Jade Yarrow, Project Europe: From takeaway fish and chips to European hacker communities

Project Europe launched just over a year ago with a narrow remit: back Europe's most ambitious founders under the age of 25, often at inception or before. In this Dealroom Exchange conversation, recorded at TechChill in Riga, Andrii Degeler sits down with Jade Yarrow, who runs the fund alongside Kitty Mayo. The conversation touches the story of Project Europe's founding, the case for hacker houses and builder communities forming beyond Europe's established hubs, and the reasoning behind backing people rather than finished companies. Jade also reflected on the rationale behind the under-25 age limit and what that implies about the value of formal higher education, as well as the persistent gender imbalance among the founders backed so far — a point that drew public criticism at launch. 00:00 Introduction 01:00 What Project Europe is 02:34 Why hacker houses and builder communities matter 05:35 Backing founders from hackathons 06:20 One year in: Measuring early results 08:51 Whether Project Europe is a VC 10:17 Why this is not another accelerator 12:15 Keeping the founder community together 14:54 The case for backing under-25 founders 17:11 Lessons from Antler 19:07 The role of formal education 20:43 Geography, demographics and gender 23:38 Closing thoughts