SuperSeed

Upside #22 - The News Behind 2024's Biggest Tech Headlines. Mads and I take a look behind the scenes in startup, VC, investing land. Some clips below BUT in the full episode available on all channels: Altman and Musk face off while Elon builds Colossus. The AI war heats up in big tech - the numbers. Is Labour competent enough to build business in Britain? Should Europe build chips? The Bitcoin Act. Will the Fed buy a million and HODL? Tariffs - Will Trump Switch us off? The Trump sugar high. Coming to Europe? Will TikTok head down to Chinatown? More M&A means more business, recycling, investment. Good? Agentic workflows to impact the Enterprise? More IPOs in 2025. Yes please. The Middle East & implications for us all. 2024 inc VC was volatile but performed well. How? Search "Upside Podcast Dan Bowyer SuperSeedVC" or click the links to Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts in the comments below. What biggies have we missed?

Two fundamental subjects startups are always looking for are customers and investors. 🔭 The #Supersaas event in the heart of London organized by Superseed Ventures delivered on both at the same time. Including great lectures how make your startup grow faster, get your series A, and other important topics. I really loved the format and I would like to attend more events like this one in the future. Extremely valuable on all three fronts - self-growth, business connections and raising capital. One of the best talks of the day was about Language / Market Fit - how language is important in success of our product. Many thanks to Jamie Giles Mads Jensen Dan Bowyer Elena Klijn Harriet Ball and many other from the Superseed team. Very down to Earth people, all with founder / startup experience, and very relevant insights in an authentic form. My brain deeply appreciated the thought provoking discussions mostly about procurement problems, and how AI could help with Gaurav Kwatra Marco Romano Bodo Bokämper Saad K. Abbas and many others. I naturally enjoyed all of the VC discussions with the aforementioned Superseed team, Wendy Lu, Richard Bloomfield Lance Younger and others I hope to still manage to connect on LI in the near future :) And last but not least, fellow founders. One brighter CEO than another, amazing startup ideas, smart discussions. Linden Schrecker Dr.-Ing. Christian Hochmuth Ka Ling Wu and others. #networking #raising #seedround

It was an absolute privilege to host such an inspiring cohort of founders at SuperSeed's SuperSaaS V! Founders: you were exceptional - thank you for creating such a special atmosphere. The interest from our Enterprise attendees underscores just how impactful your solutions are - it’s exciting to see so many promising relationships taking root. A heartfelt thank you to our panellists - Bodo Bokämper, Lance Younger, Saad K. Abbas - presenters - Nopadon Wongpakdee, Matt Lerner, Mads Jensen, Ferdinand Reynolds, Dan Bowyer, Elena Klijn - and to all attendees for making this event a success, and a special thanks to Carta & Goodwin for your generous sponsorship, and finally, to our partners, ProcureTech.

🏗️ 𝗥𝗲𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗖𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴-𝗘𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 🏗️ This weekend marks an incredible milestone: the reopening of Notre Dame, a symbol of resilience and cultural heritage. After years of meticulous reconstruction following the devastating fire, it’s wonderful to see the cathedral restored to its former glory. The result is truly stunning. We're proud that our portfolio company Tector played a small but important role in this historic project. Tector's technology for detecting and eliminating construction defects was incorporated into the rebuild, helping to deliver the highest standards of safety and quality for this iconic structure. This is innovation at its best—solving real-world challenges while preserving history for future generations. Congratulations to Lasse, Thijs and the Tector team for being part of something truly extraordinary! #Innovation #ConstructionTech #NotreDame

We’re excited to announce that Cerve has successfully raised a £3.5M Seed Round, led by SuperSeed and joined by Zenith Ventures, Ponderosa Ventures, and The First Thirty. When we started Cerve, we saw first-hand how fragmented, inefficient, and disconnected data exchange was in the food industry. There was no standardisation, no digital connection between platforms, and a glaring lack of real-time solutions. These challenges weren’t just operational – they were standing in the way of solving some of the world’s most pressing issues, including food waste and food security. Today, over one-third of all food produced globally is wasted, and that staggering statistic has remained unchanged for over a decade. Much of this is due to insufficient visibility and traceability across supply chains. Without standardised, accurate, and real-time data, visionaries, innovators, and disruptors are constrained in their ability to develop solutions quickly, cost-effectively, and at scale. Cerve exists to change this. Our infrastructure and API provide the data standardisation and enrichment needed to empower organisations to create transformative solutions, applications and automations. By giving businesses access to rich and real-time data, we’re enabling them to address global challenges faster and with greater impact. This milestone wouldn’t be possible without the incredible team of passionate and talented individuals driving Cerve forward. In addition, special thanks to Paul Williamson, Andreas Lundgren, Ferdinand Reynolds, Elin Torstensson, Martin Heier, Evi Steyer, Antony Yousefian, Elsa Hyland and many others who share our vision for a digitally-enabled food system. Check out the Sky News exclusive by Mark Kleinman (link in the comments).

It has been hard to keep quiet about this one... Today, though, I can announce that SuperSeed has led a £3.5m Seed round into Cerve. F&B is a tricky space. It is fragmented, its technology stack is outdated (and, impossibly, more fragmented even than the market), and margins are slim. It is a tough place to disrupt, ripe though it may be for disruption. Many aspects of this job are truly wonderful. Almost every moment of my typical day is spent exposed to unfathomably smart individuals, not least in my own team! Occasionally, someone stands out, even in such a crowd. Meeting Dan Mazig🎗️, it took approximately a nanosecond to establish that we were in the presence of true genius. Dan is not just an intelligent, multifaceted founder; he is an obsessive, diligent builder with maniacal attention to detail. All this is to say that having initially been very cynical about the space Cerve wanted to attack and disrupt, exposure to Dan quickly allayed concerns. As we dug deeper, we realised how elegant the solution he had built really was. Producers, distributors, wholesalers, and all the other participants that make up the F&B supply chain need not pick up the phone, submit an order form via Excel, lose 1,000 punnets of strawberries in an email, or integrate with 90s ERPs any more: Cerve serves as a seamless, real-time data exchange. Dan Mazig🎗️is a wonderful and thoughtful founder, and supporting him is a brilliant commercial leader, David Walker. Together, they have understood the complex web of the F&B supply chain well enough to tackle it, head-on, with the maturity of a startup much longer in the tooth than Cerve. It has been a pleasure assembling a consortium of well-informed, value-additive co-investors in this deal. Elin Torstensson from Zenith Ventures, Antony Yousefian from The First Thirty, and Evi Steyer from Ponderosa Ventures: thanks so much for your contributions to the journey already. I'm champing at the bit to keep working with and for Cerve to deliver on its enormous promise. Finally, I want to make sure Jamie Giles is celebrated for the immense shift he put in to get this deal in good shape! Thank you, J, for the hours and passion you invested: you drove this deal incredibly well, and I hope my dotting some Is and crossing some Ts in no way overshadows your impressive work here. Well done, and thank you. Here's to a bright new future for the F&B industry: bring on the paradigm shift! https://lnkd.in/egr4div2

SuperSeed’s proud baby, SuperSaaS, has evolved a great deal since its first iteration. Initially, we tried to add and extract value simulatanously. Our agenda was to find at least one investable business on the day. Now, we care about putting the best European pre Series A teams in front of their target customers and letting the relationship build organically. Would you sell to Rolls-Royce, Roche, Thales, NVIDIA, HSBC and other T1 banks, BMW Group, bp, GSK, Google, Nestlé, Unilever, Arm, Siemens, Boeing or Bosch? Would you sell to any tier 1 enterprise business with manufacturing, supply chain, or back-office operations? If so, you need to be part of the day. We curate startups solving urgent, valuable problems for the above and other corporate customers. We pair you with them. We help you find ways to sell to them. We also teach you how to do it effectively. Other brilliant investors from Concentric, Frontline Ventures, Notion Capital, and many others will also be there. On December the 9th, we’re doing our 5th iteration, and we’d love you to be there. So, European software business founders, flood our inboxes. Apply and join the cohort. The deadline is this Friday. The link is in the comments below. I hope to see you there.

B2B Founders: ❣️ Corporate Affairs  ❣️ Key corporate advocates will refine your vision and fundamentally change your path. The earlier the better, but easier said than done. How do you find those first, game-changing connections? Well…in central London on December 9th, SuperSeed’s playing Tinder ❤️🔥 !! We’re inviting 30 Pre-seed/ Seed Founders for a matchmaking session with Executives from 30 Tier 1 Enterprises…with a few VC’s in the mix too. 📅 Deadline to apply is midday Friday 📅 Link to applications in the comments below

SuperSaaS - Our one day accelerator is back, bigger and badder on the 9th Dec. Meet corporates and VCs as we all dig into how to sell, build and pitch us. The day is designed for early stage founders solving ‘industrial’ problems - manufacturing, supply, energy, construction, agriculture, lifesci, deeptech… If you’re shifting the productivity needle for firms like Bosch, Mars, Google, Coca Cola, Boeing, HSBC - then they’d like to meet you. Ands so would I. Link to apply in comments, or search “SuperSeed SuperSaaS” and you’ll find more details, who's coming, and what’s involved. Space limited to 30 founders. Hope to see you there.

The Seed #18 - Slush, Bitcoin & morality, Anthropic's $4bn, are we at peak AI? Klarna's IPO, Europe's own search engine? and so much more. Slush is great, founders focused, 13,000 attendees. Bitcoin to hit $100k? But it's what? And is it good for us? Anthropic raises $4bn but are we at peak AI? Klarna - Europe's exceptional founders have nowhere to go but the US Revolut gets its UK license and is after you mr big bank. Does Europe need its own search engine? Howabout no. Full episode on all pods - Search The Seed Dan Bowyer or links in comments.