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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.

I'm Dominic Midori Davis, stepping in for Rebecca Ballon, and this is the episode where we bring on industry experts to dive deep into tech world trends.

Europe's startup scene is having a moment, with more than 10 European startups hitting unicorn status this year.

But while European funding is dominating the early stages with a laser focus on local innovation, late-stage capital is still flowing primarily from the U.S. So what does this mean for European founders, and how is the continent carving out its own identity in an increasingly AI-driven world? To talk through it all, we're joined by Shemilla Banquia, newly appointed partner at Don Capital.

She's going to talk to us today about, of course, AI, Europe's growing landscape and our own

journey into the space. Shemela, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, first of all,

you just became partner. That's amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. I definitely want to talk a little

bit before we dive into our conversation about you, your rise in this industry, becoming partner, what you're excited about in this new partner role. Let's talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. We can start with me, if you'd like. Tell us, was venture capital always something you wanted to be? Like, did you grow up wanting to be a venture

capitalist? So I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. I came from a super poor country in Uganda,

which is in the middle of Africa. Everyone kind of has to work. So I started my first business

when I was 10 selling extra snacks to my friends at school. I know not very generous, but I was very obsessed

with the idea of actually like not wasting anything and creating value in some sense. And so I

always knew I'd do something entrepreneurial. I always wanted to be at the heart of either starting

businesses or being a part of their founding stories. And I remember when I went to Yale to study

economics, I was still excited about that idea.

I just didn't yet know fully how it applied myself to that problem.

And I remember doing a whole bunch of internships.

Back in the day, it was cool to work at Morgan Stanley and at Vain Consulting and doing a whole bunch of those.

And everyone basically asking what I wanted to do and me saying, well, I just think it's really, really sad that there are a whole bunch of small companies in love of the world. And they have great ideas. It would just be amazing to help them tell their stories to other big companies that could help them grow bigger. And every single person I talked to look at me and said, well, it sounds like you want to be an investor. And I was like, well, that sounds spot on. So I've actually been on this journey and career path for the last 1520 years.

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