Hosting the SuperReturn Venture VC and Policy session: Europe needs to upgrade its innovation flywheel
Next week at SuperReturn Venture in Berlin, one of the world's largest gatherings of venture capital firms and LPs, I will be hosting what is believed to be the event's first-ever session dedicated to the intersection of venture capital and policy.
Joining me are Andreas Klinger (Protoype and Co-initator of EU Inc), Jakob Mökander (VP of Policy of General Catalyst) and Willem Vriesendorp (Co-founder of Norrsken House Brussels), three leaders pushing the intersection of entrepreneurship, capital and policy in Europe.
For much of the software era, policy was often viewed as a constraint, a risk to manage, or a consideration for later stages of company building. Today, the boundaries are far less clear. Venture is increasingly flowing into sectors such as AI, health, energy, defence, advanced manufacturing and critical infrastructure, where regulation, public investment, procurement, trade policy and geopolitics help shape the market itself.
At the same time, governments around the world are taking a more active role in economic strategy. Competitiveness, resilience, sovereignty and innovation have become deeply intertwined. Whether in Europe, North America or Asia, the conditions for company creation and scaling are increasingly influenced by decisions made beyond the market alone.
This raises important questions for founders, GPs and LPs.
Will policy literacy become a core capability for successful investors? How should founders engage with governments without becoming dependent on them? And if policy increasingly shapes markets, should venture firms and institutional investors build stronger capabilities to understand and influence it?
A few years ago, these questions would have sat at the margins of the venture industry. Today, they increasingly influence where capital flows, which companies scale, and how innovation ecosystems compete.
The session builds on a recent article I wrote for SuperReturn. You can read the full piece here: VC, Policy and Entrepreneurship: Europe Needs to Upgrade Its Innovation Flywheel
