 Great. Thank you for joining us here today. My name is Ian Martin. I'm the Europe news editor for Forbes early today We launched the 7th annual My Dislice Europe which profiles the 25 best European venture investors in Europe Israel in the Middle East today We're joined by one of those top investors Lysiana who's been a list veteran so we're gonna learn a little bit more about the states of Europe in tech and also why it takes to become one of Europe's top venture investors So this has been a tough year for tech in Europe Lysiana like few exits Few large rounds like where are we now after the kind of excess American Zubran so 21 and 22 Firstly, thank you so much Ian for being on stage with me today and for inviting me and thank you to everyone at slush It's um, it's really my favorite conference and I try to come every single year. So it's a pleasure to be back It's been an interesting year Ian I think the word that you use for call it 2020 2021 is probably the right one exuberance It was there was a lot happening. There were a lot of companies getting started. There were a lot of funding rounds Things were happening quite quickly and I would say in the last 12 to 18 months things are more quiet There's still great founders who are mission driven who start great companies because They don't think about interest rates and they don't think about can I raise a series A or a series B? They just want to go and solve a problem. So we're still seeing that and there's still There's still investments happening But I would say a small percentage of companies are raising right now Many of them with an AI angle the companies that are raising are still getting pretty healthy valuations even comparable to 2020 2021 but many founders are just not even testing the markets because They they realize that things would change the extended runway and and yeah, many companies are just not not thinking about raising right now Very good. So what is what is next year hold for us in terms of like? If you ask me, I think we went from a lot of activity to too little activity And I really hope that the truth and the the right balance is somewhere in the middle So I think in 2024 we should see more of these great founders raising more great rounds Why because again many of them extended their runway So they will come back to markets to fund raise and because there are many people like us who are open for business I mean that's a quite we want to invest through cycles whether you call whether it's up or whether it's down We're here to partner with founders for the next decade and beyond So it doesn't really matter what's happening around us. We're open for business So I really hope that the the right balance is not 2020 2021 But also not 2023 where in my opinion too too little has happened So I really hope that that the balance will will happen at some point in 2024 And and a lot of these great founders will will raise great investment rounds Has Europe's tech ecosystem changed since you started investing here Like are we seeing sort of this waterfall of experienced operators emerging and also some more capital in deployed in Europe? Well, thank you firstly for not dating me and not saying when I started in the European ecosystem It's it's been a while. I'll just say it's been over a decade. I tried to be diplomatically Thank you. You were very kind. I think a lot has changed and funnily enough some things are exactly the same What has changed? We're seeing repeat founders We're seeing teams that started a company that maybe worked out to some extent and and they sold it Or maybe didn't even work out and they're coming back for more with a bigger scale of ambition and with more experience and having Experienced a lot of the mistakes for in the first company and now taking all those learnings to to the new company We have a few in our portfolio the team at Penny Lane in France is a great example They sold the company to booking a few years after college and now they're reinventing SME financial services and financial software And then the other founder persona that we just didn't have in Europe a decade ago when we have today Is people who are leaving scale ups? So they've seen what it takes to build a great company and they're they're leaving UI path or Spotify or Revolut or some of these great companies that that built large platform businesses And they're taking those learnings and they're applying them to to their own start-up And again if I look at many of our seed investments the founders have these profiles So the the great team at dust in in France for example came from stripe and open AI Or we invest in a company called tola the the founder came from plio and we're very excited about both these founder profiles But some things are the same and and what's that you know We still see really ambitious first-time founders that start in unusual locations And that's the thing that I think is is the magic and the challenge of Europe. It's not as Concentrated in one or two areas. There's not one Silicon Valley in Europe There are many ecosystems and and great companies really start everywhere So of course the obvious hubs are still London, Berlin, Paris But just to give you an example our last two series a investments were actually in Munich So yes, it's a large city, but it wasn't until recently at least the most obvious ecosystem And we see that growing UI path started in Bucharest Romania, you know, I have a bias I'm Romanian But I would not have thought so maybe seven or eight years ago Well, I would not have predicted that so that's I think that's the magic of Europe And I don't think that will change it will continue to be fragmented And we will continue to have these these wonderful local ecosystems and first-time founders starting in these wonderful ecosystems That's great to hear. I know you've talked before about looking for our outlet mindsets. Yes, the best founders Yes, what's the mindset of a Sequoia investor? Like what do you what are your practices in order to find the best new founders? Okay, that's a that's a tough question I'll start by saying that a sequoia were very team focused and we work together a lot But we also focus on everyone's individual perspective on companies on founders And everyone's individual outlook for the future So, you know, if I'm here or if my partner Matt or my partner Alfred if they're here They might give you different answers and I think that's a good thing because hopefully we we make each other better by having different perspectives But there are a few things that we do talk about then we prioritize when we look at founders Firstly, we really like to see founders who have good founder market fit What does that mean some people want to start companies and some people want to solve problems? And we get really really excited when we meet these founders that are obsessed with solving a problem Oftentimes this comes from having experienced the problem themselves not having just witnessed it but having really experienced it So that's something we get really excited about when there is that the sort of mission-driven approach to Solving whatever it is that they're going after so that's one thing and there are two other things that that we think about a lot In my opinion if there is one indicator for a company's future success is speed of execution Just getting stuff done getting it done and getting it done quickly and you will make mistakes And that's absolutely okay, but if you do it quickly and iterate you learn so much faster on the way And this doesn't mean that I wouldn't equate speed of execution with speed of growth I don't think these are the same these two things are the same It can be in the very early days how fast you're building product how fast you're hiring how fast you're learning So speed of execution really important last but not least I would say speed of learning at sequela we talk a lot about Slope not intercept you don't have to know everything when you start a company But if you learn really fast along the way I mean just think about how much better you can become over a decade because that's how long it takes to Even see if this company can become a large generational business, so I would say we all think about the world differently, but We do have values that unite us And these are some of the things that we have in common when we look at businesses and we when we try to identify an outlier mindset That's great. I think we still have maybe a tough few months or maybe a year ahead for founders Do you have any sort of top tips for founders about sort of how to navigate this kind of challenging environment? We're all going back to basics and it sounds easy, but it's not and I think that the faster Founders realize this I think the better companies they will build just focus on fundamentals And again, it sounds really simple, but I think in practice. It's really not focused on Delighting your customer focus on building the best product you can build if you don't have that much capital to invest My two cents over invest in product and technology No, necessarily and go to market in the second and just just build the best product you can build focus on your unit economics I think it's it's as simple as that and and honestly stay strong There are Periods of ups and periods of downs and I don't know one company that became really really large that didn't have some ups And some downs as well, and I think that it takes that that extra level of resilience And in my opinion things are actually already starting to look better both from a macro perspective and and from a Investing appetite perspective again, we're certainly open for business We're certainly speaking with founders every single day and want to partner with those great founders both in Europe and the US That's great. Luciana. Thank you for showing your insights. Thank you so much for having me again I love slash. Thanks for having me here and thank you again for the great questions