Welcome back to the EUCVC Summit Talks, where we bring you candid conversations with Europe’s leading founders, corporate leaders, and investors shaping the future of venture collaboration.
In this episode, Samuli Sirén, Managing Partner at Redstone, joins Andreas Munk Holm to explore how data-driven deal sourcing is reshaping venture capital. Redstone has spent nearly a decade building Sophia, its proprietary analytics platform, to track trends, identify group dynamics, and map startup opportunities long before they show up on mainstream radars.
From the promise and limits of AI in scouting to the common mistakes corporates make in startup sourcing, Samuli pulls back the curtain on what works, what doesn’t, and how data can give investors an edge without replacing human judgment.
🎧 Here’s what’s covered
00:10 Data, hype, and reality — is algorithmic deal flow just LP marketing or a real sourcing edge?
01:00 Building Sophia: Redstone’s proprietary database for mapping opportunities
02:00 Identifying groups and dynamics — why trends matter more than picking a single winner
03:00 From regulation to signals: how legal shifts and new markets trigger clusters of startups
04:00 Geography and global scope — why national champions rarely scale, and why global is better
05:00 Corporate mistakes in sourcing — overfocusing on core business and overestimating their value
06:00 Doing it right: how corporate LPs can learn, stay hands-off, and still gain massive value
07:00 Lessons from Redstone’s fintech funds — German banks as LPs and the power of curiosity