Winning the Talent Game: How You Can Help Your Portfolio Companies Build High-Performing Teams (Invite-Only)
This roundtable event is part of the unlock VC Summit 2025. To attend, you must have a ticket.
About the Session
The success of a venture-backed company ultimately comes down to three things: Product, Capital, and the ability to execute - with execution hinging on the quality of the leadership team.
In this roundtable we’ll explore the key enablers that help portfolio companies build and scale high-performing teams, including:
Coaching co-founders into a more traditional operating model
Critical early hires: first-in-function leaders - where to find them and what to look for
The inflection to C-Suite: what’s different and when it’s needed
The power of personal and fund networks — and how to apply them
How to support on "difficult decisions": when is it time to upgrade
Join this conversation led by Maria Josife & Miia Laukkarinen- Partners at Erevena
About Maria Josife:
Maria leads the European FinTech group at Erevena, with a focus on Consumer FinTech, InsurTech, Payments, Open Banking, Banking Technology, and Data and Fraud Detection. With over 20 years of executive search experience, she is also actively involved in the firm’s Board practice, specialising in CEO and Founder succession in both FinTech and Digital sectors.
Since joining Erevena in 2012, Maria has led numerous CEO appointments and works across a wide range of clients in Consumer and B2B industries, particularly in General Management, Operations, and Commercial Leadership roles. Recent clients include FinTech companies like Moneybox, Preqin, Clark, Moonfare, Monavate, and FastSpring, as well as CEO placements with companies such as Polarsteps, Huboo, Jodel, and CountingUP. She has also worked with high-profile clients like Nutmeg (acquired by JP Morgan), Bought By Many (EQT, Octopus), Curve (IDC), and Ingenico (Apollo). Maria collaborates with leading funds, including Balderton, Advent, and Vitruvian Partners.
About Miia Laukkarinen:
Miia is a Partner at Erevena, focused on Board, CEO and senior leadership searches for investor-backed technology companies across Europe. She also supports European companies scaling into the US and US companies expanding into Europe, drawing on her unique experience across both markets.
Miia joined Erevena in September 2025 after more than a decade at Bessemer Venture Partners, where she was VP of Global Talent. In this role, she partnered with portfolio companies at every stage, from early Series A startups through to some of the world’s most successful unicorns, helping them build the leadership talent needed to scale globally. Companies she supported include Shippo, Hibob, Pipedrive, Dashlane, DeepL, Twilio, Procore, and Toast.
After nearly three decades living and working in Silicon Valley, Miia returned home to Europe in 2025 and is now based in Finland. She is passionate about helping Nordic and European companies connect with world-class leadership talent to unlock growth.
Erevena is a global executive search firm that helps high-growth, innovative companies identify and recruit Board and C-suite executives and assists them in building their teams. We work with some of the fastest growing companies in the world, from early stage through growth and to exit including the likes of Anthropic, Mistral AI, Paddle, Nothing, Photoroom, Preqin, Flagstone and many more; the VCs and Private Equity firms that back them; and with publicly-traded companies undergoing transformation.
We grow value in Erevena through investing in some of the funds and early-stage companies that we work with, alongside co-founding businesses that enhance our service offerings. We are a team of 70 with offices in London, Copenhagen, Paris, Stockholm, Oslo, New York and Dubai.