Lars Rasmussen
8 Nov 2025Armis raises $435M, Attio updates, Sequoia shifts, Google Maps joins, Palantir dips Big Short 2 more
Lars Rasmussen: Panathenia 2.0 & the Google Maps Origin Story
Lars Rasmussen joins live from Athens with the Parthenon as his backdrop to explain Panathenia, a modern reboot of the ancient Greek innovation festival, returning May 27–29 after a 3,500-person, 44-country first edition built by a student-run team modeled on Slush. He tells the Google Maps origin story — the dot-com crash, a killed VC deal, and 'Where 2' being bought by Larry Page — and the lessons he brings to Athens: people can do more than they think, belief matters, and failure often means something better is waiting. He also mentions his new enterprise-AI seed fund Florent and the view that Athens is at an ecosystem inflection point.
7 Nov 2025etn. Episode 8
Lars Rasmussen: Panathinaia Festival & the Google Maps Story
Lars Rasmussen joins live from Athens beneath the Parthenon to explain Panathinaia, the modern revival of ancient Greece's innovation festival, and confirms ETN will stream the May 27–29 event. He describes the debut edition — 3,500 signups from 44 countries with guests from Canva, OpenAI, Hugging Face, Google DeepMind and pop star Kesha, built by a team of five 22-year-olds — then tells the Google Maps founding story: the Where 2 prototype, a collapsed deal with a big investor, and selling to Larry Page days later. He shares lessons on optimism and failure for young ecosystems like Athens and plugs his new enterprise-AI seed fund, Florent Venture Capital Partners.