EU-Startups Podcast

Tackling Europe's Skills Crisis

EU-Startups Podcast

Show Notes

In this episode, we speak with Davide Dattoli, Founder and Executive Chairman of Talent Garden, about building one of Europe’s largest digital skills and EdTech platforms — from its launch in 2011 as a coworking experiment in Italy to a pan-European education group operating across 12 markets in Europe, Brazil, and Singapore.

Today, Talent Garden trains 25,000 professionals and students annually, connects 4,500 startups and tech professionals, and attracts more than 500,000 campus visitors each year.

We also discuss Davide’s role as Venture Founder at Italian Founders Fund, Italy’s founder-backed VC supporting pre-seed and seed startups, as well as his broader involvement in the European tech ecosystem.

The conversation explores how the EdTech sector is evolving amid growing AI-driven learning investment (with roughly €52.7 million disclosed in European digital-skills funding rounds in 2025–2026), why physical learning communities still matter, and what “future-proof” skills really mean beyond the buzzwords.

More from EU-Startups Podcast

Oct 22, 2026

In this Women TechEU Roundtable episode, three founders building Deeptech cancer companies in France sit down together for a candid conversation about science, scaling, and what it really takes to move a breakthrough from the lab to the patients who need it.

Oct 15, 2026

What if technology could give blind people the freedom of a guide dog - without the waitlists, the cost, or the care requirements? In this episode, we sit down with Cornel Amariei, CEO and founder of .lumen, the Romanian startup building smart glasses that help blind and visually impaired people navigate the world independently.

Oct 8, 2026

In this episode, we sit down with Paul Bonnet, General Partner at 20VC, the London-based venture capital firm founded by Harry Stebbings that sprung from the extremely popular 20VC podcast.

Oct 6, 2026

This is a special two-part addition, building on the back of the A5X conference series we published last week. Since the EU-Startups team could only stay for part of the event, we missed the Singapore Defence Tech Hackathon (SDTH) in person - so we're bringing it to you in a slightly different format. Instead of our usual deep-dive conversations, we sat down with the winners to hear how they built their projects and where they're heading next.

Oct 6, 2026

This is a special two-part addition, building on the back of the A5X conference series we published last week. Since the EU-Startups team could only stay for part of the event, we missed the Singapore Defence Tech Hackathon in person - so we're bringing it to you in a slightly different format. Instead of our usual deep-dive conversations, we sat down with the winners to hear how they built their projects and where they're heading next.

See all episodes →