Spotlight On is a podcast about how companies are built, from the people doing the building. We take you behind the scenes to hear from founders and builders about what they did, what they learned… and what they’ll never do again. This series is produced by Accel, a global venture capital firm. Learn more at Accel.com/SpotlightOn.
BONUS: Nebius’s Arkady Volozh on building in the agentic era
Arkady Volozh (https://www.linkedin.com/in/arkady-volozh/) launched Nebius with one 25-megawatt data center and a belief that the AI era would require more infrastructure than anyone was building. Now, fresh off a round of major announcements—new company commitments, a deepening Nvidia partnership, and significant financing—Arkady joins us to look back on how far Nebius has come and where they’re headed next.
In this episode of Spotlight On, Arkady sits down with Accel’s Matt Weigand (https://www.accel.com/team/matt-weigand#bay-area) to talk about how domain expertise became Nebius’s early edge, the financing logic behind its rapid expansion, and why competing with hyperscalers doesn’t keep him up at night.
10 Mar 2026
BONUS: Armadin's Kevin Mandia | On Redefining Security in a New Age of Threats
When Armadin co-founder and CEO Kevin Mandia (http://linkedin.com/in/kevin-mandia-0a07173/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_feed%3BF4bv%2FOS%2BRiWWj5e%2BPn6lAA%3D%3D) started his career, hacking was an under-the-radar nuisance. As our lives and financial systems moved online, everything changed. Mandiant, his first company, became the team that CEOs called during their worst breaches. Now, he believes cybersecurity is entering its biggest shift yet, and he’s founded Armadin to put the defenders back on offense.
In this episode of Spotlight On, Accel’s Ping Li talks with Kevin about his path from the U.S. Air Force to founding Mandiant and now Armadin. They dig into how hacking went from annoyance to national security threat, what’s different about today’s AI-enabled adversaries, and Kevin’s playbook for CEOs facing a breach.
6 Nov 2025
Q&A with Zhenya Loginov: the Euro founder flywheel, 2025 IPOs, and leveling up from PLG
For our final episode of VBSR this season, Sara phones a friend. Accel’s Zhenya Loginov joins from London to talk about what defines the 2025 IPO, common PLG-to-enterprise pitfalls, and why today’s European founders look different. Plus: Zhenya’s startup green flags.
This Week’s Takeaways
IPOs are back. But they’ve changed. Not long ago, companies were going public before becoming profitable. After years of belt-tightening, 2025’s IPOs are disciplined companies with solid fundamentals, higher revenue, and durable growth trajectories.
Don’t underestimate the PLG-to-enterprise transition. Zhenya calls it “Enterprise University,” since it often takes four years to execute well. His advice: start early, be ready for a steep learning curve, and don’t forget that user love will power new customer acquisition—so keep investing in product, too.
The Euro founder flywheel is spinning. Healthy investment, a generation of unicorns, and a pandemic and AI boom that shifted the talent center of gravity have come together to reshape Europe’s startup ecosystem. Today’s founders began their careers at early-stage startups that went on to become industry-defining companies. They know how to build and understand what “good” looks like.
Conversation Highlights
2:25 - The 2025 IPO
7:02 - Zhenya’s founder green flags
8:22 - The PLG-to-enterprise tightrope
12:40 - “A leader in the global market”: today’s European startups
16:46 - What makes the European buyer different?
19:08 - The new European founder
For more on the European founder flywheel, read our Founder Factory report. (https://www.accel.com/founder-factory)
Zhenya Loginov
Zhenya joined Accel in 2023 and has a particular interest in cloud/SaaS, enterprise, and developer tooling businesses. Prior to Accel, he held roles in multiple Accel-backed companies. He ran the go-to-market teams at Miro and Segment (acquired by Twilio) as CRO and COO, respectively. Earlier in his career, Zhenya led teams at Dropbox across a number of different functional areas. He graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University and Harvard.
Inside a recent episode
Bonus: Anton Osika on how Lovable’s creating a world of builders
Published 17 Jul 2025 · Transcript excerpt
[…] What's important to you in building the culture? The most important thing for building a company that's the generational and category defining is that everyone in the company they're there because they really care about what we want to build and what to build something big together. […]
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