Zeynep Korutürk and Kris Naudts, Firgun Ventures on Quantum Scale-ups

**Grace Gong** (0:02)
Hi, Zeynep and Kris, welcome to Venture with Grace.

**Zeynep Korutürk** (0:05)
Hi, Grace. Thank you very much for having us. Hi, Grace.

**Grace Gong** (0:09)
Hi. So I'm so excited about our conversation. Before we dive into everything Quantum, I want to give a quick shout out to our amazing sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Nebius, the ultimate call for AI innovators. Nebius provides AI infrastructure you can count on, combining reliability and speed with flexibility, and engineering support unmatched by hyperscalers. AI leaders like Meta, Shopify, and Higgsfield already partnered with Nebius to run their AI workloads. Plus, venture-backed startup can save up to 150K on compute cost when they apply for access. Visit nebius.com or nebius.com/startup to learn more.
I want to start with, since you guys are based in Europe and the font itself, it's very focused on Quantum as well as all the deep tech-related subjects. Maybe we could dive into the background a little bit.
Obviously, I feel like both of you have many years of investing experience as well as research. Why don't we start with what were some core lessons that you have learned early on in your career shaping into who you are today?

**Zeynep Korutürk** (1:15)
My background, Grace, indeed, is in investing. I've been investing for almost 20 years now in different capacities, first in a hedge fund, then in a family office, and over the last 10 years at Goldman, in a cross-asset role.
I've been an investor in Quantum over the last 10 years, initially as a private investor and now indeed with regards to the fund. I always noticed the important...
I think there's an audio backup. That's my fault. I was saying that I've always been aware of spotting certain changes happening early and therefore there's been always an interest in me in actually looking at emerging technologies whether that was in the hedge fund when social media was picking up and therefore a number of companies were coming to the markets or across different industries. One of the key things that I've noticed is that if you can be an investor in the space early on and actually network yourself well enough in the space to see its first few years of evolution, it gives you a really, really special vantage point once you come into it in a proper way in our case as a VC fund. So that would be my main takeaway of the last few years and that has been my experience of quantum because I started investing in the space when there were only 20 companies. Now there are about 500 to 700 companies and I had the chance over the years to speak with over 300 of these companies. So it does mean something to be an early person in the space.

**Grace Gong** (2:41)
For sure. Yeah, Chris, do you want to tell us about your lessons as well?

**Kris Naudts** (2:48)
Sure. My background is quite different. I'm a psychiatrist and a medical doctor. Originally, I did PhD in neuroscience and then was an academic in London and Cambridge for about a decade. Left that to found my own startup, which was nothing to do with science or deep tech. It was a travel startup, which became quite successful, and I was ultimately felled by COVID, or at least temporarily felled.
Then I started to look much more at Quantum, as in I wanted to become an investor and not found another company. Quantum came into view because its technology would of course have amazing potential for drug discovery, diagnosis, which spoke to me as a medic. Indeed, we had been fortunate to invest very early in Quantum startup that we had been able to follow for 10 years.
Zeynep also wanted to go forward in this and rejoin forces and set up a VC fund.

**Grace Gong** (3:42)
Very cool.
I want to start with since Quantum space is still very new, so another person we have chatted with previously was like, I would say it's a very rare space to be in. Maybe we could start with how does the Quantum industry works? And then what would you guys think is an investable opportunity? Since the company that's in the Quantum space are taking a long time to come into fruition. And maybe we could start with how does the Quantum industry works? And then how is it related to the current computing? And maybe we could talk about the future of AI as well, with the current move of Quantum.

**Kris Naudts** (4:31)
OK.

**Zeynep Korutürk** (4:33)
Do you want to go ahead, Kris, or do you want me to?

**Kris Naudts** (4:35)
I mean, I can say a few things and you can build on it, I guess.