As the podcast market continues to gain traction and the tech sector swells, two young London-based operators, former startup operator Ronan Chambers and ex-investment associate Luke Knight, have launched a counter-offensive.
Their venture, the European Technology Network (etn), takes the form of a live-streaming video podcast, built as the continent’s answer to the new media playbook pioneered in the US.
In a challenging funding climate, Chambers and Knight recently raised £150,000 at a valuation of £1m+ from a cadre of European angel investors, pledging to “save European tech media.”
A gap in the market
The founding of etn is described by its creators as a direct response to the collapse of legacy tech-only media platforms in Europe, and the meteoric rise of new, video-first formats globally.
“TechCrunch Europe is gone,” Chambers and Knight declared in their funding announcement. “So we built the European Technology Network.”
Chambers told City AM that the timing was rare, noting that the decline of established outlets like TechCrunch Europe and The Next Web (TNW), as well as layoffs at Business Insider London, occurred precisely when the European tech ecosystem was booming.
Chambers noted that “the classic saying that we would say in every pitch would be when things like this align fully out of your control, that’s when something very rare, therefore very special, can happen.”
Knight explained that the model is inspired by the successful US counterpart TBPN, but tailored for the European context.
“We were having conversations with people, and if they didn’t know who TBPN were, we knew it wasn’t a good fit” he said, referring to finding potential investors.
The founders recognised that what worked in the US – a live show format that integrated news, meme culture, and high-calibre guests – could be regionalised and executed in Europe.
Low-friction and pro-growth
The core vision for etn, which streams live on X and YouTube twice a week, is to become the “go-to media source for the entire European tech ecosystem”, the pair claimed.
Chambers and Knight believe that the European market sees successful companies constantly criticised for scaling globally or choosing to build elsewhere, despite this having “never been a bad thing.”
Knight added: “We don’t exclude anyone building wherever it is best to go and build their company elsewhere. Go and do it – we want to push that. We want to push pro-growth.”
They aim to be a “hope signal” that highlights the growth of European champions such as Revolut, Klarna, and Mistral.
This approach has quickly attracted a wide range of guests, including Nadir Izrael, co-founder and CTO at Armis Security, and Nicolas Sharp, co-founder and chief executive of Attio.
Most recently, the podcast welcomed Matt Clifford, tech entrepreneur and author of Labour’s ‘AI opportunities action plan‘, on its stage.
The founders claimed, “exclusive interviews with chief executives that are raising £50m series C, £1.8bn valuations,” despite having recently started, is a sign that the rise of podcasting and digital media is “very, very, very real”.
Knight attributes this success to the show’s low-friction model, where etn houses an alternative, candid form of news content
“It’s super refreshing for them to come on and just chat,” Knight explained. “It’s low friction.”
etn’s funding model
The team chose to reject venture capital funding and instead raise capital from a group of 17 angel investors.
They made the minimum check size just £1,000, allowing them to focus on backers who really understood the shifting media landscape.
The current business model is sponsorship-driven, based on the philosophy that consumers should not be burdened with paywalls.
Chambers stated, “I don’t think consumers will ever like to pay for podcasts or the content that we push out. I just feel like that’s not the information that should be free.”
He added, “We have like six hours of live footage a week.” When they expand to five days, this will become “15 hours of live footage a week,” which can be cut into hundreds of short clips for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels.
They view the entire landscape as a “positive sum game”: “No one really is competing for attention, not only on social media platforms, therefore it’s a very, very positive self game.”
The vision is to be everywhere their audience is, leveraging high-quality content and an efficient production model to become an alternative media source for the surging European tech scene.
The founders are already expanding their footprint, planning live broadcasts from major events like the Slush festival in Helsinki and partnering for a venture day at Lake Como.
Knight added, “The beauty of the model” is that they are being approached by major figures without doing any outbound outreach, proving that their approach to European tech media seems to be cutting through.