Solution-Max: See Atomico’s most senior VCs on stage at Disrupt Berlin

Friday, December 6, 2019

See Atomico’s most senior VCs on stage at Disrupt Berlin

Atomico is among the most widely respected venture firms in Europe, ranking right up there with friendly rivals like Accel London and Index Ventures.

It’s also just 13 years old at this point, compared with its more established peers. It’s easy to overlook this, considering the impact the firm has made on the European startup scene since Swedish billionaire Niklas Zennström — who’d previously cofounded Skype and Kazaa — first swung open its doors.

Consider that four funds and $1.5 billion dollars in asset under management later, Atomico is now among Europe’s largest early-stage funds. It also has one of the most enviable portfolios, with companies that include Klarna (valued at $5.5 billion), Graphcore (valued at $1 billion), Stripe (valued at $35 billion) and Compass (valued at $6.4 billion), as well as a growing long list of past winners, including Climate Corp., which sold to Monsanto for $1.1 billion back in 2013.

In fact, it was through this last investment that Atomico first met Siraj Khaliq, who is today among the most senior members of the Atomico team and who will be joining us on stage at TechCrunch Berlin next week for a wide-ranging discussion about where Atomico is shopping — and how the different geographies it covers are evolving.

Khaliq previously cofounded and served as CTO of The Climate Corp. and today leads Atomico’s “frontier” investment team. He’ll be talking with us along the firm’s other most senior members, including Niall Wass, who co-leads the firm’s consumer investment team; Sophia Bendz, who lead Atomico’s Nordic investment sourcing, as well as its angel program; and Hiro Tamura, who co-leads the firm’s consumer investment team with Wass and also leads its later-stage investing team. (Tamura is also the longest serving partner at Atomico after Zennström.)

What excites them, what concerns them, and how are they trying to prepare for 2020? We’re thrilled to be sitting down with them to talk about these questions and much more.

If you care about what’s happening on the ground in Europe, this is one conversation you won’t want to miss. Tickets to the show are still available. You can find the entire Disrupt Berlin agenda here.