic-layer/)Key Trend 2: Monopoly, Regulation, and the Future of Tech PowerSignificance: High-stakes antitrust actions against Apple and Google are not just about market share today but about control over tomorrow's AI and distribution channels.Talking Point 1: Google's Default Search Under ScrutinyTalking Point 1: The Justice Department warns that Google's exclusive search deals could “supercharge” its AI rollout and foreclose competition.“Default placement … could be leveraged to ‘supercharge' new AI offerings, ensuring consumers turn first to Google” (David McCabe, NYT – https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/technology/google-antitrust-trial-ai.html)Regulators argue that data-fuel advantages from search defaults give Google an unfair head start in AI services.Talking Point 2: Apple's App Store DefianceTalking Point 2: A federal judge referred Apple to criminal prosecutors for ignoring a 2021 injunction on App Store anti-steering rules.“Apple's goal: to dissuade customer usage of alternative purchase opportunities and maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream” (John Gruber, Daring Fireball – https://daringfireball.net/2025/04/gonzales_rogers_apple_app_store_ruling)This decision forces platforms to reassess how they enforce fees and policies, with potential global ripples.Key Trend 3: Capital Markets Evolution—New Funding Paths and VC ModelsSignificance: Funding mechanisms are diversifying—SPACs are back, VC firms are retooling their partnership models, and founders must navigate changing incentives at each stage.Talking Point 1: SPACs Make a ComebackTalking Point 1: After a rocky 2021, blank-check companies are targeting sectors from autonomous trucking to nuclear power.“Kodiak Robotics announced a SPAC merger at a pre-money valuation around $2.5 billion” (Joanna Glasner, Crunchbase – https://news.crunchbase.com/public/spac/tariffs-ai-robotics-crypto-biotech/)Startups see SPACs as a viable alternative to traditional IPOs, attracting capital at scale.Talking Point 2: VC as a “Full-Stack” Support PlatformTalking Point 2: Andreessen Horowitz redefined venture capital by building specialized teams (talent, marketing, regulatory) around each investment.“Founders deserve more than just capital, but a comprehensive, long-term support system” (a16z – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpBDB2NjaWY)This contrasts with multi-stage funds whose “pipeline” approach can inflate early valuations without seed-stage expertise (Taavet Hinrikus, 20VC – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvHnRxKdg2M).Key Trend 4: Human Agency, Abundance, and the Value of PeopleSignificance: As automation and AI proliferate, human skills, relationships, and democratic participation become scarce—and thus, strategic—assets.Talking Point 1: From Scarcity to Abundance Requires Purposeful PolicyTalking Point 1: Ezra Klein's “Abundance” review criticizes timid calls for incremental reform and urges a democratic blueprint for real abundance.“This is the real discussion we need to be having: how can we achieve the disruptive level of change required for an actual abundance agenda in a democratic fashion.” (Albert Wenger – https://paragraph.com/@continuations/abundance-book-review)Bold policy and collective agency are essential to realize unlimited access to what humans need.Talking Point 2: Human Interaction as a Luxury in the Digital EraTalking Point 2: AI companions and curated human engagement are emerging as valuable services for the socially isolated.“New technologies often feel dystopian, until they feel commonplace … AI friends are a good thing, actually.” (Rex Woodbury – https://www.digitalnative.tech/p/ai-friends-are-a-good-thing-actually)“Human engagement is often reserved for those who can afford it, leading to a society where personal attention is a luxury.” (Humans As Luxury Goods – https://platforms.substack.com/p/humans-as-luxury-goods-in-the-age)Key Trend 5: Strategic Adaptation Amidst ChaosSignificance: Periods of upheaval create openings for startups and organizations that can navigate uncertainty, discipline pilots toward production, and rethink industrial strategy.Talking Point 1: Chaos as a Catalyst for Creative DestructionTalking Point 1: Startups thrive as “tricksters” in turbulent times, deploying architectural innovation to topple incumbents.“Periods of upheaval … create opportunities for startups to disrupt entrenched incumbents.”(Packy McCormick – https://www.notboring.co/p/chaos-is-a-ladder)Embracing uncertainty can be a deliberate strategy for reinvention.Talking Point 2: Overcoming “Death by 1,000 Pilots”Talking Point 2: The real challenge is not launching PoCs but scaling them into production with robust infrastructure, monitoring, and operations.“It's easy to fire up a pilot … you can get stuck in this ‘death by 1,000 pilots' approach.” (Rodney Zemmel, McKinsey Digital, via O'Reilly – https://www.oreilly.com/radar/death-by-1000-pilots/)Companies must build clear paths from experimentation to value realization.Discussion QuestionsHow can enterprises avoid “death by 1,000 pilots” while rapidly scaling agentic AI capabilities?What are the trade-offs between antitrust interventions (e.g., breaking up defaults) and the risk of stifling AI innovation?In a world where human interaction becomes a luxury, how should companies balance automation with services that emphasize personal touch?Can SPACs and “full-stack” VC platforms coexist, or will one model dominate early-stage funding in the next cycle?Given the tension between incremental regulatory fixes and calls for disruptive abundance agendas, what level of policy boldness is both feasible and desirable?How might a forced sale of a browser or default search slot reshape the competitive dynamics of AI distribution? (Controversy: divestiture as remedy)Are hyper-optimistic growth projections (e.g., OpenAI's $129 billion by 2029) fantasy, or do they play a functional role in mobilizing capital? (Controversy: realism vs. hype)Closing SegmentAcross regulation, capital, technology and human value, one pattern emerges: agency matters. Whether you're a founder, policy-maker, or individual, inertial forces abound—but so do levers for change. Embracing agentic AI, reshaping capital structures, demanding bold policy, and elevating human skills can turn chaos into opportunity. As we close, remember: “History is decided by human decisions taken in real time.” What decision will you make today to shape tomorrow? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe

Taavet Hinrikus, the co-founder of Wise, one of the world's biggest fintech firms, gives advice on forming and running teams. Andrew Palmer learns the secrets of teamwork in Afghanistan, Mumbai and Silicon Valley; and Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School explains how to foster psychological safety.Boss Class season one is free for a limited time. Season two will appear weekly starting May 12th. To hear new episodes, subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. https://subscribenow.economist.com/podcasts-plusIf you're already a subscriber to The Economist, you have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Taavet Hinrikus is a Partner at Plural, the early-stage fund that backs the most ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology. He co-founded Wise in 2010, where he was CEO and later Chairman, which went public in the first-ever direct listing in Europe in 2021. Prior to that, Taavet was Skype's Director of Strategy until 2008, having joined as its first employee. He's been an active investor for more than a decade,with personal investments in the likes of Bolt and Synthesia. In Today's Show We Discuss: 04:08 VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys 05:41 Why Banker European VCs Suck More Than The Others 11:20 Why Serial Entrepreneurs Are Better 14:48 Why the 2:20 Fee and Carry Model in VC is Broken 18:01 What are the Biggest Ways VC Investment Decision-Making is Broken 28:26 Why is it BS when VC Firms Need Every Partner to Meet the Founder 31:24 When and Why Will Founders Realise Multi-Stage Firms are Bad Early Investors 34:35 Why Does Europe Need to Build it's Own Tech Now More Than Ever 37:24 Will Putin Invade More European Countries 39:29 What are the Dangers of Having US Made Tech in Europe 47:12 How Does the Change in Relationship Between the US and Europe Impact How We Build Our Tech Ecosystem? 52:36 Quick Fire Questions and Reflections  

Taavet Hinrikus, the co-founder of Wise, one of the world's biggest fintech firms, gives advice on forming and running teams. Andrew Palmer learns the secrets of teamwork in Afghanistan, Mumbai and Silicon Valley; and Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School explains how to foster psychological safety.Boss Class season one is free for a limited time. Season two will appear weekly starting May 12th. To hear new episodes, subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. https://subscribenow.economist.com/podcasts-plusIf you're already a subscriber to The Economist, you have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

This is an excerpt from our previous conversation with Taavet Hinrikus on brave early stage building decisions and scrappy marketing tactics of Wise (Ex-Transferwise):How to build trust when nobody knows your companyMaximizing marketing efficiency on low budgetsSwitching your mindset from waiting to doingTaavet Hinrikus is a partner at Plural, a VC investing in founders on a mission to change the world through technology. He co-founded the legendary Estonian unicorn Wise (initially Transferwise) in 2010, where he was CEO and later Chairman, which went public in the first-ever direct listing in Europe in 2021. Prior to that, Taavet was Skype's Director of Strategy until 2008, starting as its first employee. He's been an active investor supporting more than 100 companies globally. More recently he co-founded Jōhvi Coding School to help increase the number of people with coding skills in Estonia.Listen to the full conversation with Taavet here on Episode 160:Link to SpotifyLink to Apple Podcastshttps://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/episodes/160-taavet-hinrikus==The support for this episode comes from Leadfeeder - turn anonymous pageviews into concrete sales pipeline.Imagine knowing which companies are checking out your site, tracking their behavior on your site, and integrating all this into your CRM.That's exactly what Leadfeeder does for you. Head to https://bit.ly/4dQVsWe for a FREE demo and get a FREE EXTENDED premium trial by mentioning the Pursuit of Scrappiness podcast.Head to https://bit.ly/4dQVsWe

Taavet Hinrikus is a partner at Plural, a VC investing in founders on a mission to change the world through technology. He co-founded the legendary Estonian unicorn Wise (initially TransferWise) in 2010, where he was CEO and later Chairman. Wise went public in the first-ever direct listing in Europe in 2021. Prior to that, Taavet was Skype's Director of Strategy until 2008, starting as its first employee. He's been an active investor supporting more than 100 companies globally. More recently he co-founded Jōhvi Coding School to help increase the number of people with coding skills in Estonia. On this episode we talk about:Early challenges and scrappy marketing strategies at WiseBuilding trust for a Fintech startupHow the Wise culture shapes the next generation of entrepreneursWhat sets successful entrepreneurs apartDealing with stress and pressureTaavet's investment principlesThe mission of Plural and learnings from investing in 100+ companiesHow to navigate the current fundraising environment==Find all episodes on >  https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/Watch select full-length episodes on our YouTube channel > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP6ueaLnjS-CQfrMCm2EoTAConnect with us on Linkedin > https://www.linkedin.com/company/pursuit-of-scrappiness/===============This episode is brought to you in collaboration with our supporters of the show - SAMSUNG and their new AI enabled Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone!Take your productivity & creativity to the next level with Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. Find out more at https://www.samsung.com/lv/smartphones/galaxy-s24-ultra/

Petri Burtsoff heads to Tallinn to meet Lisette Luik, co-founder of Arbonics, an Estonian technology company that calculates the carbon removal potential of land and allows landowners to better quantity this data. With investors including Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of Skype and Wise, Arbonics emphasises forest growth alongside technological solutions to preserve biodiversity and resilience by scaling up nature's role in carbon removal. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Matt Briers has been the CFO of Wise since 2015. In 2021, Matt led the company to a direct listing on the London Stock Exchange, the first major direct listing in Europe. Wise, founded in the UK in 2011 by Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus, has revolutionized cross-border payments for individuals and businesses by making them easier, faster and cheaper. After 10 years as a private company, Wise followed in the footsteps of Spotify and Slack by doing a direct listing instead of a regular IPO, at a valuation of 11 billion dollars. With Matt, we discuss the rationale and timing to go public for a profitable tech company which doesn't need to raise money, his experience of the direct listing process, and the considerations around a UK listing rather than US. If you have feedback, or there are any topics you would like us to cover on the show, please reach out at contact@ipostories.com Disclaimer: this discussion is not financial advice, nor an investment recommendation, nor a solicitation to buy or sell any financial instruments, or an offer for financial services or any other transaction. The information contained in the recording have no contractual value and are destined for an informational purpose only. Amundsen Investment Management and the participants on this podcast may have holdings in the companies being discussed.

This episode was the most popular one of 2023 - it first aired Apr 18, 2023. Enjoy and have a happy new year! Miguel Armaza sits down with Nilan Peiris, Chief Product Officer at Wise (WISE.L), a global fintech that helps clients move money around the world. Founded in 2011 by Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus, Wise went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2021 and has a current market cap of £6 billion, has served 16 million people and businesses, and processes £9 billion in monthly cross-border transactions across 170 countries in 50 currencies.We discuss:Building through a mission-driven approach and why it's crucial for companies to have very clear missionsHow Wise turned a consumer product into a B2B offering and an infrastructure business, essentially building three companies inside a single firm.Building customer trust through transparency and how this can lead to high customer satisfaction and strong referralsTurning regulatory challenges into opportunities… and a lot more!Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today's global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.Do you prefer a written summary, instead? Check out the Fintech Leaders newsletter and join 60,000+ readers and listeners worldwide!Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4ZMiguel on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2Jb5oBcFintech Leaders Newsletter: bit.ly/3jWIp

O country manager da Wise no Brasil, Yves Berbert, disse em entrevista ao Poder360 que o principal objetivo da empresa no país atualmente é começar a trabalhar com pessoas jurídicas. Apesar de já ter esse tipo de cliente nos EUA e na Europa, no Brasil, a companhia só atende pessoas físicas.A Wise é uma empresa de tecnologia financeira com sede em Londres (Reino Unido). Foi fundada em 2011 pelos empresários estonianos Kristo Käärmann e Taavet Hinrikus. A companhia funciona como uma plataforma financeira digital. O usuário envia dinheiro em real do seu banco no Brasil para o aplicativo da Wise e pode converter esse valor para diversas outras moedas, como dólar, euro e libra.

In der Rubrik “Investments & Exits” begrüßen wir heute Tina Dreimann, Co-Founder von better ventures. Tina analysiert die Finanzierungsrunden von Cleverly, Mjuk und Open Cosmos.Cleverly erhält 4,6 Millionen Euro in einer erweiterten Seed-Finanzierungsrunde. Das Startup bietet 1-zu-1-Online-Coachings für Schulkinder von ausgebildeten Pädagoginnen und Pädagogen. Zu den Investoren gehören Rubio Impact Ventures, Capnamic, Emma ventures, das Schweizer Familie Office White Alps, Arm und Business Angels wie Florian Langenscheidt, Verena Pausder und die Flixbus-Gründer. 2,5 Millionen Euro sammelt das finnische Re-Commerce-Unternehmen Mjuk ein, das mit seiner Plattform Möbel-Müll reduzieren möchte, indem es gebrauchte Möbel, Überbestände und Rückläufer von Einzelhändlern wieder in der Verkauf bringt und diesen Prozess End-to-End betreut. Zu den Kapitalgebern zählen u.a.  Trind VC, Alliance VC, Superhero Capital, Lifeline Ventures und Angel-Investoren. Ein Fünftel der Summe wird in Form eines Beteiligungsdarlehen von Finnvera zur Verfügung gestellt.Open Cosmos sammelt in einer Series-B Finanzierungsrunde 47 Millionen Euro ein, um sein internationales Wachstum zu beschleunigen und sein Angebot erweitern. Das britische Unternehmen möchte mit seinen Satelliten den Zugang zu Weltraumdaten vereinfachen und demokratisieren Die Impact-Investoren, ETF Partners, Trill Impact und A&G führten die Runde an. Zudem beteiligten sich auch Accenture Ventures, Banco Santander InnoEnergy Climate Tech Fund und Claret Capital Partners, mit Beteiligung von Taavet Hinrikus und Kheng Nam Lee.

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud David Musu, Tõnu Toompargi ja Matti Vanséni esinemine teemal "Investeeringud, mis kujundavad maailma". Vestlust juhtis Äripäeva börsitoimetuse ajakirjanik Simo Sepp. InvesteerimisFestivalil toimunud paneelil arutasid kinnisvaraeksperdid David Musu, Tõnu Toompark ja Matti Vansén, kuidas luua kuulikindlat kinnisvaraportfelli. Põhjusel, et kinnisvarahinnad on kriiside ajal kukkunud enamasti palju vähem kui näiteks aktsiaturud, peab Vansén seda praegustel aegadel sobivaks varaklassiks. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Liis Narusk from Certific speaks to Steve Roest CEO of PocDoc. Liis is one of the most extensive thinkers in Europe at this moment on the evolution of technology within the GP system, but focused with Certific outside the UK - yes, there is a world outside the UK! Liis co-founded Certific with Taavet Hinrikus, the founder of Wise and Dr Jack Kreindler, doctor, thinker and explorer. In this show, they cover the impact of AI on healthcare, how the regulations are going to struggle with AI, why patients across Europe are still not using digital health records and more!

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Taavet Hinrikuse ja Sten Tamkivi esinemine teemal "Investeeringud, mis kujundavad maailma". Vestlust juhtis Marko Oolo. Uut investeerimisplatvormi ehitavad tehnoloogiaettevõtjad ja ingelinvestorid Taavet Hinrikus ja Sten Tamkivi võtsid möödunud InvesteerimisFestivalil lahti, kuhu, kuidas ja miks nad investeerivad, mis on tark raha ning kuidas saada jõukaks. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulda lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Miguel Armaza sits down with Nilan Peiris, Chief Product Officer at Wise (WISE.L), a global fintech that helps clients move money around the world. Founded in 2011 by Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus, Wise went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2021 and has a current market cap of £6 billion, has served 16 million people and businesses, and processes £9 billion in monthly cross-border transactions across 170 countries in 50 currencies.We discuss:Building through a mission-driven approach and why it's crucial for companies to have very clear missionsHow Wise turned a consumer product into a B2B offering and an infrastructure business, essentially building three companies inside a single firm.Building customer trust through transparency and how this can lead to high customer satisfaction and strong referralsTurning regulatory challenges into opportunities… and a lot more!Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today's global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.Do you prefer a written summary, instead? Check out the Fintech Leaders newsletter and join 53,000+ readers and listeners worldwide!Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4ZMiguel on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2Jb5oBcFintech Leaders Newsletter: bit.ly/3jWIpqp

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Viljar Arakase esinemine teemal "10 teemat majanduses ja kinnisvaras, mida jälgida". EfTEN Capitali tegevjuht Viljar Arakas tõdes InvesteerimisFestivalil, et maailma mastaabis on hetkel oluline inflatsioon ja meie regioonis sõda ning need kaks tegurit defineerivad kõike seda, kus me praegu oleme, ülejäänu pole enam oluline. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Kristjan Liivamägi ja Paavo Siimanni esinemine teemal "Kuidas valida varaklasse vastavalt majandustsükli faasile". Investor ja finantsökonoomika doktor Kristjan Liivamägi ning investor ja finantsanalüüsi ekspert Paavo Siimann avaldasid InvesteerimisFestivali viimasel päeval, et oleme majandustsükli langusfaasi lähedal ning andsid mõtteid, kuidas ennast languse eest kaitsta. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Miguel Armaza sits down with Alex Prot, CEO & Co-Founder of Qonto, one of the largest fintechs in Europe that helps SMBs simplify their everyday banking and offers a wide range of digital financial services.Founded in 2017, Qonto serves 350,000 clients across France, Italy, Spain and Germany, and has over 1,000 employees. The company has also raised close to $700 million from Valar, DST, Hedosophia, Insight, KKR, and angels like Taavet Hinrikus, Co-Founder of Wise and Guillaume Pousaz, CEO & Founder of Checkout.com.We discuss:Three key focus areas that unlocked Qonto's successChallenges of scaling Qonto to over 1,000 employees and 350k customers How they plan to reach a million clientsGrowing through product-led growthThe power of having a strong Co-FounderFundraising lessons for entrepreneursEurope's fascinating fintech opportunity… and a lot more!Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today's global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.Do you prefer a written summary, instead? Check out the Fintech Leaders newsletter and join 52,000+ readers and listeners worldwide!Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4ZMiguel on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2Jb5oBcFintech Leaders Newsletter: bit.ly/3jWIpqp

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Jake Farra ja Taavi Ilvese esinemine teemal "Parimad ideed sissetulekute ja investeeringute kasvatamiseks". InvesteerimisFestivali laval üles astunud fotograaf Jake Farra ja tarkvarainsener Taavi Ilves on mõlemad rahaliselt sõltumatud ega pea tegema tööd selleks, et elamiseks vajalikku raha teenida. Nad töötavad oma erialadel vabadena hoopis huvist oma tegevuse vastu ja boonus on sealjuures raha, mida saab oma investeerimisportfelli kasvama lükata. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Karl Tiidu esinemine teemal "Minu 5 hindamatut õppetundi börsidelt". Investor ja börsikaupleja Karl Tiit, kes töötab LHV Varahalduses aktsiaturgude analüütikuna tõi InvesteerimisFestivalil oma aktsiatehingutest välja viis olulist asja, mida iga investor saab oma tootluse parandamiseks teha. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Mattias Wallanderi esinemine teemal "Best stocks in the Baltics". Enlight Reasearchi asutaja ja analüütik Mattias Wallander rääkis oma InvesteerimisFestivali ettekandes, kuidas analüüsida aktsiaid, ja ütles välja, mis paistab tema jaoks praegu atraktiivne Balti börsidel. Analüüsimaja asutaja Mattias Wallander on oma investeerimiskarjääri ajal läbi elanud kolm börsikrahhi, kui välja arvata koroonapandeemia alguses toimunud langus. Ta usub, et karuturgu ei tasuks raisku lasta ning see on praegu hea võimalus turgudel investeerimiseks. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taavet Hinrikus is the Co-Founder and former Chairman of Wise, the unicorn fintech which used to be called TransferWise. He's now the Co-Founder of Plural, an investment platform for early stage capital built by founders and real operators like Taavet. Oh, and he was also the first ever employee at Skype. Basically, he's one of the top startup dogs in Europe so we had to get him on to learn what the difference is between great companies and the rest. It's always amazing hearing about the early days of companies which become absolutely massive like Wise, or Skype. These are the days when they're signing up tens of users, rather than tens of thousands - and they're wondering if they're barking up the wrong tree. All startups begin with 0 real users and it's fascinating how the best navigate their way from there to the top. Taavet is part of the group of Estonian entrepreneurs who've had a GDP level impact on the country.  Let's find out why he's been so successful. We'd love your feedback hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links: evelyn.com/secretleaders/ vorboss.com/secretleaders personio.com/secretleaders vanta.com/secretleaders

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Jekaterina Tindi, Karin Nemeci ja Maarja Pärsi esinemine teemal "Kuidas mõjuinvesteeringutega turge edastada". “Kui me ühel hetkel oleme väga rikkad, aga meil pole enam planeeti, siis on sellest rikkusest väga vähe kasu,” ütles jätkusuutliku investeerimisplatvormi Grünfin juht ja asutaja Karin Nemec InvesteerimisFestivalil. Mõjuinvesteeringute vestlusringis arutlesid rahatarkuse treener ja investor Jekaterina Tint, jätkusuutliku investeerimisplatvormi Grünfini tegevjuht ja asutaja Karin Nemec ja LHV Varahalduse võlakirjainvesteeringute portfellihaldur Maarja Pärs. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Epp Kärsini esinemine teemal "Hea seks kui jõukuse allikas". Seksikoolitaja Epp Kärsini sõnul mõistavad ettevõtjad aina enam, et õnnelikus paarisuhtes ja seksuaalselt rahuldatud töötajad on ettevõtte edu pant. Kärsin rääkis InvesteerimisFestivalil, et ettevõtte edukus sõltub inimestest, kes selles töötavad ja sellest, missuguse energiaga nad hommikul tööle tulevad. Kui kõik ettevõtte töötajad on seksuaalselt rahuldatud ja on õnnelikes paarissuhetes, siis ettevõtte tulemused kasvavad. See aga eeldab, et samaväärselt tööga panustatakse aega ka oma suhtesse. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Marek Kiisa esinemine teemal "Vormelisõitjast tippinvestoriks". Riskikapitalifondi Nordic Ninja kaasasutaja Marek Kiisa rääkis InvesteerimisFestivalil, et idufirmade puhul on kõige tähtsam asutaja suutlikkus rasketes olukordades toime tulla ja vajaduse korral suunda muuta. Endise vormelisõitjana võrdleb Kiisa võidusõitmist iduettevõtlusega, kus peab samamoodi sponsoritelt raha kaasama ja ennast müüma. Õnneks või kahjuks jäi tal vormelisõitjana ühel hetkel raha kaasamata ja seejärel suunas ta oma energia eneseharimisse ning 2019. aastal asutas Euroopa suurima Jaapani kapitalil põhineva süvatehnoloogiafondi Nordic Ninja. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Jaak Roosaare, Madis Müüri ja Lauri Meidla esinemine teemal "Kuidas olla kohal enne teisi ja teenida 100x tootlust". Investori ja "Rikkaks saamise õpiku“ autor Jaak Roosaare, ettevõtja ja investor Lauri Meidla ning iduinvestor Madis Müür jagasid InvesteerimisFestivalil nippe, kuidas kohal olla enne teisi ning teenida sajakordset tootlust. Lisaks avaldasid nad, kuhu nad praegu investeerivad. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

This week it's a long form interview with founder-turned-investor Taavet Hinrikus. He's half a year into his journey as a VC and says that his new fund Plural is going to do things differently. He came into the Sifted studio to tell us about why investor committees are useless, how you can't build a business on a four-day week and the biggest lessons he learnt from building Wise.

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Mihkel Kuke esinemine teemal "Viie aastaga portfell nullist miljoni euroni". Küberturbe ekspert Mihkel Kukk kasvatas oma investeerimisportfelli kiire spurdiga - kahekordistas igal aastal palka, võttis järjest kodulaene ja ostis kokku kortereid. InvesteerimisFestivali ajaks oli tema portfelli turuväärtus 1,5 miljonit eurot ja igakuiselt laekub üürilistelt 15 000 eurot. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulda lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Neinar Seli esinemine teemal "Minu investeerimispõhimõtted". Äripäeva Rikaste TOPi esiotsas figureeriv ja Eesti ärimaailma suurim otsustaja Neinar Seli soovitas hoida kainet mõistust ja uskuda, et varsti läheb paremaks. “Tark ei torma, see aeg tuleb üle elada,” ütleb Seli. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulda lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Katri Telleri esinemine teemal "Miljonäriks kaks korda järjest". Aasta investor 2023, saatejuht ja podcasti „Blondcast“ eestvedaja Katri Teller avaldas seitse põhimõtet, mida ta igapäevaselt oma elus rakendab ning mida järgides on ta saanud kinnisvarasse investeerides lühikese ajaga juba teist korda miljonäriks. 2022. aasta veebruaris ulatus Telleri varade väärtus eurodes seitsmekohalise numbrini. Tema portfellis on kümme korterit, kolm krunti ning veidi aktsiaid. Seda vaatamata sellele, et pärast esimese investeeringuga kiirelt miljonäriks saamist, kaotas Teller finantskriisis kõik. InvesteerimisFestivalil rääkis Teller oma põhimõtetest ja tugevustest, tänu millele tal miljoniportfell taastada õnnestus. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulda lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Kristi Saare ja Marko Oolo esinemine teemal "Investeerimise tööriistad, mis aitavad jõuda järgmisele tasemele". Aasta investor 2021 ja Naisinvestorite Klubi eestvedaja Kristi Saare ja Eesti riskikapitalifondi Superangeli meeskonnaliige ning InvesteerimisFestivali eestvedaja Marko Oolo on jõudnud oma investeerimisteekonnal finantsvabaduseni ning on oma edu saavutamise teekonnal saadud kogemused jaotanud kuueks alussambaks. Nende hinnangul kannavad need põhimõtted edasi nii alustavaid kui ka edasijõudnud investoreid. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulda lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Tõnn Talpsepa, Tarvo Vaarmetsa ja Kristjan Liivamägi esinemine teemal "Investeerimisedu põhimõtted". Tänavu uue investeerimisraamatu välja andnud Kristjan Liivamägi, Tarvo Vaarmets ja Tõnn Talpsepp rakendavad praeguses börsilanguses üksteisest erinevaid investeerimisstrateegiaid, millest nad rääkisid tänavusel InvesteerimisFestivalil. Praeguse turulanguse ajal köidavad investorite meeli eelkõige küsimused, kuhu praegu investeerida, kust eemale hoida ja milliseid riske tuleks märgata. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taasesitamisel on suursündmusel InvesteerimisFestival 2022 toimunud Otto Pukki esinemine teemal "Kuidas viie aasta aktsionäride vara 13kordistada". Otto Richard Pukk on Eesti juurtega rahvusvahelise ettevõtte Incap Corporationi president ja tegevjuht 2018. aastast. Ta on saanud 2020. aastal Pärnu juhtimiskonverentsil Eesti parima juhi tiitli. Selleks, et ettevõte raketina investorite raha mitmekordistaks, tuleb Otto Richard Puki sõnul usaldada oma töötajaid vigu tegema. Ta usub, et otsustusvabadus motiveerib inimesi rohkem pingutama. Sellest ja paljust muust saad kuulata lähemalt juba podcastis. InvesteerimisFestival 2022

Taavet Hinrikus on üks Eesti edukamaid ettevõtjaid, kes alustas oma karjääri programmeerijana digimeedia agentuuris Halo Interactive. Hiljem sai Taavetist Skype'i esimene töötaja, seejärel asutas koos Kristo Käärmanniga Transferwise'i, mis nüüd on tuntud Wise'i nime all. Aastate jooksul on Taavetist saanud üks aktiivsemaid tehnoloogiainvestoreid Euroopas, kes investeerib koos Sten Tamkiviga ning 2022. aasta suvel tulid nad välja uudse investeerimisplatvormiga Plural. Lisaks on Taavet nii tervishoiu startup'i Certific kui Jõhvi tehnoloogiakooli ehk Kood / Jõhvi kaasasutaja. Selles saates räägime Ehedamatest lapsepõlvemälestustest ning uudishimust maailma vastu kogu lapseaja Kuidas tekkis huvi tehnoloogia ja programmeerimise vastu? Õpingutest Ameerikas keskkooli ajal Esimesest tööintervjuust Sten Tamkiviga ja kuidas ta mõnikord Steni allkirjaga puudumistõendeid kooli viis Õpingute alustamisest TTÜ-s Esimestest töökohtadest Skype'i skaleerimiseni Skype'ist lahkumisest, Londonisse kolimisest ja magistriõpingutest Singapuris Transferwise'i asutamisest ja algusest Milline on Taavet investorina? Liitu uudiskirjaga www.globaalsedeestlased.org, et uus saade jõuaks iga nädal sinu postkasti!

In der Rubrik “Investments & Exits” sprechen wir heute mit Jan Miczaika, Partner bei HV Capital. Jan hat die zwei angekündigten Fonds von Climentum und Aenu sowie die Finanzierungsrunde von Certific besprochen. Climentum Capital verkündete gestern einen ClimateTech-Fonds mit einer Gesamthöhe von 150 Millionen Euro, um 25 Frühphasenstartups bei der Reduktion der europäischen CO2-Emissionen zu unterstützen. Dafür werden junge Unternehmen in den Branchen erneuerbare Energien, #Landwirtschaft, Industrie, Baugewerbe, Transport und Abfall mit Tickets zwischen 1 und 5 Millionen Euro unterstützt. Der VC wurde 2021 von Doerte Hirschberg, Morten Halborg, Stefan Mård und Yoann Berno in Kopenhagen gegründet. Ihr wollt mehr über Climentum Capital erfahren? Gestern war Doerte bei uns im Podcast!

Live Sports – The Next Streaming WarTHE DIGITAL SEATS REVOLUTIONBy Keith Teare • Issue #316 An average sports stadium can hold 50-100,000 fans. But teams have millions and sometimes billions of fans. What is the true value of the rights to stream games? This week Amazon bought UK Champions League rights. Can we expect more money to come for sports rights and who should own them?ContentsLive Sports — The Next Streaming WarEssays of the Week* Will China Build Your Next Car?* China EV Battery Breakthrough* Howard Morgan's Amazing Career* Critiquing Crypto Promoters* Startup Workforce Trends from Carta* Does VC Investing Violate Crypto Ethics* Software Salaries — Europe and USA* Web3 Use Cases Part IIGood News* Sequoia raising $2.25bn?* EF raises $158m Series C* Plural launches €250m Entrepreneur Led Fund* Long Term Stock Exchange Raises $100m* Normalyze Series ABad News* A16Z slows pace of investments* VCs advise company sales* Substack cuts 13 jobs* Unity loses 4% of workforceStartup of the Week* PaveTweet of the Week* BlockFi sold for $25m after raising $1.2bn?EditorialSoftware is about to eat live sports. The signs have been coming for some time. Apple pioneered the trend by buying the rights to Friday night baseball and MLS soccer. It is rumored to be interested in Sunday Ticket for NFL streaming.Now Amazon is strongly favored to buy the rights to one of the biggest football competitions in the world — the UEFA Champions League — in one of its biggest markets — the UK. This follows the deal announced in March, an 11-year deal, valued at $1bn (£824m) annually, for Amazon to broadcast live NFL football in the US.These deals highlight the next stage in the competition between broadcast, cable, and satellite networks on one side and streaming giants on the other. Live sports and live news are the only significant content that consumers want and streamers historically did not have.The value of live sports to a rights owner is that it compels sports fans to buy subscriptions to services that host their favored events.Rupert Murdoch pioneered the approach with Sky Sports when building out his BSkyB franchise. It required every football (soccer) loving home to install a satellite dish and set-top box. And they did.Now Apple and Amazon are playing their game and have very deep pockets for doing so.The key to understanding how to play the game is to understand its value. I am familiar with the English Premier League so using it as an illustration here are the facts.The EPL has 20 teams. Between them, they have over 2 billion global fans who have 380 games per season. That is a total market available of 760 billion viewers. The EPL is currently planning to sell the rights for £10.5 bn ($14.2) for 3 years:For the 2022 to 2025 rights cycle, The Times says international deals will be worth UK£5.3 billion (US$7.1 billion), up 30 per cent, while domestic deals bring in UK£5.1 billion (US$6.9 billion), with commercial partnerships taking the total to UK£10.5 billion (US$14.2 billion).That makes $4.73 bn per year. On a per viewer/game basis that is point six of a cent per viewer/game in revenue.* Games Per Week 10* Total Fan base 2,000,000,000* Number of Weeks 38* Total viewer/games 760,000,000,000* Rights per year $4,730,000,000* Revenue per viewer/game $0.006Of course, the rights buyers monetize the games at a multiple of their cost, by selling subscriptions and advertisements. The total value of the league measured in income is unknown. But clearly, it is well over $4.73bn a season. Perhaps 9–10 times that.The income goes to the rights buyers, not to the League.So if streamers gain control of the EPL, how much might it be worth?Let us assume that 50% of the fan base watches one game a week and pays $1 a game. That would be as follows:* Total Fan Base 1,000,000,000* Number of weeks 38* Games Per Week Per Fan: 1* Viewer Games Per Week 1,000,000,000* Price per game: $1* Weekly Revenue: $1 billion* Seasonal Revenue: $38 billion* Revenue per viewer/game $1So at 1 game per week, at $1 a game, streaming could generate $38 billion per season. In reality, the price per game can be higher and most fans would watch more than one game per week.The untapped fortune here is what I call digital seats. Liverpool FC can fit under 70,000 fans into its Anfield stadium. But over 500,000,000 would pay to watch live games. Double that for Manchester United. Streamers can create these digital seats. Over time they can deliver a better than stadium experience to those seats.This means that the price Amazon is paying for European football is very small compared to the opportunity.Beyond that, the EPL itself should probably retain the rights and offer ticket-based streaming directly to fans globally. In that case, the revenue would come back to the EPL and not be placed into the hands of middlemen.The real promise of streaming is to cut out the middlemen and simply pay for production and transport, as a cost. Movies, TV series, News, and Sports will all go that way. This week Amazon is shining a light on this.VideoThat Was The Week's video cast streams live each Friday. The recorded version is available only to subscribers. Subscribe here.Live Sports — The Next Streaming WarAmazon close to deal over Champions League rights in UKUS retailer and streaming giant set to split UK rights with BT Sport, while BBC to broadcast highlights in new Match of the Day editionAmazon is close to securing a groundbreaking deal to broadcast live Champions League football in the UK from 2024, with highlights returning to terrestrial TV for the first time in nearly a decade in a midweek BBC Match of Day show.The US internet retailer and streaming giant, which already has a broadcast portfolio spanning Premier League football, tennis and rugby, is understood to be set to split the UK rights with existing holder BT Sport in a new deal with the governing body, Uefa, running from 2024 until 2027.Continue reading…www.theguardian.com • ShareEssays of the WeekChina Built Your iPhone. Will It Build Your Next Car?RUMORS OF AN Apple electric car project have long excited investors and iPhone enthusiasts. Almost a decade after details of the project leaked, the Cupertino-mobile remains mythical — but that hasn't stopped other consumer electronics companies from surging ahead. On the other side of the world, people will soon be able to order a vehicle from the Taiwanese company that mastered manufacturing Apple's gadgets in China. Welcome to the era of the Foxconn-mobile.In October 2021, Hon Hai Technology Group, better known internationally as Foxconn, announced plans to produce three of its own electric vehicles in collaboration with Yulon, a Taiwanese automaker, under the name Foxtron. Foxconn, which is best known for assembling 70 percent of iPhones, has similar ambitions for the auto industry: to become the manufacturer of choice for a totally new kind of car. To date it has signed deals to make cars for two US-based EV startups, Lordstown Motors and Fisker.Foxconn's own vehicles — a hatchback, a sedan, and a bus — don't especially ooze Apple-chic, but they represent a big leap for the consumer electronics manufacturer. Foxconn's ambitious expansion plan also reflects a bigger shift across the auto world, in terms of technology and geography. The US, Europe, and Japan have defined what cars are for the last 100 years. Now the changing nature of the automobile, with increased electrification, computerization, and autonomy, means that China may increasingly decide what car making is.If Foxconn succeeds in building a major auto-making business, it would contribute to China becoming an automotive epicenter capable of eclipsing the conventional powerhouses of the US, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Foxconn did not respond to requests for an interview.The automobile industry is expected to undergo big transformations in the coming years. An October 2020 report from McKinsey concluded that carmakers will dream up new ways of selling vehicles and generating revenues through apps and subscription services. In some ways, the car of the future sounds an awful lot like a smartphone on wheels.That's partly why there's no better moment than now for an electronics manufacturer to try car making, says Marc Sachon, a professor at IESE Business School in Barcelona, who studies the automotive industry.www.wired.com • ShareChina's CATL Announces 1,000-Km / 620-Mile CTP 3.0 EV BatteryThe company says its energy density is 255 Wh/kg and that it will debut in 2023, although it did not mention for which application.insideevs.com • ShareThe Petty Pleasures of Watching Crypto Profiteers FlounderBehind all the Web3 bluster is just “hollow abstraction.”I cannot stop watching videos of Web3 boosters failing to explain the usefulness of the technology. I realize this is petty, but the videos are deeply cathartic.I'm talking about two clips in particular, both of which were posted by Liron Shapira, a tech investor and writer, and a critic of crypto and Web3. The first is of Packy McCormick, a newsletter writer, investor, and advisor to A16z's crypto venture-capital team. I urge you to watch this clip before reading any further (but I'll also summarize parts of it below):McCormick is questioned by Zach Weinberg, a crypto skeptic who asks McCormick to reason through why a given problem might be better solved with a Web3 or blockchain-based project. McCormick offers up the example of a blockchain-based real-estate transaction, which he says hasn't been done yet but is touted as one of Web3's “promised” examples. Property buying outside of the blockchain is a long, onerous process, McCormick argues. He suggests that, “theoretically, you could make all these things NFTs … you could transact very quickly, borrow against them in the global market as opposed to going to Bank of America to take out your mortgage. You have a more open system that people are able to transact in more creative ways in.”Weinberg stress-tests this particular scenario (putting your house on the blockchain) first by asking: What would happen in a decentralized mortgage market if a mortgage lender couldn't get its money back? McCormick responds, essentially, that the lender could take legal action via the courts. They go back and forth a bit about smart contracts, and at every turn Weinberg pushes McCormick with some version of the same question: What makes this blockchain version better than the current system? McCormick has no answer. Here's a transcript of the end of their exchange:newsletters.theatlantic.com • ShareCompensation report: The state of startup compensation, H1 2022For most startups, payroll is the primary driver of cash burn. And with inflation and economic unease on the rise, knowing trends within compensation is critical. How can a founder balance the need to conserve capital with the imperative to grow? How can leaders pay employees fairly through boom and bust cycles?At Carta, we see it as our responsibility to share the insights that come from an unmatched amount of data about the private market. That includes data on startup headcount, payroll and equity metrics, salary medians, and remote work. We created this compensation report from data using more than 127,000 employee records from startups that use Carta Total Comp, the premier compensation management platform for private companies.Key trends:* Remote hiring soars: In 2019, about 35% of new hires were based in a different state than the primary company headquarters. So far this year, that number has ballooned up to 62%.* Geo-adjusting is the norm: The vast majority of companies (84%) take employee location into account when deciding on compensation packages.* Engineering is a key hire: Engineering accounts for nearly half of payroll spend in companies valued between $1 and 10 million.* Terminations rise: Across all of Carta's platform, involuntary terminations made up 29% of departures in May 2022 (the rest were employees leaving their jobs by choice). That's nearly double the 15% termination share recorded in August of 2021.Note: If you're looking for compensation benchmarks against companies like yours, you can also download the addendum to this report to get an extended dataset.www.carta.com • ShareDoes Venture Capital Investment Violate the Ethos of Crypto? Sequoia Says No — Ep. 367unchainedpodcast.com • ShareThe Trimodal Nature of Software Engineering Salaries in the Netherlands and EuropeUpdate: dozens of hiring managers confirmed this trimodal model applies to all global markets: from the US, through Asia to Latin America as well. Also see TechPays.com for data recorded for a growing number of countries in the three tiers. (Watch this article as video narrated by me, withblog.pragmaticengineer.com • ShareWeb3 Use Cases: The FutureWill web3 justify the hype?Today, real people are spending real money to use real products, even if some seem silly or circular.But the real question isn't whether there are any use cases, but whether there will be use cases that, collectively, are worth the hype.In other words, will web3 produce use cases that justify all of the venture dollars, investment, and talent dedicated to the space? I think it will. That's what today's essay is about.There are two time-scales on which I'm excited about web3's potential: the next few years and the next few decades.If there is another bull cycle in the next few years, I think it will happen on the backs of real products that people use at scale, not speculation. When those hit, speculation will follow, but that will look more like a traditional tech bull run than pure speculation. These products are on the way — the applications are coming and the infrastructure continues to improve.In the next few decades, I believe that web3 infrastrastructure will become the fabric of much of what we do online and in our financial lives. I also believe that the experiments web3 protocols are running in economic design, incentive alignment, and governance will jump out of the internet and impact “real-world” institutions.Today, I'll dive into some of the future use cases and potential benefits I'm excited about.The Next Few DecadesSo let's begin with the future. If all of this pans out, so what?www.notboring.co • ShareGood NewsSequoia Capital Targets $2.25 Billion for Two U.S. VC FundsSequoia Capital, defying the tech market sell-off that's chilled startup fundraising, is asking investors to commit money to two new U.S.-focused funds, according to two people familiar with the matter.The Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm behind Airbnb and DoorDash expects to dedicate $1.5 billion to a U.S. growth fund focused on more mature companies, the people said. It's also planning a $750 million fund focused on earlier-stage deals, one of the people said. The firm expects to close the new funds in July.They're the latest of what Sequoia is calling “sub-funds,” launched after the firm overhauled the structure for its U.S. and European business. In a bid to make it easier to hold stock in companies after their initial public offerings, Sequoia set up an evergreen main fund called the Sequoia Capital Fund. The firm is now inviting investors in that fund to place their money in these new sub-funds.www.theinformation.com • ShareWhy we've raised our $158M Series C to invest in the next generation of co-founders — Entrepreneur FirstEntrepreneur First (EF) is the best place in the world to find a co-founder and start a startup from scratch. We are excited to announce we've raised a $158 million Series C round from a global alliance of some of the world's top technology founders and investors. They include: Patrick and John Collison, co-founders of […]www.joinef.com • ShareWise's Taavet Hinrikus among four co-founders in group seeking to disrupt traditional venture capital in the regionPlural launches €250mn entrepreneur-led fund for European tech start-ups — Financial TimesFour European entrepreneurs have launched a €250mn fund to back tech start-ups across the region, seeking to disrupt the traditional venture capital model by creating a peer-to-peer investment platform. Called Plural, the new fund's co-founders are Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of the international payments company Wise; Ian Hogarth, the co-founder of Songkick; Sten Tamkivi, the co-founder of Teleport; and Khaled Helioui, the former chief executive of Bigpoint. The group aims to invest in more than 25 start-ups over the next 18 months, taking early-stage stakes of between €1mn and €10mn. If successful, Plural will enlist dozens more entrepreneurs as investors and raise bigger funds to boost the European start-up sector. The move comes during a tech downturn which has led many VCs to slow investment, complaining that it has become difficult to value start-ups at a time of turmoil in public and private markets. But Hinrikus, who last year floated Wise in London at a valuation of close to £9bn, said the fund was a response to the European start-up sector beginning to mature like Silicon Valley, with one generation of successful entrepreneurs backing the next.www.ft.com • ShareStock-Exchange Startup Gets $100 Million Investment Funded by Walton Family Member — The Wall Street JournalThe Long-Term Stock Exchange, a Silicon Valley firm trying to push for sustainable investing, said it raised $100 million in June from James Walton, part of the famed family associated with Walmart Inc. WMT -0.16%▼The investment comes as traditional venture-capital firms are pumping the brakes on funding startups right now, wary of taking on new risk when the markets and economy appear to be in a tenuous position. Companies are instead having to strike deals at big discounts to their prior funding rounds, cut costs or look to less common investors, such as corporations, to write checks.Mr. Walton, the grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is a philanthropist and conservationist, a co-leader of the social impact fund Wend Collective. He and The Space Between, the venture fund with which Mr. Walton partnered to provide the funding, started discussions with the exchange months ago.The exchange was talking to Mr. Walton, TSB and several other investors about a Series C funding round this winter when the markets “dropped out on us,” said LTSE founder and chief executive Eric Ries. Other investors who said they would participate in the funding round backed out, skittish from a stock market roiled by soaring inflation, a war between Russia and Ukraine, and a swift retreat from fast-growing companies, including most tech stocks.www.wsj.com • ShareNormalyze's multicloud management tools aim to tighten security and lower cost | VentureBeatData security has become more complex due to the proliferation of data, an explosion of microservices, rapid cloud adoption, hybrid work environments, compliance, remote work and more.“Today's enterprises find their data scattered throughout their various cloud environments with limited visibility of where sensitive data resides. It's a massive problem that current cloud security offerings aren't equipped to handle,” said Amer Deeba, cofounder and CEO at Normalyze.“We built Normalyze to classify and secure sensitive data across all public clouds,” Deeba said. Normalyze announced today that it's coming out of stealth with $22.2 million in series A funding. This round brings the company's total funding to $26.6 million to date.“Our graph-powered platform is a hub that connects all data with assets, identities, accesses, misconfigurations and vulnerabilities to help security teams continuously discover sensitive information, determine attack paths and automate remediation efforts to secure it,” said Ravi Ithal, Normalyze cofounder and CTO.venturebeat.com • ShareBad NewsEven A16z Is Slowing Its Investing PaceAndreessen Horowitz is one of the most-recognized venture capital firms in Silicon Valley and it just keeps growing. But amid a broader pullback in venture investment, the firm also appears to be slowing down its investing pace this quarter, at least compared to where it was last year.To be clear, a16z hasn't hit the brakes. In fact, it's still one of the most active investors in the United States, according to Crunchbase data, along with Tiger Global Management.It's just not investing at the same rapid pace it adopted last year, according to our data.The firm has participated in 46 funding rounds totaling around $2.5 billion so far in the second quarter, the lowest levels since before 2021, Crunchbase data shows. The number of rounds it has participated in and the amounts raised in those funding rounds is also down quite a bit from the first quarter of this year, when the firm participated in 62 funding rounds that totaled around $6.1 billion.Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to a request for comment or to verify our data.news.crunchbase.com • Share‘Put up the for-sale sign,' more VCs tell founders as market sours — PitchBook News & AnalysisAfter years of telling their portfolio companies to grow at all costs, investors are dishing out an entirely different type of advice.Cut expenses, borrow venture debt, or raise additional capital at a flat or even slightly lower valuation than the previous round.But if after trying to take those steps the startup is still at risk of running out of cash in 12 months or less, then some investors are telling companies to resort to even more drastic measures: try to sell to a strategic buyer at a discount rather than risk going out of business.“I've called founders [to say], ‘I think you should sell,'” said Chris Farmer, a partner and CEO at early-stage firm SignalFire. “A sale could be attractive to founders because they don't have to lay off everyone, and investors can get some or all their money back. It's a soft landing.”Some startups that are short on capital are trying to raise a financing round and run a sale process simultaneously, said Wayne Kawarabayashi, a partner and head of M&A at Union Square Advisors, a technology-focused investment bank.“There are a lot of these dual-track conversations now,” Kawarabayashi said.So far, there haven't been many low-priced acquisitions in this market cycle. But we may soon see more sales like that of Tile, in which investors barely make their money back. Tile, a developer of tracking devices for personal items, was sold to Life360 for $205 million. Prior to the January sale, the company had raised a total of $150 million from investors like Bessemer, GGV and Khosla Ventures, according to PitchBook data.pitchbook.comSubstack cuts 13 jobs to avoid raising more venture capital — TechCrunchThe newsletter platform Substack laid off 13 employees today, mostly in HR and writer support roles.Co-founder and CEO Chris Best informed the company after holding meetings with the affected employees. The meetings also included founders Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi. That's probably a better way to deliver the news than some other companies' approaches (cough, Coinbase), but the news is still rough for a company that raised $65 million from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) just last year. Even then, we were skeptical about how the company managed to earn a $650 million valuation so soon.Like several other companies that boomed in a time when venture capital flowed more freely, Substack must figure out how to survive in a hostile economic time.Substack reportedly tried to raise another venture round as recently as last month, but the platform chose not to take on more funding. According to The New York Times, Substack earned about $9 million in revenue in 2021, which comes from the 10% cut it takes from writer subscriptions. Aside from a 3% credit card processing fee, that means that Substack writers are earning around $90 million a year — though the top 10 writers earn $20 million of that pile of cash. These figures would have made it challenging for the company to raise at a higher valuation than its last round.techcrunch.com • ShareUnity lays off 4 percent of its workforce to realign its resourcesUnity has laid off hundreds of employees in its offices across the globe, according to Kotaku. The video game software development company known for its popular game engine has reportedly let around 300 to 400 staffers go so far. Layoffs are still ongoing, sources said, so those numbers may be higher by the time the company is done. Unity has confirmed to Engadget that it's “realigning some of [its] resources,” which has led to the dismissal of approximately 4 percent of its entire workforce. That's consistent with the report that it has let around 300 people go, since its LinkedIn page lists 8,048 employees.The company told Engadget:“As part of a continued planning process where we regularly assess our resourcing levels against our company priorities, we decided to realign some of our resources to better drive focus and support our long-term growth. This resulted in some hard decisions that impacted approximately 4% of all Unity workforce. We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Unity and we are supporting them through this difficult transition.”While the mass dismissal affects Unity's entire workforce, Kotaku said it's mostly concentrated on its AI and engineering divisions.www.engadget.com • ShareStartup of the WeekPave, whose software analyzes HR data to help companies close pay and equity gaps, raised a $100M Series C at a $1.6B valuation and acquired rival Option ImpactAllison Levitsky / Protocol:Option Impact, a benchmark compensation product from Advanced-HR, has a new owner. — Pave, a fast-growing Option Impact competitor …www.techmeme.com • ShareTweet of the Week This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thatwastheweek.substack.com/subscribe

Kuni 1. juunini saab märkida LHV aktsiaid, emissioonist kaasatavad 25-35 miljonit eurot paigutatakse Suurbritannia filiaali arengusse. LHV Groupi juht Madis Toomsalu selgitab tänases saates, kui suureks kasvab Suurbritannia filiaal ja kuidas mõjutab börsiettevõtet tõusev intressikeskkond. Juttu tuleb ka sellest, milline on LHV töötajatele mõeldud optsiooniprogramm ja kuidas võib see hiljem aktsia hinda börsil mõjutada.  Räägime mh sellest, kuidas suhestub LHV Ühendkuningriigi äri Wise'iga ning miks on Taavet Hinrikus paigutanud LHV-sse miljoneid. Saadet juhib Geeniuse investeerimisportaali vastutav toimetaja Indrek Mäe. 

On today's Ian King Business Podcast: inflation pressures continues after a sharp fall in wages; Taavet Hinrikus talks about his startup helping boost routine testing at home; the world's biggest maker of aluminium cans discusses recycling; we look at investment opportunities in Andorra and Vietnam; and review the biggest business stories of the day

Kood/Jõhvi is a coding school in northeast Estonia which was established by several Estonian startup founders, including Martin Villig and Taavet Hinrikus. Today we are joined by it's Co-director Karin Künnapas as well as two students - Gunta Klava and Georgi Suikanen.In this episode we talk about the history and reasons behind the establishment of the school, the practicalities of getting admitted, student life, professional growth as well as the future of the school and its funding model. We also talk a lot about making the leap into coding at different points in our careers.The topics covered in this episode with Timestamps[03:20] - THE ORIGINS OF KOOD/JOHVI SCHOOL8 Estonian founders set out to solve lack of tech talentSchool with no teachers and no classesThe learning methodologyRemote vs. on-site studyingChoice of school locationHow the school is defined[09:45] - STUDENTS SHARE WHY THEY DECIDED TO JOINCoding school vs. university for high school graduatesJumping into coding from a different careerCombining Kood with full-time job[15:40] - LEARNING TO CODE CAN BE A CAREER CHANGEVarious backgrounds and previous experiencesAll ages welcome above 18Multiple coding languages and platformsSpeed of studies[19:05] -  LIFE OF A STUDENT AT KOODTeacherless studiesReal-life like study processMatching of flexible schedules between studentsCampus atmosphere[23:45] - HOW TO GET INTO KOODFirst step - game/testSecond step - 3 weeks selection springPersonality fitDemand for women and international students[28:45] - WHY THE SCHOOL IS FREESchool is free for studentsStudents pay for food and accommodation40+partners pay the school to hire students at graduationPossible to work also not for the partnersExpected salary for graduates[32:50] - HOW SOON CAN YOU CODE SOMETHINGGetting to practical tasks from day 1Main mission and side questsEncouragement for other studentsReinventing yourself during increasing length of careers[39:00] - FUTURE OF KOOD AND ROLE OF ITS FOUNDERSExpanding in size and geographyContinuous support for regional developmentHow Karin got to become Co-Head of KoodFounder engagement - heart project[44:15] - PRACTICAL DETAILS FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO APPLYWebsite: https://kood.techTo reach out to Karin use: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kunnapas/Find out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/ Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/Support for this episode comes from Venetor > https://www.venetor.co/ ===See the video content exclusively on Linkedin > https://www.linkedin.com/company/pursuit-of-scrappiness/ Questions/suggestions? Join our Telegram group > https://t.me/pursuitofscrappiness 

Produced by Foundersuite (www.foundersuite.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders who have raised capital. This episode is with Nhon Ma of Numerade.com, an AI powered digital tutoring platform with over 1 million video lessons. In this episode, Nhon talks about the epiphany moment of doing asynchronous tutoring, how he used a "traction story" with investors to pitch the business pre-revenue, why he believes founders must earn the right to pitch investors, how game theory applies to fundraising, and much more. The Company recently raised $26 million from IDG Capital, General Catalyst, Mucker Capital, Kapor Capital and Interplay Ventures, and strategic investors such as Margo Georgiadis (the former CEO of Ancestry), Khaled Helioui (the former CEO of Bigpoint Games and angel investor in Uber) and Taavet Hinrikus (founder of Wise) How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $3 Billion since 2016. Create a free account at www.foundersuite.com/

Rohith Bhat, Founder & CEO 99Games chats with Amit Somani, Managing Partner Prime Venture Partners.Rohith is a  parallel entrepreneur who started three companies: Robosoft Technologies, Global Delight and 99Games. Robosoft Technologies started in 1996 and had Apple Inc. as the first customer.  Robosoft was acquired by  TechnoPro of Japan in 2021 for $100m+. Rohith is now focussing all of his attention towards growing 99Games profitably towards scale. Listen to the podcast to learn about01:50 - Starting the Entrepreneurial Journey with Apple05:00 - New Opportunities: Metaverse Gaming + NFTs08:00 - Building a Large B2B business from Udupi15:30 - The Game Changer: Democratisation of Distribution21:00 - The Process of Selling Your Startup Successfully29:00 - Monetisation of Gaming BusinessesClick here to read the full transcriptNext, listen to a founder who has built a large global business from a small country. Taavet Hinrikus, the Co-founder of Transferwise and one of the first employees of Skype. In this episode, Taavet talks about the growth of digital technology in Estonia, his time at Skype, growing a team by 200 members in 12 months and the magic formula to attract the right talent to your team. Enjoyed the podcast? Please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and subscribe wherever you are listening to this.Follow Prime Venture Partners:Twitter: https://twitter.com/Primevp_inLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/primevp/ This podcast is for you. Do let us know what you like about the podcast, what you don't like, the guests you'd like to have on the podcast and the topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes. Please share your feedback here: https://primevp.in/podcastfeedback

Hablé con el gran Carlos Sánchez, Country Manager de Xolo. No se pueden perder esta charla relajada pero llena de insights sobre el emprendimiento del futuro. Lo que venga de Estonia me emociona. Más aún si está ligado a la e-Residency que es la residencia digital de Estonia que permite a los Freelancers facturar y tener cuentas bancarias en dicho país.De ahí nace ésta Joya de empresa llamada Xolo un producto impactante. Miren los números. ● 75.000 emprendedores individuales se han registrados en más de 130 países.● Principales países: España, Grecia, Italia, Francia, Alemania, Portugal● 1,100,000,000 EUR en transacciones procesadas por solopreneurs● 300.000 clientes a los que se les ha facturado a través de Xolo● 11,1 millones de euros en capital de riesgo recaudado, incluidos los de Karma Ventures y Vendep Capital, el cofundador de Wise (Transferwise), Taavet Hinrikus, y el cofundador de Skype, Jaan Tallinn.España● ~ 6000 emprendedores individuales de España (~ 10% del total)● ~ 70% de ciudadanos españoles - ~ 30% de expatriados en España● Principales áreas: Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Valencia, Sevilla, Málaga● Campos principales: servicios digitales; marketing (contenido, producción de videos, marketing digital),Tienen su cede en Tallin, Estonia, equipos remotos en Helsinki, Berlín, Madrid y Barcelona. Carlos, otro Gran Inventor. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Host Jason Pereira talks to Nick Catino, Head of Policy and Campaigns with Wise. It is a London-based financial technology company founded in January 2011 by Estonians Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus. In today's episode, Nick talks about consumer-facing products used by banks and businesses. Episode Highlights:0.38: Nick says Wise is a global payment technology company giving the best way to move money worldwide used by people who travel, live, and work internationally. 3.08: Jason asks Nick about the origin of the company, how it came to be? Nick points out Wise was founded in 2011 as Transfer wise in London. 3.10: It has two co-founders Kristo Kaamann and Taavet Hinrikus. 4.01: The company's idea came from the analysis that consumers are getting ripped off to send abroad, and it is so central to our mission today trying the payments more transparent.5.30: Nick says living and leisure is focused on pricing across portal payments. When he travels, he keeps records of his credit card transaction receipts. When he gets back, he calculates how much he has spent, he does this for a living, and it is a complicated calculation.7.17: Jason points out, “If you are running a company and you have to buy from overseas vendors regularly, you will probably speak to your bank about what can be done, and they will graduate you up to the next level.” 8.33: Nick states, “When you are a multinational corporation or large business, you have a finance desk that is negotiating these rates in the wholesale market. 8.40: As per Mckenzie's study report, hundred or billion dollars in fees consumers pay in small business pay per year.12.53: Jason asks Nick as a consumer, “If I have to send money somewhere in the world how can he utilize your platform?”13.08: Nick says Wise allows to send money to friends and family members on platform using their name or FI. During traveling, you can use your debit card. It is integrated with apple pay. In small businesses, you can use it for goods and services import and exports, paying workers and freelancers internationally, and combined with several accounting platforms to make easy payments.14.48: Jason asks how you enable business and how is that service different?15.14: Nick says we are making it easy for our customers to move money abroad in the business side. Small businesses are joining our services every month, and not only banks some tech companies are launching platforms that users in the US can pay directly in India or Singapore.16.45: Nick says we tried to make it easier for businesses to use our service. We started a consumer-facing brand, and there are end number of features and excited about market growth in the future by integration between business and banks. 18.15: Jason inquires, “What happens if I transact in Euros, but I don't want Euros? Nick answers then it will automatically transact the lowest cost conversion related to the product.20.10: Nick says payments amortization has been a huge focus in many countries because it benefits consumers, and the ecosystem is very clear.23.00: Jason asks from an end-user perspective, “Why is payment amortization important?” Nick says it's about the cost. In the UK, on average, fees are 0.4%, and money is moving instantly, but if you are Canadian or American, it is 1% or more, and money can take days to receive on the other side. 24.52: Jason says friction is in two ways one is speed, and two is basically cost, and both are impactful on the economy.26.35: Nick reiterates that a global payment company being new in the market is certainly difficult, and lack of consumer awareness about how much you are being charged while sending money abroad is a challenge we have to overcome.27.49: Jason asks Nick, “What excites him most about every day when he wakes up in the morning and keeps doing what he is doing?”27.55: Nick replies that so many smart, driven diverse people, 2400 wiser from more than 70 countries, still continue to learn about different markets in culture and take ownership with projects they are working on is the best part of working with Wise. 3 Key Points: Nick talks about the consumer-facing products used by banks and businesses to integrate APIs directly with their platforms.Nick says, “We pay fees to transfer money abroad, but we don't realize how much we are overcharged, and many consumers and small-scale businesses are unaware of exchange rate markups.”Jason mentions like western union, you need a massive global network of fixed locations that will allocate money on one side of the border to move it to the other side of the border. Tweetable Quotes:“Business doesn't impact revenue on the way it's all about living methods of transparency” – Nick Catino“In 2021, sending money is like sending email” - Nick Catino“Many smart-driven diverse people, 2400 wiser from more than 70 countries continues to learn about different markets in culture and take ownership with projects they are working on.” - Nick CatinoResources Mentioned:https://wise.com/in/https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholascatino/https://wise.com/us/blog/author/nicholas-catino/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kkaarmann/?originalSubdomain=ukhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/taavethinrikus/?originalSubdomain=ukPodcast Editing See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Eestlaste loodud ükssarvik suundub Londoni börsile, et iga klient saaks soovi korral finantsettevõttest tükikese. LHV podcasti stuudios on külas Wise'i kaasasutaja Taavet Hinrikus, kes tutvustab, mis ettevõttega on tegu, räägib börsile suundumisest ja sellest, kuidas tehnoloogiaettevõtted finantsturgu uuendavad. Kus maal Wise oma arengus on? Mida veel plaanitakse? Küsis LHV vanemmaakler Nelli Janson. Vaata lähemalt: wise.com/owners Podcastis esitatud teave on informatiivne, tegemist ei ole investeerimissoovituse ega nõustamisega. Enne investeerimisotsuse tegemist küsi nõu asjatundjalt, tutvu prospekti, ametliku teabe ja riskidega. Investeerimisteenuste pakkuja on AS LHV Pank.

BukuKas, a startup focused on digitizing Indonesia's small businesses, raises $50 million in Series B funding. The round included participation from Gokul Rajaram, the DoorDash executive, and Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder and CEO of Transfer-Wise. BukuKas, the digital bookkeeping application, will use its Series B, to hire for its engineering, and product teams in Jakarta and Bangalore, and launch new services for merchants. Singapore-based Thunes, a fintech, focused on making cross-border money transfers easier, announced today it raises $60 million in a growth round led by Insight Partners. The round included participation from existing shareholders. Founded in 2016, Thunes' customers include Grab, PayPal, MPesa, the Commercial Bank of Dubai, Western Union, Remitly, and the Singaporean insurance firm, NTUC Income. Fintech startup, StudentFinance, which allows educational institutions to offer success-based financing for students, raises a $5.3 million seed round, co-led by Giant Ventures, and Armilar Venture Partners. The startup, which launched at the beginning of 2020, provides the tech back end for institutions, to offer flexible payment plans, in the form of income-share agreements. It's now raised $6.6 million total, to date. Styra, the startup behind Open Policy Agent, has picked up $40 million in a Series B round of funding, led by Battery Ventures. Styra will use the funding, to continue evolving its product, specifically by creating better, and more efficient ways to apply authorization policies, by way of code; and by bringing in more partners to expand the scope, of what can be covered by its technology. Google Cloud announced Vertex AI, a new managed machine learning platform, that is meant to make it easier for developers, to deploy and maintain their AI models. The focus of Vertex is on mobile and web developers. The service is also integrated with Vizier, Google's AI optimizer that can automatically tune hyper-parameters in machine learning models. Artificial, which has built a software platform for laboratories to assist with, or in some cases fully automate, research and development work, raises $21.5 million. It plans to use the funding, to continue building out its software and its capabilities, to hire more people, and for business development, Artificial's technology can both orchestrate, and manage robotic machines that labs might be using to handle some work; and help assist scientists when they are carrying out the work themselves.

Taavet Hinrikus, Co-Founder Transferwise, chats with Sanjay Swamy Managing Partner Prime Venture Partners.Taavet has been building internet businesses since 1997. He has been Skype's director of strategy until 2008, joining the company as its first ever employee.And then he moved on and found his own venture Transferwise.Listen to the episode to learn about:2:05 - Why Estonia has been one of the pioneers in adoption of digital technologies 4:16 - Early days at Skype8:30 - How do you grow a team to 200 in 12 months13:04 - Birth story of TransferWise17:39 - How to not end up with technology debt19:53 - What is the magic formula to convince the right talent to join your team?21:11- Transparency as a core value 24:48 - Quick learning and adaptation to grow in a fast changing world.Read the complete transcript here.Enjoyed the podcast? Please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and subscribe wherever you are listening to this.Follow Prime Venture Partners:Twitter: https://twitter.com/Primevp_inLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/primevp/

My guest in this episode of the podcast “Leadership is the Competitive Advantage” is Kaarel Kotkas, Veriff founder and CEO. Veriff is Kaarel’s 12th entrepreneurial project that has grown into a successful organization with global reach offering identity verification service to online businesses. Kaarel is dreaming big. Veriff is pursuing an ambitious goal of building the infrastructure for higher global trust online and single global identity whereby one day passports will be issued by Veriff instead of local governments. Besides being loved by US investors, the company has also been supported, among others, by our very own Taavet Hinrikus from Transferwise. Earlier this year Kaarel was awarded EY Entrepreneur of the Year title. Last year he was distinguished as one of the 25 most influential Northern-European young entrepreneurs. I enjoyed this chat a lot, loved to get know Kaarel more, and his crazy ambition to solve the seemingly unsolvable. Behind the apparent calm and serene energy you can really sense the intensity of the drive that Kaarel contains in himself. Go get the world, Kaarel & Co! “I believe my teammates would describe me as visionary. I do not necessarily have the answers to specific questions that may arise in a day to day business, but I always know where we are heading towards and try to constantly think at least five steps ahead. At Veriff, our big ambitious goal is to create a single global identity. This means that at one point eventually we will onboard people around the world with their government issued identity on their hands, whether it is a passport of any other formal identification document, and become so-called home for their identity online so that they can verify themselves once and from there on start using Veriff as a single global identity for any transaction online requiring trustworthy personal identification. This might sound like a small undertaking at the beginning, but if you start to put some real numbers behind it then you will realize how big hairy audacious goal it actually is. If you are going after all those 2.8 billion people that are online today and knowing that there are lots and lots of more people joining the online community every single day, then the vision becomes pretty ambitious. There are 250 million businesses in the world and only 5% of them are operating online today, 95% of the transactions take place offline – this gives you a perspective of the grandiosity of this endeavor. We can see how the world is shifting towards online presence, hundreds of businesses will take their operations online sooner or later. And this sounds so big that it excites me but also at the same time makes me humble as we are at the beginning of our journey. But I can already see the successes. I think it all comes back to an impact. About six months ago, when the world basically stopped due to lockdowns and all the restrictions associated with the pandemic, then at one point we ended up having the responsibility to keep the world still spinning and enable services to be accessible from distance. This is a great feeling and you get a very tangible understanding of the impact that you are providing.” – Kaarel Kotkas Listen and enjoy!

Piers Ridyard is the CEO of Radix, a layer-one protocol built for DeFi. DeFi applications are currently built on protocols that were not designed to scale. Radix has built a scalable, secure, high-throughput protocol for building applications and tokens. Building on the successes of existing public ledgers, Radix's protocol is a permissionless framework on which DeFi services can be developed and run. Radix claims to have solved two of the biggest challenges in DeFi - scalability, and security.  Why you should listen: Radix has raised $6 million in funding, including $4.1 million in 2020 from the founder of TransferWise, Taavet Hinrikus.  The value of DeFi is over $8 billion. However, for DeFi to reach its full potential, it needs fast, low-cast transactions and secure by design systems. It's critical that DeFi applications are scalable and composable. Piers says that protocols such as Ethereum 2,0, Polkadot and Cosmos are solving the wrong scaling problems, and not addressing others. Piers says that mainstream DeFi needs a DLT platform designed bottom-to-top to make DeFi just work – for users, and for developers. This is the aim of Radix.  For the DeFi ecosystem to continue to grow incentives are needed to attract developers. Radix has an innovative developer incentive program that allows developers to profit from the applications they contribute to. Key takeaway: Radix features two core innovations, firstly Cerberus, the scalable consensus protocol. Cerberus is capable of processing massive numbers of transactions in parallel due to its highly sharded data structure and unique application layer.  The second innovation is the Radix Engine, a developer interface that allows quick public ledger deployments in a secure environment. The Radix Engine is Radix's application layer.  In the Crypto Conversation hot take round Piers says that he expects DeFi to have more liquidity than any other single exchange in the transitional market within the next ten years. “The fundamental component of DeFi is the way that liquidity can move between applications and products.” Asked about his favorite piece of sci-fi, Piers picks Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. Supporting links: Radix Radix on Twitter Piers on Twitter Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin Rendezvous with Rama If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

In this episode Bits & Pretzels Editor-in-Chief Britta Weddeling talks to Taavet Hinrikus, the co-founder of London headquartered borderless cash company Transferwise, who's a tech pioneer, an investor and business angel, just days after his company announced a 43 percent valuation jump to a valuation of 5 billion dollars after a secondary share sale. In 2003, Taavet was the first employee at Voice-over-IP platform Skype, before he decided launching Transferwise in 2011 to provide cheap cross-border transfers. In this podcast Taavet explains why he left Skype to become a founder himself and what rules have guided him since – while building Transferwise from a niche into a global platform – now serving 8 million customers, processing around 4 billion in cross-border payments each month across 54 currencies and why today you can build a global player from anywhere in the world. More to explore: Stay updated on news & insights from us about founders, startups in Bavaria, Austria & Switzerland at www.bitsandpretzels.com. Signup for our media newsletter to get the next episode of this podcast delivered right to your inbox: www.bitsandpretzels.com/media-signup. Host: Britta Weddeling (@bweddeling), Editor-in-Chief of Bits & Pretzels (@bitsandpretzels) Featuring: Taavet Hinrikus (@taavet), co-founder & chairman of TransferWise (@TransferWise), previously built Skype (@Skype) as 1st employee Follow us: Twitter: @bitsandpretzels Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bits-&-pretzels If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review & tell your friends about us! You can also send us feedback at podcast@bitsandpretzels.com. Production: professional-podcasts.com (Regina Körner, Migo Fecke), Hubert Honold & Sophie Dechansreiter.

Antibody testing to see if a patient has had coronavirus is becoming more frequent. Many are putting their hopes into using such tests as the basis for immunity ‘passports’ so people can re-emerge back into society without fear of infecting others. Chile and Estonia have begun work on such systems, and we’ll hear from Taavet Hinrikus, the tech entrepreneur who is helping design Estonia’s system. Individual companies are interested in the idea as well, as John Holland-Kaye, the CEO of Heathrow Airport, explains. Meanwhile, companies such as Onfido are racing to design apps to accommodate such a system, while other businesses are wary of whether immunity passports are the right way to get their staff back to work. (Picture: illustration of a SARS-CoV-2 virion. Picture credit: Getty Images.)

As a government minister resigns and more Conservative MPs speak out over the prime minister’s top adviser Dominic Cummings, will Boris Johnson carry on standing by his man? We hear from Rev. Martin Poole, whose question over family lockdown fines seemed like it might prompt the government to look again at the issue. And what are immunity passports? The founder of Transferwise and first Skype employee Taavet Hinrikus tells us about his next venture - an app he hopes will let those who have tested positive for Coronavirus antibodies have more freedom. Producers: Frankie Tobi, Natalie Ktena, Seren Jones Studio Director: Emma Crowe Assistant Editor: Emma Close

Tänases Restardi saates on külas Transferwise’i kaasasutaja Taavet Hinrikus. Ta on osaline eestlaste uues projektis, mis töötab välja nn koroonapassi rakendust. Räägime ka sellest, kuidas Transferwise’il üldse läheb, milliseid muutusi nemad on pidanud koroonaviiruse pärast oma töös tegema ning kas vastab tõele ajakirjanduses levinud spekulatsioon, et keegi on Transferwise’i ära ostmas. Saatejuhid Henrik Roonemaa ja Taavi Kotka.

Tänases Restardi saates on külas Transferwise’i kaasasutaja Taavet Hinrikus. Ta on osaline eestlaste uues projektis, mis töötab välja nn koroonapassi rakendust, aga me räägime ka sellest, kuidas Transferwise’il üldse läheb, milliseid muutusi nemad on pidanud koroonaviiruse pärast oma töös tegema ning kas vastab tõele ajakirjanduses levinud spekulatsioon, et keegi on Transferwise’i ära ostmas. Saatejuhid Henrik […]

Tänases Restardi saates on külas Transferwise’i kaasasutaja Taavet Hinrikus. Ta on osaline eestlaste uues projektis, mis töötab välja nn koroonapassi rakendust, aga me räägime ka sellest, kuidas Transferwise’il üldse läheb, milliseid muutusi nemad on pidanud koroonaviiruse pärast oma töös tegema ning kas vastab tõele ajakirjanduses levinud spekulatsioon, et keegi on Transferwise’i ära ostmas. Saatejuhid Henrik […]

Tänases Restardi saates on külas Transferwise'i kaasasutaja Taavet Hinrikus. Ta on osaline eestlaste uues projektis, mis töötab välja nn koroonapassi rakendust, aga me räägime ka sellest, kuidas Transferwise'il üldse läheb, milliseid muutusi nemad on pidanud koroonaviiruse pärast oma töös tegema ning kas vastab tõele ajakirjanduses levinud spekulatsioon, et keegi on Transferwise'i ära ostmas. Saatejuhid Henrik Roonemaa ja Taavi Kotka.

In today's episode, we bring you an interview with Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder and chairman at TransferWise and Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO at GoCardless. In November 2019 it was announced that GoCardless and TransferWise would be joining forces to enable better cross-border global payments. In this episode of Fintech Insider Interviews, Jason Bates caught up with the pair to discuss payments, partnerships and future plans. Tune in for industry insights, a wealth of experience and much much more! This podcast is brought to you by Stake (https://hellostake.com/), the digital brokerage app bringing you unrivalled access to the US market. Invest in over 3,500 US stocks and ETFs, including game-changing companies like Google, Amazon and Tesla. Trading is instant, direct and commission-free, and with a fully digitised sign-up, you’ll be in the market in minutes. Visit hellostake.com or search ‘Stake Trade’ to seize the US market’s 31 trillion dollars-worth of opportunity today. Love fintech? Then sign up for our newsletter, Fintech in Five. A snack-sized selection of the week's biggest stories, longer reads, soundbites and more. Just visit this link to sign up! 11fs.com/newsletter Fintech Insider by 11:FS is a podcast dedicated to all things fintech, banking, technology and financial services. Hosted by a rotation of 11:FS experts including David Brear, Simon Taylor, Jason Bates, Leda Glyptis and Sarah Kocianski and joined by a range of brilliant guests, we cover the latest global news, bring you interviews from industry experts or take a deep dive into subject matters such as APIs, AI or digital banking. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and please leave a review Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/fintechinsiders where you can ask the hosts questions, alternatively email podcasts@11fs.com! Special Guests: Hiroki Takeuchi and Taavet Hinrikus.

Er weiß, wie Disruption geht: Taavet Hinrikus war 2003 der erste Mitarbeiter von Skype. 2010 gründete er dann selbst: Transferwise, einen Peer-to-Peer-Geldtransfer-Service, der schneller und billiger ist als die komplizierten Auslandsüberweisungen der Banken. Heute steht Transferwise bei vier Millionen Kunden, 1300 Mitarbeitern und einer Bewertung von 3,5 Milliarden Dollar. Mit OMR-Gründer Philipp Westermeyer spricht Taavet Hinrikus über den Weg zum Fintech-Unicorn.

Taavet Hinrikus, CEO and cofounder of TransferWise, had a big problem to solve. In his case, it was a financial one, and TransferWise, the company he cofounded and leads, fixed the issue for himself and now just seven years later -- millions of others. On this episode, hear Hinrikus share the origin story of TransferWise, how his company is achieving what banks are slow to embrace and discover a bit of fascinating history about Estonia, the little-known country from where Hinrikus hails - (and the origin country of Skype).

Henry Ward is the Founder & CEO @ Carta, the startup that helps private companies, public companies, and investors manage their cap tables, valuations, investments, and equity plans. To date, Henry has raised over $147m in funding from some of the industries leading investors in USV, Spark, K9 Ventures and Meritech and then also leading founders including Flexport's Ryan Petersen, Transferwise's Taavet Hinrikus and Slack's Stewart Butterfield. Prior to founding Carta, Henry was Founder of SecondSight, a portfolio optimization platform for retail investors. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Henry made his way into the world of startups and came to found the gamechanger of cap tables and valuations with Carta? 2.) What does Henry mean by the term "executive half-life"? How does Henry determine between an exec that can scale with the company and an exec that cannot? What are the leading indicators? When weaknesses are revealed, how does this manifest itself? Does the exec open up and admit to it or does the leadership team have to be proactive? 3.) Question from Manu @ K9: As a first time CEO, what have been the biggest personal challenges for Henry in the scaling of himself? Why does Henry think it is unfair founders are given exemption from blame in scaling but execs are not? How does Henry make decisions differently now to the early days? What have been the improvements? 4.) How does Henry buck the conventional wisdom with his willingness to go after very small markets? What does the N of 1 vs 1of N rule mean here? Why does Henry believe the N of 1 markets is the most attractive? What are the core advantages to owning your market? How can founders think about insertion points? When is the right time to add additional products? How does Henry respond to the traditional notion of "focus"? 5.) Why does Henry believe most founders are afraid to put investors to work? If fundraising is, as Henry suggests "an auction process", what can founders do to optimise it? How does Henry approach the element of value creation and value extraction? How does this influence his approach to pricing? How does Henry think more tech founders can leverage acquiring services businesses and automating their processes over time? Where is the arbitrage in pricing here? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Henry’s Fave Book: The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Henry on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

This week, Andrii Degeler, Natalie Novick, and Chris Chinchilla talk about the departure of Uber and Cabify from Barcelona, the rise of “data ownership” companies that help to guard your data, the doublethink of the Western corporates regarding automation, writing tips from Stephen King, diversity in the entrepreneurship ecosystem in the UK, and much more. Check out the full show notes on Tech.eu: https://tech.eu/news/podcast-104-uber-cabify-barcelona-transferwise-taavet-hinrikus For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

John Thornhill talks to Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of Transferwise, about shaking up the lucrative money transfer business and how he helped build a tech unicorn that is not only highly valued but is profitable too. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Taavet Hinrikus is the Co-founder & chairman of @TransferWise the international money transfer platform with over 4 million customers and valued at over $1.6billion makes sending, receiving, and spending money around the world as cheap as possible at the real exchange rate. Previously built @Skype as 1st employee, from Estonia, adventurer, disruptor and investor.

Taavet Hinrikus - Jazz Shapers with Mishcon de Reya

This week Mark Scott, POLITICO Europe's new chief technology correspondent, talks to us about the trends he sees as tech companies deal with the reality that their libertarian early days are coming to an end and regulators confront them in the name of protecting citizens' and national interests. Taavet Hinrikus, the Estonian member of the 2016 POLITICO 28 list who helped build Skype and went on to found and run TransferWise, is our main interview guest. Hinrikus explains how he sees the future of banking, gives advice on how to found your own start-up, tells us about living life out of a backpack, and why he might be thrown out of the U.K. because of Brexit. Our Brussels brains trust, Lina Aburous and Ailbhe Finn, give their radically different takes on David Davis' performance at this week's Brexit negotiations in Brussels. Is he a genius or a fool? You decide. And in our Dear Politico section we hear from a listener with an extraordinary allegation: he says he's an assistant to an MEP who has asked him for a €1,000 a month slice of his salary as the price for keeping the job.

The idea of a small, dynamic company with big ambitions and a mission that all employees believe in, seems to be something that everyone wants a slice of these days. Industrial heavyweights such as car-makers, BMW and Ford have been launching their own spin-off initiatives to try to capture that startup magic themselves. But what exactly is startup culture and how can a company hang on to it as it grows? Is it even possible for corporate giants to emulate it? At the London offices of Transferwise, presenter Ed Butler gets to grips with startup culture, through a game of Ping-Pong with CEO Taavet Hinrikus. It is all good fun, but how much do employees really benefit from working in environments like this one? And when does a culture, become a cult? To explore all that and more, Ed returns to the studio where he is joined by Alicia Navarro, CEO and co-founder of the London-based tech startup, Skimlinks, and from Boston in the US by Dan Lyons, author of a recent best-selling book, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble, and Bill Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Centre for MIT Entrepreneurship and a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. (Photo: A man enter the doors of the WeWork co-operative co-working space in Washington, DC. Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Taavet Hinrikus is co-founder of TransferWise, the international money transfer platform. The business allows regular people to access the real mid-market exchange rate by cutting out traditional banking fees altogether. It charges only a tiny, totally transparent service charge. In the two years since it launched, the business has transferred over £1bn worth of customer money. -- London Business School students created the TELL Series in 2009 to put the spotlight on entrepreneurship in Europe. The TELL Series showcases successful entrepreneurs' personal stories of building high growth businesses. Successful founders, investors and key figures from the European entrepreneurship world share their start-up stories, lessons learned and thoughts on the future. Tell Series is sponsored by the Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Frog Capital.

Fi Glover and digital guru Martha Lane Fox look at the digital revolution pioneered by the government in Estonia – where people vote, get their medical prescriptions even pay for their parking, online. With the help of Professor Henrietta Moore from the Institute for Global Prosperity and Taavet Hinrikus from Transferwise they ask - could it work where you are? Estonia's digital services have revolutionised the country since its independence from the Soviet Union with 600 services now being available online. E-Estonia has the fastest broadband speeds in the world, was the first to allow online voting in a general election, all classrooms are online, all medical records online, and it has more start ups per person than Silicon Valley in California. But does the networked society come at a price? (Photo: People gathered on 20 August 2010 in Toila, Estonia for the world's first ever digital song festival. Credit: Raigo Paulla /AFP/Getty Images)

There are fewer and fewer parts of our lives that don't feel like an extension of our smartphones. Any song you might want to hear. Any place you might want to go. And a ride to get there. All served up simply, quickly, at the right price, and with an experience that is actually enjoyable. And then there is the world of banking. Taavet Hinrikus, CEO and co-founder of money transfer company TransferWise, and a16z's Angela Strange discuss why and how banking and finance -- from paying back a friend to refinancing a mortgage -- is about to catch up to the rest of our technology-enabled lives. The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

BLAST FROM THE PAST For the August summer break we bring you some of the Greatest Hits of Silicon Real starting with an interview published one year ago on August 12, 2013 with Taavet Hinrikus, Co-Founder of Transferwise.

Taavet Hinrikus is the co-founder of Transferwise, a peer-to-peer international money transfer business.  He was the very first employee of Skype and their Director of Strategy until 2008.

Tänane Restart räägib startupist, mis mahtus eelmise aasta Restardi perspektiivikaimate idufirmade top 10-sse. Stuudios on Taavet Hinrikus, Transferwise-i kaasasutaja ning ühtlasi kunagine Skype-i esimene töötaja. Transferwise teeb valuutavahetuse soodsamaks - võrreldes pankadega on tehingu hind suurusjärkude võrra väiksem. Idufirma on võitnud Seedcamp-i, on tõstnud üle miljoni eurot maailma tipp-VC-fondidelt ja on suurepärane eeskuju neile, kes alles mõtlevad oma äri alustamisest. (Andrei Korobeinik, Henrik Aavik.)