The best European VC category is compliance | Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, Speedinvest

European pension funds allocate 0.1 percent to venture capital. American pension funds allocate 3 percent. That single number explains a decade of European tech.

In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Christian Woese and Melanie Gabriel sit down with Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, General Partner at Speedinvest, who has been investing in early-stage European companies for more than a decade and now leads investments across the firm's Vienna, Munich, Berlin, London, and Paris offices.

This is not a "state of European tech" conversation. Andreas walks through the structural mechanics that decide whether ambitious founders stay or leave: how capital actually flows between continents, why one 1970s American reform still defines the modern venture playbook, what would have realistically kept Peter Steinberger of OpenClaw in Vienna, and which single reform would unlock the rest if European policymakers could only do one.

We talk about:

• The Peter Steinberger / OpenClaw moment and what European institutions failed to do when Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and others reached out and Europe stayed silent

• Why European pension funds allocate 0.1 percent to venture capital while US pension funds allocate 3 percent, and why the 1970s ERISA reform is the most under-discussed turning point in startup history

• Why a large share of the capital sitting inside US venture funds is European money that flows to Sandhill Road and back to European companies at a markup

• The four reforms Andreas would push (Solvency II, pension fund VC allocation, harmonized startup visas, EU Inc) and the only one that matters if you can pick just one

• Why "compliance software" is genuinely one of the best categories to build a European VC around, and what that tells us about the real regulatory tax

• What European founders consistently do better than American ones, and why being average at everything is the worst possible strategic posture for the continent

What makes this conversation different is that Andreas refuses to talk about Europe in the abstract. He has been in the room with European Commission officials, in interviews with national TV, and on cap tables for the companies that decide whether the next decade of European tech happens here or somewhere else. He treats policy the way operators treat product: a system of incentives and decisions that either compounds or doesn't.

Our biggest takeaways, including Andreas's view on which single reform would change Europe more than any policy debate of the last five years:

https://www.followthegradient.io/p/andreas-schwarzenbrunner-podcast 

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Where to find Andreas Schwarzenbrunner:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreas-schwarzenbrunner/ 

X: https://x.com/schwabro

Speedinvest: https://www.speedinvest.com/ 

Email: andreas@speedinvest.com 

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00:00 Introduction

01:32 The Peter Steinberger moment and what Europe missed

06:20 The 0.1 percent vs 3 percent pension fund gap, explained

10:51 How European money flows to Sandhill Road and back at a markup

16:48 EU Inc, public procurement, and the 28th regime

26:18 What European founders do differently