There are a lot of voices talking about the importance of European strategic autonomy. This narrative is particularly prevalent in the European VC sector and understandibly so; venture capital plays an important role in brining technological innovations to the market and funding of early stage ventures is a prerequisite to increase Europe's technological strength.

At the same time, we live in a dense and interconnected world, with global supply chains, and global challenges. I'm therefore more a believer in the importance of strategic "relevance" than strategic "autonomy".

When I planned this project, I thought it would be great if it could be run on a full European tech-stack. Not to strive for autonomy, but to showcase relevance.

Today, I'm proud to announce the platform runs on an almost entirely European tech stack:

- pocketbase 🇧🇬 for our backend
- n8n 🇩🇪 for workflow automations
- Creem 🇪🇪 for payment infrastructure
- Hetzner 🇩🇪 for hosting
- Proton 🇨🇭 for email and filestorage
- Apify 🇨🇿 for automations

What remains is to switch to a full European AI inference provided. I am investigating several options. I you have any suggestions, please do reach out via X.com or via email.

Thanks,

Bastiaan

Today, I'm opening Grounds.vc in public beta. I'm building a clean, AI-native way to explore European fundraising activity.

I started building Grounds.vc out of a growing discomfort with existing fundraising overview platforms. Most of the time, I simply wanted a clear overview of previous fundraises, but instead had to work our way through complex interfaces, irrelevant information, and other distracting elements.

I realised that the ideal fundraise data platform would have the following properties:

- It has accurate data and a clean UI.
- It offers broad European coverage.
- It publishes new rounds immediately.
- It works intuitively for both humans and AI agents.
- It makes every data point traceable to primary sources.
- It is fairly priced, respects privacy and has no adds or trackers

Grounds.vc aims to provide exactly that. This achieved by leveraging a modern AI stack that combines deterministic and agentic tools. Furthermore, the platform is built on a full European tech-stack.

The core platform is ready to use today: you can explore the deal feed, search and filter the data, and trace each data point back to its primary sources. I will continue to expand coverage, improve the product, and refine the experience with feedback from early users. I will soon release a high-level roadmap describing the next features.

For now, please create a free account, explore the platform, and see how it can benefit your daily workflow. Feedback is especially welcome at this early stage, so please send us a message directly on X.com or via email.

Pro membership will be available shortly.

Thanks,

Bastiaan

PS: And yes, I realise the current layout is seriously lacking colour. I will fix this after I've have decided upon our final branding :-)