Welcome back to another episode of Upside at the EUVC Podcast, where ⁠Dan Bowyer⁠,⁠ Mads Jensen⁠ of ⁠SuperSeed⁠, ⁠Lomax Ward⁠ of ⁠Outsized Ventures⁠⁠⁠, and this week’s special guest Robin Haak break down the real stories behind the headlines shaping European tech and venture.

Robin joins us as the founder of Robin Capital, an early employee at SmartRecruiters, angel in 100+ companies, including eight unicorns, and one of the most active emerging GPs in Europe. He brings deep operator insight, especially into the German ecosystem, politics, and economy, which this episode leans heavily into.

We cover everything from UK policy signals to German recession warnings, AI dominance to Europe’s bureaucratic drag, the rise of solo GPs, and why the next decade of tech will be won or lost on energy availability more than anything else.

What’s covered:

• 04:00 EU wants to restrict social media for minors
  The team debates the proposals to ban or limit social media for children under 16, the mental health case, and the tension between safety and overreach.

• 06:00 Surveillance creep & messaging regulation
  Robin explains concerning drafts that would’ve allowed governments to read private messages. The group breaks down the slippery slope of “protect the children” legislation.

• 10:00 UK Budget: surprisingly startup-friendly
  Dan and Lomax unpack EMI reforms, EIS/VCT clarity, and why the market reacted calmly. Signals of a more innovation-forward UK emerge.

• 12:45 Lovable.ai’s VAT scandal & Europe’s compliance maze
  A Swedish engineer’s viral post on LinkedIn sparks a discussion on Europe’s inconsistent VAT rules, compliance complexity, and whether hypergrowth and European regulation can co-exist.

• 17:00 N26’s long struggle with German regulators
  Robin, an early angel, offers an insider's view on the fintech’s challenges—BaFin restrictions, governance issues, and the counterfactual: “Would N26 be worth €20B if it were French?”

• 20:00 Germany’s big macro problem: stagnation + overload
  A brutally honest breakdown of the German economy: energy scarcity, migration overload, rising welfare costs, labor shortages, and political paralysis.

• 28:00 Education, welfare, pensions & the cost structure crisis
  Robin explains why Germany’s systems are buckling: the collapse of PISA scores, overloaded municipalities, and an economic model no longer supported by productivity.

• 33:00 Nuclear shutdowns & Europe’s AI energy deficit
  Why Germany shut down its safest reactors, how it backfired, and why France and the Nordics will become the new AI infrastructure hubs.

• 40:00 Startup ecosystem: the good, the bad, the bureaucratic
  From Munich’s deep tech boom to notary nightmares, ESOP fixes, GmbH limitations, and how founders are learning to hack the system.

• 55:00 The rise of Solo GPs
  The team discusses the American roots, European trajectory, operator funds, fund-of-funds appetite, and why founders increasingly prefer solo GPs.

• 01:00:00 AI Corner
  OpenAI’s trillion-dollar capex future, Google’s TPU resurgence, Anthropic momentum, Michael Burry shorting AI (and why it’s misguided), and the geopolitics of compute.