Boardwave Live 2025: Five key takeaways

We’re now two years into our 10-year mission to elevate Europe as the world’s leading technology powerhouse by 2033. And just like European tech, the Boardwave community continues to grow bigger, bolder, and more ambitious with each passing year.

A group of delegates 500 strong, made Boardwave Live 2025 our biggest gathering yet: more leaders, more insights, and more momentum - but still with plenty of time for the 1-2-1 networking that our members and partners love. Here are the five lessons that stood out. 

Europe is on the front foot 

Europe’s moment is now. European tech is no longer just competing and instead it’s consolidating power. 

Examples are everywhere you look. This year, Klarna’s IPO topped the global charts, marking the largest public tech listing of 2025, while Bending Spoons made waves with its $1.38 billion acquisition of Vimeo following earlier moves to acquire WeTransfer and Komoot.

Then there’s ASML, the Dutch giant quietly powering the global AI boom. With a €320 billion market cap, ASML is the only large-scale company at present that can produce the tech required to build Nvidia’s most advanced chips. In other words: Europe is building the infrastructure of AI.

Once, these might have been seen as one-offs. Now they’re clearly signals of a deeper shift: the tables are turning, and it’s now great to see Europe acquiring U.S. companies. Husayn Kassai spoke about the unique point we’re at, with AI levelling the playing field between Europe and the US: “Until two or three years ago, the US had a capital advantage. But with AI, the cost of building companies has dropped. There’s ample capital here. The US has lost its key competitive edge.”

Our co-founder and chair, Phill Robinson reminded delegates that the opportunity now isn’t just to compete, it’s to excel. “Europe has always been good at building software companies,” he said. “But this is our moment to go from good to great.”

AI is our inflection point 

We’re moving beyond disruption and into an era of dissemination. AI is blurring the lines between sectors, and those who harness technology fastest will scale swiftly and succeed. Some industries are rapid to adopt; others require more patience and perseverance.

The Boardwave Live 2025 programme, featuring market leaders from across finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, energy, defence and more, showed that all are heading in the same direction. 

Phill set the tone with a stark comparison. Boardwave’s member survey showed that on average, European leaders expect to reach £40m in revenue in ten years. By contrast, in the US, companies typically reach $100m ARR in the same timeframe, adding that AI-enabled businesses are already growing 50% faster than their peers: “We are at that inflection point. If that’s the case, it is Europe’s moonshot moment.”

In heavily regulated sectors like defence and healthcare, our speakers found that AI innovators need to balance their mission with sharp commercial focus. As Karl Eze noted in ‘Double-Edged Tech: AI, Drones and Cyber’, “You can’t get too drawn into the mission. Remember, you’re trying to build a financially viable company.”

Our panel discussion ‘Rewriting the Code: Leading Health Innovation Through Deep Tech’ found that despite the technical, regulatory and commercial hurdles for innovators in the healthcare sector, the opportunities on the other side are vast. 

“A lot of deep tech comes from scientific breakthroughs, so lots of new markets are being created”, said serial entrepreneur and businesswoman Dr. Vivian Chan. “A lot of innovations happen before there’s a market for it.”

“It’s high risk, but high reward when you get there.”

Failure is the price of progress 

A recurring theme throughout the day was the need to embrace uncertainty and let go of the fear of failure.

Even potential setbacks, such as MIT’s recent study showing a 95% failure rate for AI pilots, needn’t deter us. When faced with the statistic, our panel on ‘How AI is Transforming Industries: The Customers’ Perspective’ sung the praises of experimentation within safe environments before scaling - even if that means botched attempts. “I’d be surprised if everything we tried worked”, said Deliveroo’s Carlo Mocci.

James Matthews, Ocado’s Deputy CEO captured the same spirit: “With AI, you have to let a thousand flowers bloom and accept that not all of them will survive.”

In his afternoon workshop ‘Mastering Uncertainty’, Sam Conniff cited data showing that 91% of his respondents cite “fear of failure” as their greatest fear - yet 89% also cite “missed opportunity” as their worst regret.

The lesson for software founders? Just go for it. 

It’s a bold attitude that needs to take hold here in Britain. “We’ve had this inferiority complex in the UK”, CUBE founder Ben Richmond told The Times’ Katie Prescott in his CEO Story. “That’s all got to change.”

Quantexa CEO and founder Vishal Marria agreed: “Sometimes Britain can be a bit humble. We can spend weeks and years talking about how bad things are. I had a million reasons not to start Quantexa – but I did it.”

Culture scales faster than code

We heard from multiple founders who had navigated the challenge of building and maintaining culture through growth. 

Reflecting on his journey at Microsoft under the leadership of three different CEOs, Jean-Philippe Courtois emphasised the company’s enduring focus on values and culture. He shared a simple yet powerful leadership framework: Model (the behavior you want to see in others), Care (deeply about the whole person, not just the employee), and coach (regularly, not just during annual reviews). 

This year’s edition of ‘Moments of Truth: It’s Not a Straight Line to Success’ explored the unfiltered stories of founders facing the challenge of growing from a close-knit team into a scaled organisation. Each had to learn how to delegate, trust, and code culture into every process – after each had made the mistake of trying to do everything alone in the early growth phase. “I was the C-everything-O”, said Sodium founder Duane Jackson. After explosive growth during COVID, GoHenry co-founder Louise Hill had to learn to relinquish control over key processes. “I was still the main contact for most of our critical supply relationships,” she said.

That human focus was echoed in Dr Jack Kreindler’s workshop on ‘Founder Wellbeing & Performance’: “There’s a difference between resilience and endurance,” Dr Jack explained. “As founders we can take the knocks and bounce back. But if your teams are relying only on resilience, you’ll break them. What teams need is endurance and flexibility. Longevity starts with people – our bodies and our minds.” Offering a timely reminder in an era trying to glamourise seven-day working weeks, Dr. Jack talked about the importance of investing in sleep, nutrition, exercise, mental health and relationships. “Your businesses are great but they’re not as good as your body or brain. Look after yourselves and your teams.” Culture, in other words, isn’t just about perks or slogans, it’s about creating an environment where people can thrive over the long term.

The key takeaway? Finding and trusting in the right people. Which was highlighted as a strength of the UK and European markets. “The UK is far more accessible in terms of who you can go and hire”, said Onfido and Quench.AI founder Husayn Kassai. “Access to talent here is second to none.”

Every mission needs a destination 

Europe is alive with momentum, but now we need to make sure it keeps building. We need companies and founders with the perseverance and resilience to scale beyond $100m ARR.

Our ‘Rewriting the Code’ panel reminded us that every growth plan needs an end goal. Our experts agreed that many founders are so busy thinking about fundraising, they neglect to think about their endgame. “Don’t build companies you don’t want your children to inherit”, said 28X founder Amber Vodegel. “Every mission requires a destination”, added Dr. Vivian Chan. 

For European tech, that destination is securing our status as a software superpower. Today, we’re at the vanguard of this shift. Our role is not just to respond to disruption but to turn today’s challenges into our opportunities. 

The power to get there lies not just in individual ambition, but in shared knowledge and collective momentum. That is what Boardwave was built for: to bring Europe’s most ambitious software leaders together, so that no founder has to scale alone. Roll on Boardwave Live 2026!