The European Startup Scene

The European Startup Scene

Author: Software Engineering Daily May 26, 2026 Duration: 48:57

Europe’s startup ecosystem is maturing rapidly, with companies like Revolut, Lovable, and Legora demonstrating that world-class technology businesses can be built and scaled on the continent. While the US remains the dominant force in venture-backed software as home to the largest markets, the deepest capital pools, and the most ambitious exit culture, a growing number of European founders are choosing to build at home.

Edward Keelan is a Partner at Octopus Ventures, one of Europe’s largest and most active venture capital firms, where he has spent over 16 years leading the B2B software and enterprise AI fund. His portfolio spans seed through Series C, with a focus on European founders building in AI, vertical SaaS, and enterprise software. This long-view experience gives him a rare perspective on what it takes to build enduring technology companies in Europe.

In this episode, Edward joins Elena Boroda to discuss what separates great founders from the rest, how AI is reshaping the software landscape and threatening established players, the state of the European startup ecosystem and what it needs to compete globally, and what engineers and founders should be thinking about as the industry enters a new era.

Elena Boroda focuses on GTM for developer tools and AI startups, with experience in observability and building tools for MCP servers. She is based in Berlin.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-boroda

Please click here to see the transcript of this episode.

Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com

The post The European Startup Scene appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.


Dive into the vast Podcast Archives-Software Engineering Daily, a curated collection of in-depth technical conversations that have defined the landscape of modern software development. This archive goes beyond surface-level news, offering a permanent record of deep-dive discussions with engineers, researchers, and founders who are building the tools and platforms shaping our digital world. Each episode is a focused exploration, unpacking complex topics like distributed systems, machine learning infrastructure, programming language design, and the practical challenges of scaling technology. You'll hear firsthand accounts of architectural decisions, post-mortems on system failures, and thoughtful debates on emerging paradigms. It’s a resource built for the curious professional who values substance over soundbites, providing context and depth that shorter formats simply cannot. Whether you're looking to understand the historical context behind a current technology, reinforce your foundational knowledge, or discover niche specialties, this podcast archive serves as an essential, ever-growing library. The conversations are detailed, technical, and assume a level of familiarity with the field, making it a trusted companion for continuous learning. Listen to this podcast not for fleeting headlines, but for the enduring insights and nuanced expertise that come from thoughtful, long-form dialogue with the people writing the code and designing the systems that run our world.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 50

Software Engineering Daily
Podcast Episodes
The Hardware Bottleneck AI Can’t Fix [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:47
Software engineering has developed powerful tools for observability, data management, and continuous testing, but hardware engineering has largely not kept pace. The feedback loops, tooling, and infrastructure that softw…
Autonomous Drone Delivery at Scale [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:30
Autonomous drone delivery has long been the stuff of science fiction, but ongoing advances have moved the space from experimental to operational. Zipline is one of the leading companies in this space, with drones that ch…
React Native at Scale [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:35
React Native is an open source framework developed by Meta that allows engineers to build mobile applications for both iOS and Android using a single JavaScript codebase. The framework bridges the gap between web develop…
Formal Methods as Agent Guardrails [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:32
Formal methods are a branch of mathematics and computer science focused on proving the correctness of systems, and they have long promised a more rigorous foundation for software. However, their complexity has kept them…
Open Source Sustainability [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:43
Open source software underpins nearly every modern application, including frameworks powering the most popular websites, to the libraries securing financial backend systems. However, while open source drives collaboratio…
Vespa AI and Surpassing the Limits of Vector Search [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:35
Vector search has risen to become a foundational tool in modern search and retrieval systems, including the RAG pipelines that power many AI applications. However, the demands on retrieval systems are growing more sophis…
SmartBear and Multi-Agent QA [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:15
AI coding tools have dramatically accelerated the pace of development, and the bottleneck in the software development lifecycle has shifted to code validation and testing. However, the conventional tools and workflows th…
The Ethics of Autonomous Weapons Systems [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:40
Artificial intelligence is transforming warfare faster than the legal and ethical frameworks designed to govern it. Militaries around the world are deploying AI-powered decision support systems to identify targets, asses…
Open-Weight AI Models [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:14
Open-weight models are AI systems whose trained parameters are publicly released, which allows developers to run, fine-tune, and deploy them independently rather than accessing them only through a hosted API. While close…