Building Ventures as the Rules are Changing
Event Overview
The tech landscape is shifting fast — AI is rewriting product and GTM cycles, incumbents are moving quicker, and the funding bar is higher. The old playbooks don’t fully apply anymore.
Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs UK invites you to an evening of strategic insight; a candid conversation on what it takes to build and scale ventures right now — in a world where moats are harder to hold and speed matters more than ever.
The goal is simple: cut through the noise, share real insight and surface the new rules of building in today’s market.
Join us for a panel discussion and interactive Q&A with:
Norman Fiore, Co-founder & General Partner at Dawn Capital
Barend Van den Brande, Founding Partner at Hummingbird Ventures
Charlotte Barttelot, General Partner at MMC
Together, they’ll explore themes such as:
Redefining What Works: Which models are still winning (and which aren't)
Market Evolution: How the B2B vs. B2C landscape is changing, where new venture-scale opportunities are emerging
Capital & GTM Discipline: What today’s founders must do differently across product, GTM and capital strategy
This is a unique opportunity to gain unfiltered insights from the investors behind Lovable, Synthesia, Revolut, Kraken, Peak Games, Mimecast, Dataiku, Collibra, Interactive Investor, among many others!
Event Timings
6:30pm: Arrivals
7pm - 8:15pm: Panel
8:15pm - 9pm: Networking
Panelists
Norman Fiore, Co-founder & General Partner at Dawn Capital
Norman co-founded Dawn in 2007 and is a passionate technology investor. Whilst at Dawn, Norman participated in the recent investment waves in Cloud, Data, Vertical Saas and AI, investing at early stages in Mimecast, Collibra, Gelato and Quantexa – startups that have all become unicorns.
Most recently Norman has invested in Blackwall, an AI security juggernaut, AI natives deepdots and Kraaft, and Qogita – Europe’s leading B2B marketplace.
Prior to Dawn, Norman was a GP at Reuters’ $450 corporate venture fund and subsequent owner via an MBO.
Barend Van den Brande, Founding Partner at Hummingbird Ventures
Barend is the founder of Hummingbird Ventures, Nomads.vc, and Magnificent Grants.
Hummingbird Ventures delivered several 10x+ funds. Looking at more than 10.000 founders per year, they invest in 3-4 startups, aiming at $10B+ generational companies, with initial check sizes ranging from the first million to its largest initial investment of $125M. Apart from aggressively concentrating, Hummingbird embraces a generalist approach, seeing industry-specific expertise decaying faster than ever, radically acting against what they regard as "the nonsense of [investor] value-add", and almost solely investing based on its way of pattern-matching outlier founders.
No longer venture’s best kept secret, Hummingbird’s influence shifted on the back of Kraken’s $20 billion valuation, Lovable’s rocketship trajectory from $0 to $200M in 12 months, and Billlion2One’s standout Nasdaq IPO, each time with Hummingbird as the leading seed investor, doubling down, building 10%+ stakes and holding long-term positions after IPO.
Charlotte Barttelot, General Partner at MMC
Charlotte Barttelot is a Partner at MMC Ventures, a leading European VC backing early-stage technology companies. MMC is a research-led fund with one of the largest portfolios of AI companies in Europe, backing founders across enterprise software, cloud and data infrastructure, fintech and digital health. MMC has been an early backer of several European leaders in AI and infrastructure, including Synthesia, Blackwall, Copper and Signal AI.
Charlotte has been investing in enterprise software for over 10 years and leads Health & Bio for MMC, investing in companies applying AI, advanced data science and medical innovation to improve patient outcomes and build more efficient healthcare systems as well as platforms that progress our understanding of the underlying science. Example investments include Wawa Fertility, Sano Genetics, XUND and Synteny.
About our host
Dawn Capital is a leading European venture capital firm focused on B2B software and technology-enabled services. The firm backs founders building category-defining companies from early stage through growth, with a strong emphasis on building resilient teams and long-term businesses. You can find our more here: https://dawncapital.com