Ra's Circle · Edition IV The Atlantic Stack
The Atlantic Stack: Who Funds Europe's Frontier?
Ra's Circle is a private gathering for people who believe the best conversations happen in small rooms.
Each edition brings together a carefully curated mix: investors, founders with exits, policymakers, artists, athletes, and the outliers who don't fit neatly into any category. Never too many of any one kind. Always a balance that makes the room more interesting than the sum of its parts.
It's a rotating circle, never the same room twice, coming together around one question worth going deep on. Real connections. Honest exchange. The kind of conversation that stays with you.
At its core, Ra's Circle is built on an old Silicon Valley instinct that's gotten rare: people who give before they ask. The curious ones, the slightly crazy ones, who believe changing themselves comes before changing the world.
This edition's featured story
Isidro Laso Ballesteros
Senior Official, European Commission · Startups and Scaleups Task Force · EIC Scaleup Europe Fund
Europe has decided it is done watching its best deep tech companies leave to raise their growth rounds somewhere else. Isidro sits at the center of that shift.
He holds two roles at the European Commission. He helps lead the new Startups and Scaleups Task Force, and he helps steer the European Innovation Council's Scaleup Europe Fund. The EIC doesn't just give grants. It co-invests directly in companies alongside venture investors, from early rounds up to large scale-up rounds backed by pension funds and insurers.
Before that, he was an engineer and a two-time founder, then the driving force behind Startup Europe for nearly a decade. During the pandemic he coordinated EUvsVirus, the largest hackathon ever organized: more than 21,000 people built over 2,000 solutions in one weekend.
This evening he joins a small table of space and aerospace founders, investors, and professors in Menlo Park. The question for the night: what does it take to build frontier companies that scale on both sides of the Atlantic, and who funds them when they do?
Come hear the story in person.
Friday, October 16 · 6:00 PM
Menlo Park · Address shared with approved guests
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Hosted by Samira Curtis · RawLab Ventures