Upside #100 - Two Years, Two Wars, One Existential Crisis, Zero Trophies.
Upside is a weekly podcast that looks behind headlines affecting European venture. Hosted by European emerging managers who all invest early into deep tech, space, physical AI, health, defence and resilience.
[02:34] Football grief counselling. Lomax recounts dragging a foldable chair home through the streets in an England shirt "my low point of 2026." Denmark, meanwhile, won something in 1992, apparently.
[04:20] News blast: EU Inc's five non-negotiables, Thinking Machines ships "Inkling" (toolkit: "Tinker," adorable), Uber eyes Delivery Hero, and Yan LeCun launches a fund then kills it roughly ten seconds later.
[07:10] Markets wobble live on air. NASDAQ down, TSMC down, everyone blames memory and Iran.
[08:09] Eli Lilly buys Atai Beckley for up to $3.8bn. Lomax explains DMT nasal spray with the confidence of a man who has opinions about ayahuasca ceremonies.
[11:19] Earnings carnage. ASML and TSMC print growth "as far as the eye can see." IBM has its worst day since 1972 (-25%). Mads eulogises the mainframe; Andrew notes it at least doesn't hallucinate your bank balance.
[17:43] Korea's memory supercycle; the KOSPI went from 2,500 to 9,000 to 7,000, which is fine and normal and not at all terrifying. Mads says the cycle will turn; the only question is when.
[21:57] The main event: two years reviewed. Anthropic up 52x, SpaceX pulls off the biggest IPO in history, and Europe's share of global VC… halves from 16% to 8%. Cool cool cool. Mads insists Europe is thriving; Lomax insists Europe is missing the boat again; both are somehow right.
[41:00] Predictions for 2028. Dan calls Bitcoin sub-$20k and declares Apple and Google will "win AI" then admits every prediction is just a personal grudge. Lomax: smart glasses become real and a quantum winter arrives. Andrew: tech is foreign policy, one big LLM ends up in trouble, and Europe manages eight orbital launches to America's ~180. Ouch.
[57:12] SpaceX quietly stops taking rideshare bookings until 2028, casually orphaning every hardware startup on Earth. Lomax spots the European opportunity; Andrew reminds him we're "nowhere near" the industrial scale to seize it.
[59:24] Deal of the Week: Valerian ($50m, the "anti-Palantir"), MicroAGI ($55m — largest seed in German history, and software-only), plus a repeat cheer for Atai Beckley.
[1:02:20] Week ahead: the UK gets its seventh Prime Minister (lucky number seven!), Alphabet and SAP report, Farnborough flexes, and Lomax reveals he got a First in his Odyssey paper then threatens Christopher Nolan with notes.
Thanks for a hundred episodes. Still not Joe Rogan. WiP.
