Episode Details

European investors are moving faster, while global funds are becoming increasingly active across the Nordics. As competition for the best founders intensifies, technical talent is attracting more attention than ever at the earliest stages.

Oliver Molander is Founding General Partner of Inception Fund, which recently expanded to €30 million. Drawing on his experience as both a founder and investor, he believes technical founders build the biggest outcomes, and that Europe should focus on creating indispensable technologies rather than simply talking about sovereignty.

The Scaling Europe show is presented by Deel. Check them out here:

https://get.deel.com/ruynb7o4lfjk

Sponsors:

Mishcon: https://www.mishcon.com/pop-ups/scaling-europe

Chargebee: https://www.chargebee.com/events/beelieve/london/2026

SurrealDB: https://surrealdb.com/

Airwallex: https://www.airwallex.com/uk?utm_source=other&utm_medium=partner_referral&utm_campaign=v01_emea_multi_ib_dg_prtmk_mofu_scalingeurope

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction

0:18 - Why Inception Fund was created

1:42 - Backing technical founders at inception

2:25 - Why European investors need to move faster

4:17 - The rise of a new generation of European funds

5:25 - Working with Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia and Lightspeed

7:08 - Building the LP base behind Inception Fund

9:31 - Convincing LPs to back a first-time fund manager

12:02 - Why Inception invested in Recursive

15:42 - Stockholm, Finland and the future of Nordic tech

20:52 - EQT and the €5 billion European scale-up fund

22:20 - Why Europe should focus on indispensability, not sovereignty