Seeing Around Corners
A conversation with Nezahat Gultekin, our new Strategic Advisor, on capital, talent, and building companies with global reach
We are very happy to welcome Nezahat Gultekin to United Ventures as Strategic Advisor!
Nezahat brings not only an exceptional track record, but also the kind of thoughtful, international perspective that feels deeply aligned with the next chapter we want to build at United Ventures.
She joins us at an important moment for the firm, as we continue to strengthen our international reach, deepen our presence across the European technology ecosystem, and support founders with increasingly global ambitions. Her arrival is a meaningful addition to United Ventures’ strategic path and a valuable opportunity for our team and portfolio to benefit from her perspective, experience and network.
Nezahat brings more than two decades at the intersection of technology, capital and corporate strategy, across Silicon Valley, Europe and emerging markets. Her career began in Silicon Valley, at Broadview and Lehman Brothers, where she became one of Lehman’s youngest lead technology bankers, covering deals across the US and Europe. She went on to lead technology investment banking across EMEA at Credit Suisse and Nomura, rebuilding the practice and launching its growth-stage offering; moved to the principal side at Temasek, Singapore’s global investment firm, backing technology companies across Europe and joining their boards; and built UniCredit’s advisory business from the ground up, shaping its strategy, culture and team. Along the way she was a founding member of Tech Nation’s Future Fifty program, working with the UK government to help build one of Europe’s most significant technology ecosystems.
Today she advises founders, CEOs, and boards as they scale and transform, and serves as an independent director at listed technology companies, including Logo Yazılım and Stillfront. She holds a master’s from Stanford, which she attended as a Fulbright Scholar, and graduated first in her class in industrial engineering in Turkey.
At United Ventures, Nezahat will help us further develop our international positioning and support our portfolio companies as they scale beyond their home markets. Her contribution will be especially valuable as we continue to back European technology companies with the ambition and potential to compete globally.
To mark her joining, we sat down with Nezahat for a conversation about company-building, international scale, the evolution of the European technology ecosystem, and the role United Ventures can play in helping founders connect with global opportunities.
Below, she shares her perspective on what separates locally successful companies from globally competitive ones, where European founders still have room to grow, and what continues to shape her view of technology and innovation.
Nezahat, we're so happy to have you on board! To kick things off: you've built a career by moving between very different vantage points on the same industry. What did moving between them teach you that staying put never would have?
I’ve been fortunate to sit in nearly every seat at the table over a 20-plus-year career: investment banker, principal investor, business and ecosystem builder, board member. Together they’ve given me the ability to connect the dots between capital, strategy, organization, and market dynamics. Through all of it, what has mattered most has stayed the same: integrity, grit, curiosity, care for the people I work with, and the conviction that the most durable outcomes are built on trust.
Each seat taught me something the others couldn’t. Investment banking gave me an acute sense of the corporate life cycle: reading where a company could go, and whether the team has the vision and execution to get there. As a principal investor, your skin is in the game. You need a thesis on where the market is heading, so you can anticipate the gaps and back the founders solving them, with clarity from the outset on what you’re underwriting, a future sale or a company built to stand on its own. The boardroom taught me that governance is inseparable from value creation.
What ties it together is human capital and financial capital coming together, anchored in trust, to build value with purpose. That thread, more than any single seat, is what shapes how I see around corners today.
So, why United Ventures, and why now?
I’m thrilled to be joining the United Ventures family. Under Massimiliano and Paolo’s leadership, the firm has played a foundational role in building the Italian tech ecosystem. What sets them apart is the ability to see problems and opportunities before they become obvious, in deeptech above all, and to back audacious founders who combine vision, technical strength and execution discipline. They are true partners through the journey; Musixmatch and Faceit are great examples. I also respect their operational heritage and global mindset, spotting local talent and helping companies scale internationally.
Italy, and Europe more broadly, is at a pivotal point in the innovation cycle. I saw this firsthand thirteen years ago at Tech City UK, David Cameron’s initiative to foster the UK ecosystem, and the same elements are converging in Italy now: deepening technical talent, universities working more closely with industry, success stories inspiring a new generation of founders, proven entrepreneurs recycling their intellectual and financial capital, and ambition at scale.
The scale-up stage is a critical inflection point. Founders need investors who can support their evolution from early-stage to scale-up and beyond, with the operational and commercial acumen to open doors to capital, customers, partners, and talent across borders. United Ventures embodies that combination, and the timing feels right to add a global perspective.
Your focus here is internationalization. When you strip away the obvious "more countries" reading, what does that word actually mean for a VC firm?
To me, internationalization today is less about geographic footprint and more about building global connectivity: real access across the whole value chain, from universities and research to human and financial capital, corporates, partners and policymakers worldwide. That connectivity gives you a richer view of how the landscape is evolving, helps identify the gaps that drive investment conviction, and supports our portfolio’s global ambitions.
It matters more than ever as AI and the maturing of tech ecosystems make borders less relevant. Physical presence still counts, but connectivity counts for more: it’s what lets portfolio companies reach the capital, talent and conviction they need to scale.
Northern Europe has been quicker to act on global ambitions and attract global capital. Italy and Southern Europe are now at the right moment to leapfrog, and United Ventures, with its track record backing category leaders from Italy and across the Italian diaspora, is well placed to lead that and build the momentum to compete on the world stage.
Where do you think European founders already punch above their weight, and where do they still underestimate what going global really asks of them?
European founders punch above their weight where there are real structural advantages. In deeptech, Europe’s research universities produce world-class talent across ML, AI, security and biotech; DeepMind is the obvious example. Creativity is native here, from gaming to music to fashion. And the continent’s complexity- so many countries, languages, payment systems and regulatory regimes- has forced founders to solve hard problems early, in mobile, fintech, payments, ecommerce and travel; having navigated that first, they often scaled globally before their US counterparts. Advanced manufacturing adds another edge, drawing on Europe’s industrial heritage, and the continent’s diversity and geopolitical position give companies an advantage in addressing the Middle East, Asia and other emerging markets.
Where I see room to grow: US founders have been remarkable at articulating a bold vision with conviction and commercial urgency from day one. European founders have equally transformative ideas and real technical depth; the next step is pairing that with the same commercial sharpness, an early go-to-market focus, and relentless execution. Silicon Valley thrives because collective success outweighs envy: people learn from one another, treat failure as part of the process, recruit the best at every level, and adapt fast. As Europe’s ecosystem matures, that mindset will bring more success.
A more unified, more enabling regulatory environment across Europe will be key to helping the continent’s tech reach the global stage it deserves.
United Ventures backs digital infrastructure, enabling technologies, deeptech and AI. Of all of those, which do you think will look most different five years from now?
The world is going through a transformative phase. It’s hard to predict where we’ll be in five years, but I believe AI will become far more embedded across every part of life and industry, even if the pace and depth of adoption vary by sector and demographic.
That will require infrastructure to evolve at both the hardware and software level. Security, from the infrastructure layer to the application layer, becomes more critical as AI scales. Real-time, unified data across databases, applications and cloud will be essential for agentic AI that acts autonomously within workflows while keeping humans in the loop. Computation moves toward the edge, demanding better form factors, stronger security and more efficient hardware, all deeptech imperatives, with semiconductors and advanced manufacturing evolving to support a distributed, edge-first world.
I expect enabling technologies to keep transforming verticals, embedded in enterprise and consumer applications across every industry. And deeptech fields like quantum computing and fusion will move closer to commercial reality.
A year in, what would tell you it's going well? And where do you want to start?
United Ventures is a fantastic team with a strong vision, deep experience, and a proven track record across technology cycles, leading with purpose and putting people first. I’d like to bring my experience and perspective to help the team read market dynamics, identify themes, and build conviction around investment opportunities.
I also expect to work closely with the portfolio. Having invested in, advised, and served on the boards of leading companies around the world, I want to help founders navigate what it takes to become category-leading businesses across product, positioning, execution, go-to-market, and business model evolution. I can add a perspective on capital strategy and on what investors at each stage look for, and help prepare companies for the next step, whether M&A or IPO. Above all, I’d like to bring the pattern recognition I’ve built across business models, geographies and sectors to help them fulfill their ambition at scale.
You've worked with some of the fastest-growing tech companies in the UK and Europe. For a founder with global ambition from day one, what's the one thing you'd tell them to do before they think they need to?
The best founders combine technical excellence with commercial acumen and instinct, from day one. Where I sometimes see gaps is when technical founders fall in love with the technology itself without thinking through the business model: how it will sell and scale, how customers buy, and how to make the product indispensable rather than nice-to-have. Technology moves so fast now that the real test is whether you can deliver enduring value.
That commercial instinct starts with understanding the problem deeply: how big it is, whether it’s temporary or structural, a local inefficiency or a global gap, and what your addressable market really is.
It also helps to surround yourself with the best: team, partners, investors and advisers who think long-term and have scaled globally. Learning from founders who’ve done it before is invaluable, because every market has its own structures and regulations, and their experience accelerates yours.
Commercial discipline from the start, clarity on the problem, and the right people around you: those turn ambition into a lasting company.
And away from work, what shapes how you think? A book, a place, a habit, anything that might surprise us.
Since childhood, I’ve been observant and curious, always thinking about how things could be done better. Business is serious, and there’s no better way to keep that childlike energy alive than travel: new places, cultures, and ways of living and thinking. Travel and nature engage the logical and the emotional parts of my brain at once; they spark ideas and let me dream, while keeping me grounded. Nature is a quiet teacher of resilience and reinvention; its patterns remind me that the most enduring things are built to withstand change. And I connect with people from every background, not as a learned skill but as an expression of empathy, and of the belief that everyone deserves to be truly heard.
Art, music and sport awaken emotion, and remind me that emotion, as much as logic, drives most human decisions. I also love to read, history and philosophy above all, because understanding people, and where we’ve come from, never stops fascinating me.
Underneath it all is observation: how people think, act and choose, and what drives them. Those are the things that keep me curious, and that shape how I see the world and make my decisions.
Thank you, Nezahat, for your thoughtful answers. Welcome to United Ventures, and to everything we'll build together!