Vuyiswa M'Cwabeni

Europe has the talent — now it’s time to bet on ourselves. When Sandra Navidi and I met in Davos during World Economic Forum, one question kept coming back: What will it take for Europe to build global tech champions? We continued that conversation on ntvNachrichten’s BIZ & beyond podcast with Ulrich Reitz. From building Europe’s first venture studio, finleap, in Berlin to now leading early-stage investing at Motive Ventures in New York, that vantage point shapes how I see Europe’s path forward. Here’s what I believe: ▪️ Europe has great ideas — but we lack the structures, speed, and capital to scale them. ▪️Especially in later stages, we hesitate to go all in — and when capital finally comes, it’s often not European. ▪️We should learn from the U.S. — but not everything that shines is gold. ▪️Our real strengths, like quality of life and global talent, are already here. ▪️Capital matters. But culture decides. If we want to build global champions, we need belief. Belief that we can build big — and the urgency to work for it. That mindset is one of the few things Europe should take from the U.S. In short: If Europe wants to become a true tech force, the time to act is now. And it starts by betting on ourselves. A big thank you to Sandra and Ulrich for an insightful, thought-provoking discussion. And about that headline calling me “Tech-Wunderkind” — it made me smile. Feels good to be young again 😄 🎧 Listen via the link in the comments (German only). #Capital #Entrepreneurship #Europe #Leadership #Fintech

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Spoke with Brevo's Chairman of the Advisory Board. Steffen Schebesta led Brevo's M&A for 3+ years. Here's their acquisition playbook: Steffen founded Newsletter2Go back in 2011. And he kept building it for over 7 years until it became: One of the top email marketing platforms in the German-speaking market. In late 2018, Sendinblue (now Brevo) acquired them. (but it was almost like a merger) At that time, they were both figuring out how to merge the companies. And that's how Steffen became in charge of Brevo's M&A strategy: Phase 1: Geographic Consolidation (2018-2019) → Started by acquiring Newsletter2Go to crack the German market → But Europe isn't one market - each country needs localization → So they bought local players over organic expansion Phase 2: Product Extensions (2020+) After raising €140M, they shifted the strategy: → E-commerce focus: Chatra (chat), Push Owl (notifications), Metrio (analytics) → CRM expansion: Yodel (telephony), Meet Fox (scheduling), Captain Wallet (mobile) → Infrastructure: Mail Clark (email parsing) TLDR: Early on, they focused on geographic expansion through local acquisitions. When scaling, they shifted to product capability expansion. Now, they're into platform consolidation plays. And their next M&A activity? Likely after their next fundraising round. If you were leading Brevo's next acquisition strategy, what would you focus on? #acquisitions #saas #strategy

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42% of CEOs believe their company won't survive 10 years on its current path. Last week at PwC Switzerland's Digital Leadership Summit, I saw why they're right—and wrong. "By 2030, companies will have more AI agents than employees," Amit Joshi declared. His solution? Not more technology. More humanity. Think about that. I shared the stage with Gustav Baldinger and Raymond Schnidrig. One statistic says it all: Employee engagement sits at 21%. Cost to global economy? $8.8 trillion annually. Trust in managers crashed from 46% to 29% in two years. Meanwhile, high-trust organisations outperform competitors by 286% in stock returns. Traditional Leadership: ↳ Command and control ↳ Quarterly targets rule ↳ People as resources ↳ Purpose as PR AI-Era Leadership: ↳ Trust becomes currency ↳ Purpose drives profit ↳ Humans do human work ↳ Leaders serve teams But here's what stopped me cold: A global manufacturer replaced 30% of assembly work with robots. Layoffs? Zero. They retrained workers as robot supervisors, quality specialists, customer experience designers. Revenue jumped 40%. Employee satisfaction hit record highs. That's the blueprint hiding in plain sight. Watch what happens when leaders grasp this: When 2,800 bakeries adopted AI, they didn't fire bakers—they eliminated food waste. When hospitals deployed surgical robots, nurses became patient advocates, not unemployment statistics. The Multiplication Effect: 1 leader building trust = team transformed 10 embracing vulnerability = culture shifts 100 prioritizing humans = industry evolves At scale = work becomes meaningful Gen Z engagement dropped 7 points this year. But purpose-driven companies retain them. Why? They see leaders who view them as talent to develop, not costs to minimise. The real disruption isn't AI replacing humans. It's humans finally doing human work. 42% of CEOs fear the wrong apocalypse. Companies won't die from technological disruption. They'll die from treating humans like machines just as machines become human-like. The future belongs to leaders who multiply human potential, not minimize it. Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld for insights on thriving when intelligence becomes artificial but leadership stays human. ♻️ Share if you believe the best ROI comes from investing in human connection. ____________________________ Thank to Prafull Sharma for the invitation as speaker and sharing the insights from the lastest PWC surveys. Special thanks to the people who made this happen behind the scene: Stefanie Huber and team!

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Walk into a bookstore’s self-help section , rows of productivity systems : Getting Things Done, Bullet Journal, Zettelkasten. Each promises transformation—if you commit weeks. The market thrives , hundreds of new titles annually. But something new is emerging. We’re discovering we can redesign workflows instantly with AI prompts instead of studying methodologies for weeks. Three recent experiments hint at what’s coming. First, Paper2Agent transforms research papers into working code agents in 30 minutes to 3 hours. Ask it to implement AlphaGenome’s genomic analysis from a published paper & it processes the code, builds the environment, runs the tutorials. Previously: read the paper (2 days), understand the methodology (1 day), code the implementation (3 days). Now: point AI at the repository, get a working agent by lunch. Second, when I discovered Google’s Agent Development Kit research on tool design patterns, I asked AI to redesign my automation tools following those principles. The result : a 41% reduction in AI operation costs, implemented while I was answering emails in another browser tab. Third, over the weekend I read Jesse Vincent’s architect/implementer workflow via Simon Willison’s write-up. The approach splits AI coding into two sessions: one architect to design, one implementer to execute. No weeks of trial & error to understand the nuances. Read, implement, test, done. The pattern emerging : instant implementation. We can now test productivity systems like trying coffee drinks. Monday : architect/implementer (cappuccino—structured , classic). Tuesday : traditional single-session (flat white—simpler , maybe better?). Wednesday : hybrid workflow (chai latte—wait , is this even coffee?). By Thursday , the data shows which saves 3 hours per week. The self-help aisle promised transformation through commitment. AI promises transformation through experimentation.

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