The inception of SEON traces back to 2013 when founders Tamás Kádár and Bence Jendruszák launched their crypto exchange and faced rampant fraud. Dissatisfied with the available tools to combat this, they innovated their own solution which catapulted into a journey marked by remarkable achievements, including a €10 million Series A and a staggering $94 million Series B funding round. The latter, led by the prestigious Silicon Valley-based IVP, with participation from previous investors, Creandum and PortfoLion, highlighted SEON's potential and attracted investments from industry giants and notable angels including founders and senior executives from the very best product tech stories: Aiven, Coinbase, Datadog, Doordash, Figma, G2 Crowd, Github, Public, Slack, Supercell, UiPath, Veriff, and Wise.

During the fireside with Tamás Kádár we explored the strides SEON has made since their record-high Series B round. Tamás delved into SEON's strategic navigation through the evolving macroeconomic landscape, detailing their adjustments, and major milestones such as acquiring a Hungarian startup, Complytron, opening an office and expanding in the US, and scoring key hires, like Matt DeLauro as the new Chief Revenue Officer.

This was followed by a fireside with Enis Hulli (500 Emerging Europe) - 500EE is a leading VC in CEE, aiming to support the best regional tech companies to scale globally. With 28 active investments from their first fund, 3 companies became unicorns and 2 reached +$100m valuation. Over the past two years, they have invested in +30 startups across CEE & the Baltics from their new fund, including two from Hungary, which became a strategic market for them. Their portfolio companies have raised over $2B in follow-up funding, employing >2000 people.

We chatted with Enis about his bold vision for the future of CEE tech and why he is bullish about ambitious regional founders, as well as touching on the playbook for scaling globally and 500EE's Hungarian investments and growing presence in the local market.