Gideon Valkin launches $12 million fund to back Europe’s fintech Mafia
Gideon Valkin – formerly of Monzo, ClearScore and Entree Capital – has closed on a $12 million fintech venture fund, Adrena Ventures, and made his first investment in Nustom, an AI startup founded by Monzo’s co-founding CTO Jonas Templestein.
Just as the PayPal Mafia used experiences gained at the global payment pioneer to build the world’s biggest tech giants, Valkin believes a similar flywheel is being seen across Europe today.
“Europe’s time has arrived,” says Valkin. “A new power network of founding teams has emerged out of Europe’s first generation of industry-defining companies. These teams are using their lessons and experiences to solve tomorrow’s most pressing and important problems across fintech, AI, climate-tech and enterprise software. They deserve investors who understand these problems, believe in their ambitious vision and have the knowledge and know-how to truly support them.”
According to Dealroom data, there are 10 fintech unicorns in Europe that have spun out 145 new startups which have raised ~$5bn.
Valkin has experience both as an angel and as an investor at Entrée Capital, backing the likes of e-commerce enablement startup, Packfleet, rewards credit card company, Yonder, autonomous customer operations agent, Gradient Labs AI, and cross-border B2B payments network, Moment.
The fund’s first investment in Nustom is a prime example of Valkin’s investment ethos.
Nustom is founded by Monzo CTO Jonas Templestein and Oliver Beattie, formerly Monzo’s VP of architecture, who left the bank after six years in 2021 and has since had roles at fintechs like Imprint and Pleo.
Another Monzo alumnus recruited by Nustom is chief operating officer, Maria Campbell, a former head of people at Monzo, and most recently COO of challenger bank Griffin. The founding team is finalised with two engineering leads, former Monzo staff engineer Fred Jonsson and Eugenio Marchiori of Google.
Nustom intends to start by building SaaS products using the foundation models built by the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic and Mistral.
