Investing as a multi-stage fund into Europe's top startups with Deepka Rana, Principal @ Northzone

Riding UnicornsJun 11, 202534 min

Deepka Rana from Northzone offers a rare insider's view into managing a billion-dollar multi-stage fund while navigating Europe's challenging startup landscape. She argues that AI's transformation is happening at an unprecedented pace that makes even experienced VCs uncomfortable, while European policymakers lack the courage to create the tax incentives needed to retain top talent and compete globally.

Key takeaways

  • Raising a massive fund fundamentally alters your investment strategy, requiring changes to portfolio construction and platform services beyond just writing bigger checks.
  • AI adoption is following the cloud computing playbook but accelerating across every industry simultaneously, creating both opportunities and discomfort for investors.
  • European startups face a structural disadvantage because politicians avoid making unpopular decisions about tax incentives that would help retain talent and encourage company formation.
  • Patience becomes exponentially harder to practice when you're surrounded by wildly ambitious people, yet it remains critical for proper founder evaluation and deal timing.
  • Multi-stage funds must balance the speed of early-stage investing with the thoroughness required for later rounds, fundamentally changing how you approach each deal.

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18:51· 59smarket insight

Why Europe's startup ecosystem needs politicians with courage to make unpopular decisions

It's like we wanna open everyone's eyes to, like, the opportunities that are out there.

18:51 / 19:49

you know, the political sentiment, unfortunately, is kind of against that. If you say to people, like, let's create, like, tax incentives for people to start companies and and to keep them here, and let's create new visa rules that makes it easier to to hire, you know, really amazing talent and have them like, that politically right now, like, is is probably not the most popular thing and not on top of folks' agenda. And it will take some, I think, some, you know, people who are creating policy with really long term goals in mind and, frankly, some courage

to stick their necks out and do that. But that's something I would love to see because, ultimately, it comes down to talent and access to capital and incentive structures. Right? Yeah. No. But I completely agree. And it's one of the reasons why we do this podcast. It's like we wanna open everyone's eyes to, like, the opportunities that are out there. But I think you explained it, like, perfectly, so that was really cool. And you've been an investor for about eight years. Is that right? Before you made the switch from investment banking to VC about eight years. Is that right? What have you learned in that time? Like, what what is something that you

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