Amy Lewin

1 week ago | sifted.eu | Amy Lewin

The AI-generated summary of my interview with 18-year-old startup founder Arlan Rakhmetzhanov reads like a synopsis for one of the “bildungsroman” novels I studied at university. “The conversation revolves around a young entrepreneur’s journey and experiences,” transcription app Otter tells me, bringing to mind a genre of coming-of-age stories encompassing everything from David Copperfield to Dune.

1 week ago | sifted.eu | Amy Lewin

VC firms across Europe are stuffed full of mid-level investors wondering whether they’ll ever ‘make’ it to partner. There will never be as many spots at the top as there are underneath — and so many investors who are denied partnerdom choose to either leave the industry, or start their own firm. But that wasn’t the route taken by Dinika Mahtani, who heads up early-stage investor Cherry Ventures’ London office.

2 weeks ago | sifted.eu | Amy Lewin

In early April, serial entrepreneur Debbie Wosskow took the mic at a meeting of the UK government’s Women and Equalities Committee to talk about why “the UK is currently a pretty terrible place to be a female entrepreneur” — and why a government on a mission to drive growth should care about that.

3 weeks ago | sifted.eu | Amy Lewin

In the past 12 months, Italian software unicorn Bending Spoons has bought six other startups; most recently, German outdoors app Komoot. Over the next nine months, it hopes to buy another three, CEO Luca Ferrari tells Sifted — and has over $1bn to invest in those acquisitions. Once acquired, Bending Spoons gets to work quickly trying to turn those businesses around, frequently laying off the majority of their teams, and figuring out ways to dramatically boost growth.

4 weeks ago | sifted.eu | Amy Lewin

When Marjut Falkstedt took up her role as head of the European Investment Fund (EIF) two years ago, the conversations VCs — and politicians — were having, in public at least, were very different. Defence spending wasn’t regularly headline news, or part of VC social media chitter chatter. Today, it very much is. That means the EIF — the biggest backer of Europe’s VCs, investing €7bn in equity financing last year, with €143.7bn in assets under management — has shifted its priorities.