baby vc

🥨 the entire European ecosystem will be in Munich next week (sept 28-30th). This is the first year Bits & Pretzels offers a student ticket and the baby vc community still has exclusive access to some. DM us for details!!

baby hot take #6: VC is often the exit in one's career. Strong statement? Maybe. But it's coming from someone who broke into VC straight out of her master's and now sits at one of the biggest funds in Spain. So either she's wrong, or she knows exactly what she's talking about. 👀 For the latest edition of #babyHotTakes 🧨, we talked to Paula Andreu Rivera, baby vc alum and investment analyst at Kfund, about biomedical engineering, choosing Madrid over London, and what actually happens when they throw you into an investment committee in month one. No polished "how to break into VC" playbook. No 10-step LinkedIn thread. Just strong opinions, a few uncomfortable truths, and an honest answer to the question nobody asks analysts: does what you think actually matter? Read the full interview on the link in the comments 👇

⏰ Tonight at 23:59 CET, applications close for Wave 1. If you're planning to apply for Sweden, UK, Switzerland, Denmark, or Germany & Austria, this is your final reminder to hit submit. We screen for curiosity, perspective, and drive. Even a previous rejection shouldn't hold you back:  Sandra applied twice before getting into the bootcamp, and now leads the Barcelona chapter. (If you’re applying for Portugal, Spain, France, Finland, Italy, or the Netherlands, you still have one more week!) Don't overthink it. Shoot your shot before the clock strikes a minute to midnight: Application link on our website🔗.

baby hot take #5: Most investors don’t create much value. Strong statement? Maybe. But when it comes from someone who has been on both sides of the table, it’s definitely worth hearing her out. 👀 For the latest edition of #babyHotTakes🧨, we talked to Karina Repko, baby vc alum and co-founder & CEO of miora, for a very honest conversation about what it actually means to build a company. No polished founder playbook. No “10 lessons I learned” thread. Just some strong opinions, uncomfortable truths, and a few takes you might not agree with. Read the full interview on the link in the comments👇

Are the rumours true? Legend has it that the baby vc Bootcamp is one of Europe’s coolest ways to break into venture capital. Still wondering wheter to apply? Join our live Q&A on Monday, 7 September at 18H30 CEST to meet the people behind the programme, learn more about the community, and hear how it can support your next step into VC. Link in the comments 💛

The last time I ran an editorial team, I was thirteen. Today, baby vc crossed 10,000 Substack subscribers. 🎉 And I still can't quite believe it. None of us are writers or journalists by trade. Not me, nor Sarah Luna Mongin (who I started this journey with two years ago) and Aris Sevastianos (now a core member rounding out our trio). We're just highly curious tech people embedded in the ecosystem, which turns out to be the one thing that matters most. Since day 1, there were no sacred cows. We treated the newsletter as an open experimentation ground. It's taken many shapes since. We did the work to find the tone (tongue-in-cheek meets Gen-Z) and to build the audience. The grounding principle always stayed the same: democratizing European venture for the most ambitious young talents. Here's what we've shipped since that I'm most proud of: → Event coverage: the etn. launch party, Slush, VivaTech, TechBBQ → Ecosystem deep dives: Sarah Luna just released a piece on the tech landscape in Switzerland 🇨🇭 → Hot takes with Eleftheria Topaloglou and Sandra Pitu: catching up with our alumni on what they're building now → Women in VC: worked with Lauryn Mwale and Michela Keller on the reality of venture from a gendered perspective And if you're going after the 10k mark, here's what worked for us: 1. LinkedIn as the distribution layer. The newsletter grew on LinkedIn, off the back of lead magnets our audience actually wanted. 2. Community is the network effect. We wrote with baby vc fellows, alums, and local contributors on pieces they were proud to put their name on, and that were true to what's happening on the ground. We also pitched the newsletter directly inside the bootcamp, where our audience already was. 3. Niche down, then keep testing. We still run new formats constantly, but we know our bread and butter, and it delivers consistent open rates. That's what people actually come back for. Of course, none of this would have been possible without Sarah Luna, Aris and every baby vc fellow and alum who's supported us on this journey - from pitching ideas and spending time with us to writing incredible pieces. So lucky and grateful to do this day in and day out. If you're trying to break into venture, that's exactly who we write for → link in comments 😉 Back to Substack 👩💻

I grew up in Geneva, and by my early twenties I knew working with startups meant leaving. Paris, then Berlin, both cities where the ecosystem was supposedly stronger. But covering tech news for baby vc these past three years, I started noticing something that made me smile more and more each time. Zurich was slowly but surely getting put on the map. By now it seems clear to most investors in Europe that it's become the deep tech capital. Switzerland holds leading institutions, insane talent, and capital patient enough to wait out a hardware timeline instead of chasing the next software cycle. When baby vc announced the Swiss Bootcamp a couple of months back, I knew I wanted to write the Swiss deep dive for the newsletter. The piece that puts my country forward.🇨🇭 So I went back to my lake and my mountains for the best summer Geneva has to offer, and got to work. Interviewed connections, friends, founders, investors, to get an overview of the ecosystem through their eyes. Read every report I could find while soaking in Lake Geneva (and not Lac Léman). And I started writing. As luck would have it, on the other side of the Atlantic, Saskia Sartor, one of the founding member behind the Swiss Bootcamp, wanted to write a perspective on Swiss founders who left to go build in the US, so we teamed up. I'm proud to say you can now 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐬 𝐃𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐃𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞: https://lnkd.in/e-9dN7dP It's not really a traditional baby vc newsletter. It's more of a tour of the Swiss startup and VC ecosystem, our favorite Swiss tech voices to follow, where to actually found your company, where to get funded, and yes, where to get a good coffee while you're at it. I hope you have as much fun reading it as Saskia and I had writing it, and that you learn a little more about this tiny country that has so much going on. 🐮🧀🫕⏱🍫 💛 A massive THANK YOU to the people who helped us craft this piece. Eleftheria Topaloglou, Michela Keller, Meryl Brucker, Hanna Rosmarie Grothe, Riccardo Zana, Calimna Sladic, Louise Scarlette Maunoir, Joshua Cohen-Dumani and of course Annika Bautista for editing with her magic. Link to the Swiss bootcamp application in the comments.👇

🇨🇭 Switzerland: banks, mountains… and one of Europe’s most exciting deep-tech ecosystems? We went down the rabbit hole to find out. From Zurich’s robotics boom and Basel’s biotech scene to Lausanne, Geneva and the Swiss–SF connection, our latest Swiss Deep Dive maps out what’s really happening in the ecosystem. And yes, we also busted a few myths along the way. Some main points covered in this special edition newsletter: - 63% of Swiss VC funding goes into deep tech. - ETH & EPFL rank #1 & #2 in Europe for spinout creation. -  Only 12% of $100M+ deep-tech rounds are funded domestically And somehow, the mountains are still the most interesting part. 🏔️ Read the full deep dive via the link in the comments 👇 p.s. If you’re curious about getting inside the ecosystem, the baby vc Switzerland bootcamp is now open. 🇨🇭 Willkommen in der Schweiz. cc: Sarah Luna Mongin, Saskia Sartor

Legend has it, we organise the coolest VC bootcamp in Europe. Are the rumours true? 🫵 There is only one way to find out: be part of it. Applications for our fall 2026 bootcamps are now open. Time 2 shine (and break into venture capital) babiessss. Link in the comments as per usual <3.

Most fellows join baby vc to build the network that will eventually help them raise money for their startup. But Juho Niemi did the exact opposite. He secured a €50K ticket before he even started the baby vc bootcamp. So… why did he join anyway? And more importantly, how do you raise money before building the network that supposedly helps you raise it? This week’s #babyHotTakes🧨 isn’t really a hot take. It's rather an entire paradoxical story on how to raise money. It's Juho's story. And it's now live on Substack. Link to read it in the comments.