Julien Bek

I learned from my parents, a recruiter and an astrologist, a lot about reading people. I also come from a family of entrepreneurs, so it was almost a default for me to become an entrepreneur myself. I had a successful startup while I was in high school and a less successful one while I was in a graduate program at Cambridge. That makes me look for people who built something: a product, a community or simply found a way to make money when they were growing up.

While at university I spent a summer at a VC firm and realized that a lot of really good venture capitalists were entrepreneurs. I remember seeing early pitches for UiPath and Revolut. That’s when the people filter tuned in. At the time I thought, wow, those are real entrepreneurs! What was I thinking? I wasn’t ready to play in the same league. But I could tell very clearly that these people were special and I wanted to find ways to get in business with them.

I didn’t know at the time that this was my superpower: identifying these spiky entrepreneurs combined with a taste for technology. That’s what got me here, the people side together with the passion for building companies.

I’m an entrepreneur at heart so I get really passionate about applications that can solve everyday problems, which is what got me excited to invest in companies like Revolut and Melio. Whether it’s consumer or enterprise I look for companies that are very product-centric.

I’m quite excited about the fact that we have the highest density of AI talent in Europe which is the critical ingredient for the region to become a key player in this new paradigm. The ecosystem here is also really maturing and coming to fruition. Young talent coming out of school now aspires to work and build in technology instead of going into banking or consulting like a decade ago. And there is also a second generation of people who have seen the startup movie before and are truly world class. I really enjoy bringing this expertise to entrepreneurs to help them compete on the world stage.

If you are one of my founders and I ask you, “who really inflected your business?”—I want to be that person.

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