22 Oct 2025AWS Outage, CoMind do $60m, VEED 0 to 1, Atomico Partner on Klarna IPO, Farmer J's do $23mill
Tech Europe's Bella: Hackathons & a 10-Year Mission
Bella, founder of Tech Europe, joins from Berlin and mentions an upcoming, not-yet-announced hackathon with VEED in London, after the hosts show off their Synthesia jersey wall. He explains Tech Europe started a year ago when he couldn't find a hackathon in Berlin to meet potential co-founders, and now aims to help create 10 new $100B+ European companies in 10 years. They discuss scaling from one event a month to two, closing the year at roughly 20 hackathons, and the Berlin hack that drew 1,200 registrations with 400 accepted builders queuing from 8am.
Unipolar vs Multipolar Ecosystems & Sandbox
Bella lays out his thesis on unipolar ecosystems like Munich and Zurich, anchored by a single institution, versus multipolar ones like Berlin, arguing that truly big ecosystems like San Francisco need many reasons to attract people. He credits Andreas Klinger with pushing him to launch Sandbox, a free physical space in Berlin for early-stage technical builders that takes no equity or fees and hosts them for up to six months. He also explains his bet on long-form YouTube storytelling to make building in Europe attractive, saying weak storytelling is a root cause of European talent leaving for the US.