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In this episode of DefTechPod, Erica Dill-Russell is joined by Mads Jensen, Managing Partner at SuperSeed, for a practical conversation about AI, seed investment, technical founders and what it takes to build a credible company in a very noisy market.
Mads is a former entrepreneur, technologist and investor who has spent two decades building and scaling technology businesses. At SuperSeed, he backs ambitious technical founders across the UK and Europe, with a particular focus on AI, enterprise technology and what he describes as “physical AI”: the next generation of AI systems that can help software understand, navigate and transform the real world.
The conversation looks at what investors are really listening for when founders pitch AI companies. Mads explains why buzzwords are not enough, why “me too” AI companies are hard to fund, and why the strongest founders usually have a clear view of how the world is changing, a deep understanding of the customer problem, and enough technical capability to build something genuinely differentiated.
Erica and Mads also discuss the changing shape of early-stage company building. With tools like Claude Code and other AI-enabled development systems, small teams can now build faster, iterate more quickly and get much further before raising significant capital. For Mads, that changes investor expectations. Founders should be able to show evidence of customer engagement, real learning and momentum before asking for large amounts of money.
The episode also covers founder risk, pitch quality, customer discovery, internationalisation and the difference between raising capital to scale and raising capital simply to buy time. Mads is clear that early-stage founders should stay lean for as long as possible, learn quickly, test their assumptions with customers and only raise serious capital once they have a stronger signal that they are onto something.
For the defence and dual-use audience, the conversation turns to where AI investment is heading next. Mads discusses why SuperSeed is interested in technologies that transform real-world sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, construction, energy and agriculture, and why many of these areas naturally overlap with defence and security applications. He also gives his view on dual-use companies, the extra requirements that appear when defence becomes part of the customer base, and why companies need to understand the difference between selling to industry and selling directly to government.
The episode closes with a wider discussion about sovereignty, European supply chains and the scale of the AI transformation still ahead. Mads argues that we are still in the early stages of AI’s impact, and that by 2030 many sectors may look very different from how they do today.
This is a useful listen for technical founders, AI companies, defence and dual-use start-ups, investors, and anyone trying to understand what credible AI company-building looks like beyond the buzzwords.
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