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I'm a General Partner at Highland Europe, a venture fund backing the next generation of…
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Jacob Bernstein shared thisWe just became an Unframe customer. We'd been talking about building an agentic investment sourcing platform for YEARS. With Unframe it is up and running already! Congrats to the whole team led by Shay, Larissa & Adi 🤩Jacob Bernstein shared thisClose the gap between AI pilots and AI production. That's what Unframe was built to do. Forbes named us to their Next Billion Dollar Startups 2026 list, selected by 80+ leading VC firms. The companies on this list are building the future for enterprises worldwide. We're proud to be among them. To our team, our customers, and our investors: thank you for being part of this. Read the full article at the link in comments.
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Jacob Bernstein shared thisThrilled to announce our new fund!! $1.25 billion to back Europe & Israel's most ambitious founders. Thank you to our LPs for the trust, and to the entrepreneurs, co-investors & colleagues who make all this possible!
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Jacob Bernstein shared this9 years ago, I walked into Highland Europe for a job interview with one of our founding partners. Halfway through, Fergal stood up and went to the whiteboard: "Your interview is over. Now you're interviewing me." He described Highland’s fully equal partnership: collaborative by design, where everyone's first instinct is to help. The belief that people are the only thing that matters. A vision of a multi-generational firm I might one day help build. Most of it went completely over my head. I was thinking: *I just want the job.* But in almost a decade growing up here, I've learned how rare this partnership is, and how excited I am to help build it. Today, I become a General Partner. I owe this to a lot of people. To the Highland team and our LPs, for betting on me. And to the ridiculously brilliant founders whose coat-tails I've clung to the whole way: Benny & Amir at Zero Networks; Shay, Larissa & Adi at Unframe; Alyn at Oritain; Tanguy at Descartes Underwriting; Ola at Fundment; Rahul & Randal at Red Sift and many others. Thank you. P.S. Here are three other people backing me, though they have less of a choice!
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Jacob Bernstein shared thisJust about everyone can describe a game-changing AI use case for their business. They can picture how it should work. And then… what? The internal tech team is buried in backlog. Off-the-shelf SaaS tools almost-but-don’t-quite fit. Vibe-coding, for a real enterprise use case, rarely makes it to production. Enter Unframe. A world-class technical team on speed-dial, building your dream application alongside you, a prototype in your hands in a week — and you only pay when you're happy with the result. “It sounded too good to be true” – said every customer I spoke to. Then we tried it out with one use case. Now we’re lining up the next 10. There’s a reason the commercial momentum here is the fastest I’ve ever seen, achieved by three founders who have redefined my understanding of what it means to “move fast”. Shay Levi, Larissa Schneider & Adi Azarya are incredible entrepreneurs and it’s a thrill to see them bringing enterprise AI to life. Thank you for having us on board this remarkable journey. Thrilled to be joining the board with Amit Karp and Shahar Tzafrir, coinvesting with Bessemer Venture Partners, TLV Partners, Craft Ventures, Third Point LLC, Vintage Investment Partners, Cerca Partners & Shira Kaplan, and working with my colleagues Sam Brooks, Tom Neuberger and the whole team at Highland Europe
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Jacob Bernstein shared thisCongrats to James McMaster and the entire team at Huel on their acquisition by Danone today! And to Stan Laurent and Helena Richardson for bringing them into the Highland Europe family. I can't get this out of my head https://lnkd.in/eb4rmSu9
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Jacob Bernstein shared thisIncredible outcome for Nexthink, for Pedro Bados and Fergal Mullen, and for European tech more broadly. $3B!!! Congrats to all involved!Jacob Bernstein shared thisToday marks another huge milestone in the history of Nexthink and Digital Employee Experience. I’m proud to announce that we’ve reached an agreement with Vista Equity Partners for a majority investment valuing the company at around $3B. This milestone is a testament to the incredible work of our teams, the trust of our customers, and the growing importance of Digital Employee Experience around the world. The DEX revolution is accelerating — and an exciting new chapter lies ahead. 🔗 Full announcement in my blog -> https://lnkd.in/emXExS4b #Nexthink #DEX #Growth #Leadership
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Jacob Bernstein shared thisThe 🚀 emoji is an overused one but the growth and customer love n8n is experiencing is nothing short of explosive. Thrilled to be working with you Jan Oberhauser and congrats David Blyghton - no doubt it is just the beginning.Jacob Bernstein shared thisAnother exciting day for European tech! Pleased to share that n8n has raised a $180m Series C, just 6 months after Highland Europe led the Series B. Delighted to be working alongside new investors Accel, Meritech Capital, Redpoint, Evantic Capital, Visionaries Club, NVIDIA and TVentures, as well as existing investors Sequoia Capital, Felicis, HV Capital & firstminute capital amongst others. Over the past year, n8n's community, customer base and ARR have exploded, driven by its bold redefinition of developer-first workflow automation in the new AI paradigm. By seamlessly combining LLMs, code, and human input, n8n empowers a wide range of business use cases - from everyday tasks, to mission critical workflows - making it the platform of choice for open-source, flexible automation. Jan Oberhauser, Claudia S., David Roberts, Cornelius Suermann, Ben Kiziltug, Luis Guzmán, Michael Kuntz and the rest of the n8n team continue to combine ruthless execution with their meticulous prioritisation of product and community at the heart of everything they do - and the benefits are starting to show. See more in n8n's blog post in the comments section 👇 CC Ben Fletcher, Arsham Memarzadeh, Anthony DeCamillo, Logan Bartlett, Matt Miller, George Robson, Aydin Senkut, Jannis Fett
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Jacob Bernstein shared thisSo excited to be working with this team! To the moon Zero Networks 🚀Jacob Bernstein shared thisWe're honored that Highland Europe led Zero's $55 million Series C fundraise, and thrilled to welcome Jacob Bernstein as our newest board member! 📺 ⬇️ Tune in to hear Jacob's thoughts on the evolving cybersecurity landscape, key market trends, and the features that set Zero Networks apart. Want to see for yourself what's got Jacob so excited about Zero? Check out our self-guided product tour 👉 https://lnkd.in/g6ri3rz4 #Microsegmentation #ZeroNetworks #Cybersecurity
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Jacob Bernstein liked thisThe good news keeps coming; Oritain named in Gartners Coolest Vendor Innovations in Supply Chain Sustainability report! #supplychain #originverification #traceabilityJacob Bernstein liked thisFor years, supply chain transparency has relied on paperwork and declarations. Today, businesses are looking for stronger evidence. That's why we're excited to be included in Gartner's Coolest Vendor Innovations in Supply Chain Sustainability report 🎉 We believe it reflects the growing momentum behind science-led approaches to helping organisations make more informed sourcing, compliance and sustainability decisions. If you're exploring new ways to strengthen confidence in your supply chain data, we'd love to continue the conversation. Gartner clients can access the report via Gartner. #Oritain #SupplyChainVerification #Traceability #SupplyChainTransparency #ResponsibleSourcing
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Jacob Bernstein liked thisJacob Bernstein liked thisBig day for our team at Headline: we’re announcing Headline EU VIII, our new $400 million fund dedicated to European founders. The mission stays the same: partner early, work closely and help founders build on a global scale. A European founder’s ambition rarely stops at Europe’s borders: with $5 billion in assets under management and a $900 million growth fund alongside our early stage fund, we want to support founders from their earliest stages through global leadership. That conviction comes to life through the founders we are lucky to partner with at Mistral AI, Fundamental, AMI labs, Attio, Primo, Notch or Payflows. The new generation of European founders is building & scaling at an unprecedented speed. We will help them win bigger! A huge thank you to our community of founders, LPs and the whole Headline team. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to work alongside such exceptional people. Let’s get to work!
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Jacob Bernstein liked thisJacob Bernstein liked thisSqueezed in 48 hours in London between holidays, new customer onboardings, and product releases. Short, but very needed. We had the chance to stop, think, plan, and spend just a little quality time together as Unframe leaders, making sure we’re aligned before the next sprint.
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Jacob Bernstein liked thisJacob Bernstein liked thisReading the headlines, you’d think every European first round was a $100m+ raise for a new AI lab. Our 2026 at Concept Ventures has looked rather different. 8+ teams backed so far. Five of those rounds, with the companies still in stealth: 🥼 Biotech — $1.7m 🏦 Fintech infrastructure — $1.8m 🦾 Robotics — $4m 🔧 Agentic tooling — $2m 🛰️ Space infrastructure — $2.7m $12.2m across those five rounds. Less than an eighth of one $100m raise. One more signed this week and another in closing. But the round sizes are only part of the story. Among the founders are doctors who’ve worked across clinical care and drug development. Operators who’ve built fraud-prevention systems used at scale. Researchers and product builders who’ve taken technically difficult work from the lab into customers’ hands. Some have worked together under pressure for years. Others are bringing people from very different disciplines together around a problem they know deeply; founders knowing where the hard problems are, what’s already been tried, and who they need alongside them. Spending time with these teams makes me very optimistic about the depth of founder talent in Europe!
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Jacob Bernstein liked thisJacob Bernstein liked thisWe've raised $5.75B in new capital! $1.75B for seed and early-stage, $4B for growth. Venture has been drifting toward the extremes: a few enormous late-stage checks, a long tail of small seed rounds, a widening gap in between. We think backing a founder before there's a product and standing behind them at scale is the same job, not two businesses. That matters a lot in Israel. Israeli founders build globally from day one, and the gap between an interesting seed round and a company that wins its category is where too many get stuck - and we plan to be there to help. There's a lot being built here. We intend to be in it. Bessemer Venture Partners https://lnkd.in/p/eWvWfSvy
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Jacob Bernstein liked thisJacob Bernstein liked thisThe news is out! We at Bessemer have raised $5.75B in new capital, $1.8B for early stage, $4B for growth. We're excited to fund a new generation of companies who will become the next Anthropic, fal, Legora, Ramp, Wonderful, Waymo. For founders in Europe, we're actively looking for you. Pre-seed to growth, in AI, deeptech, healthcare, fintech, sovereignty, resiliance. If you're building in a new surface area to make something that has never been possible before, we want to hear from you. Alex Ferrara, Parth Rajwade, Karan Pahwa, Michelle C., Carolina Küng, Kiran A., Jessica Sutherland-Martin, Bessemer Venture Partners
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Jacob Bernstein liked thisJacob Bernstein liked thisIt was a privilege to stand in front of a room full of INSEADers at INSEAD Day 2026 and talk about the thing I now spend my days on. But the talk was the smallest part of the evening, it was the conversations after that stayed. People working on new ideas, leading teams, raising families, managing priorities across multiple timezones - and almost every one of them, at some point, steering the discussion to the same place: health. How to keep fit when the calendar owns you. What to do with a lab report nobody explained. Sleep. Stress. Mental wellbeing. Several of you scanned the QR that evening. If you didn't, come and see for yourself: - Say hi to Fiya on WhatsApp: https://lnkd.in/dN4xWHqi - Or register at fyxlife.com Thank you to everyone who organised INSEAD Day and to everyone who came up afterwards with a story, a question or a challenge. Look forward to the next event and meeting this warm bunch! #INSEAD #INSEADDay #Fyxlife #Health #Longevity
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Jacob Bernstein liked thisJacob Bernstein liked thisToday we announce Connect Ventures Fund V. I’m approaching 20 years of investing in venture and this moment doesn’t get old. Finding and working with the brightest, most ambitious, most inspiring minds of our generation is a gift. Each time we earn the right to do it for another cycle is a milestone worth celebrating. Since 2012, Connect has led rounds at pre-seed and seed, writing cheques of $500k–$5m in founders across Europe. Founders building companies with global ambition, where technical depth is fundamental to the product and the problem being solved. We back founders deep enough to see what the market can't yet; technical enough to build it themselves; and driven enough to make the value legible. This capability was never learned. It's always been earned. And we believe it's the scarcest thing in the market. These founders move faster, solve problems others cannot, and create structural advantages that are difficult to replicate. They are the technical builders tackling the hardest problems of the future. We're not looking for many. We never were. We're looking for the few who make the extraordinary look, in hindsight, inevitable. With Fund V, we will double down on these founders and the features that define our investing approach: the same GP-only investment team, built to back the few with high conviction and high support. We’ll continue to lead pre-seed rounds across Europe, writing $500k–$5m cheques, with a particular focus on AI, infrastructure, hardware, robotics and biotech - where technology is fundamental to the product and the problem being solved. With today’s announcement, we close $55m of our $80m fund. Fund V is anchored by British Business Bank, with returning LPs including Aldea Ventures, Sella Venture Partners and Molten Ventures, alongside new investors, a group of leading European family offices, and several founders of Connect-backed companies. Thank you to the LPs who continue to back us, and to the founders who have trusted us from the very beginning. To our awesome Connect team 💜. And to my partners (Pietro Bezza, Sitar Teli) 🫡 Thank you. Day zero for us too. 🙏
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Paul Perrett
Big milestone for Firmable. We’ve raised $14m Series A led by Airtree. Sales has moved through a few big waves: intuition-led, CRM-led, data-led. We’re now entering the next one – intelligence-led sales. The opportunity isn’t just better data. It’s turning that data into clear direction and action, without adding more work for sales teams. That’s what we’re building at Firmable: a foundation of trusted external data, layered with intelligence that helps sellers know who to focus on and when. Led by Airtree, this round supports our expansion across Asia and into the US – and accelerates the build-out of AI agents that take the admin work off sales teams so they can focus on what they do best. Proud of the team, grateful to our customers and investors. We’re just getting started. Read the exclusive in the AFR. https://lnkd.in/gr66uknb Leigh Jasper | Tara Salmon | Karthik Venkatasubramanian| Chester Thompson| Chath Widanapathirana
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Harvrinder Athwal
Can fundraising teams detect a stalled process before silence becomes the strategy? The forwardable lesson is that long sales cycles need an early-warning layer, not simply more activity at the top of the funnel. The system is designed to recommend action, not merely record that progress slowed. The Long Cycle RAISE combines mandate scoring, allocation signals, trigger detection and pipeline intelligence to surface issues earlier. The Warning Layer The workflow can track investor stage, relationship activity, soft commitments, hard commitments and risks around the target process. The Waiting Problem The company is addressing a process that managers already understand and repeatedly need to solve. RAISE is raising capital and looking for investors. See company website https://raiseplatform.eu and then DM me for more info. Is faster feedback more valuable than faster outreach in institutional fundraising?
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