20 Feb 2026Europe $1B Seed Round, Perplexity Kills Ads, Toyo's OpenClaw for Enterprise
Jamie McFarlane (Creator Fund): First Checks into PhDs
Jamie McFarlane opens the Creator Fund segment (one host's audio is still down) with the firm's thesis: European universities attract the world's top talent in AI, robotics, quantum, materials and biotech, so the fund writes first checks to PhDs to turn research into deep-tech companies. Started in 2019 after seeing the American campus model, it has grown from London, Oxford and Cambridge to 30 universities across 10 countries, embedding in the labs where the most interesting work happens.
Creator Fund on Backing European PhD Founders and the Loki Exit
The guest from Creator Fund argues that PhD-level company creation in Europe is as strong as or stronger than in the US, with hubs like Cambridge, Zurich and Munich plus specialist cities like Glasgow and its world-leading chemistry lab. He describes the fund's thesis of backing "scientific founders" — PhDs with commercial experience — its roughly £80 million under management across 60 companies, and its decentralized sourcing model of 45 PhD scouts who share in carry and go through a 20-part VC training program. He tells the story of Loki: discovering founder Jack Davis through a neural-rendered Djokovic–Federer tennis clip, matching him with co-founder Eugene Yi, and selling to Epic Games in an exit that returned the first fund. He also argues Europe's spin-out culture wrongly installs external managers instead of helping PhDs become CEOs themselves.