Why Regulation Cannot Be Your Business Model - Mahir Sahin (Cloudberry Ventures)

Regulation can make or break a business overnight — but betting on it can be even more dangerous. Mahir Sahin argues that no business should depend on anticipated or existing regulation to survive, pointing to how quickly policy can shift in markets like the United States.

The conversation challenges a common deep-tech assumption: that regulatory tailwinds justify venture-scale bets. Sahin warns that over-reliance on policy frameworks exposes both companies and their investors to existential risk when political winds change. The principle cuts across sectors — from industrial infrastructure subject to mandates, to financial rails shaped by compliance regimes. The underlying message is one of discipline: a company's unit economics and competitive moat must stand independent of the regulatory environment, even when that environment appears favorable.

**Key points discussed:**

🏗️ Business models must be structurally sound without regulatory support — tailwinds are a bonus, not a foundation

⚖️ Policy environments can reverse rapidly, as recent shifts in the US demonstrate

💰 Investors face compounded risk when portfolio companies are tethered to regulation rather than market fundamentals

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/kAHmuS24cYE

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About Mahir Sahin [General Partner of Cloudberry Ventures]:
General Partner of Cloudberry Ventures, a European deep-tech fund investing across industrial, financial, and compute infrastructure. Spent sixteen years at Google, including time at Google X advising Taara, Alphabet's laser-internet moonshot, before founding Cloudberry in 2025. German-born economist from Bonn who built a portfolio of roughly a dozen companies across three infrastructure pillars in the fund's first twelve months.

About Aulium:
Aulium is a video show exploring Innovation and Private Capital, hosted by Thomas Viguier.

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