• Dutch decentralized marketplace for AI algorithms raises series A
• Romanian developers of a browser-based platform to prototype game systems also closed series A
• what does it mean for a startup to be defensible

 

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This week's edition we'll try something a bit different than the usual - the newsletter includes the regular intel update we send to our Nordic 9 customers every Monday morning. As a quick reminder, every Monday we send a newsletter with the current week's deal curation combined with intel bits from the European startup ecosystem - customers include investors, founders and decision makers willing to stay updated with what's going on in Europe.  

It's a bit data heavy for a Sunday morning read but I hope you will find it interesting nonetheless - if you want to receive it every week, you simply need to subscribe* from here, and you will also get access to other goodies such as full access to a premiere database of investors and their deals from across the continent. Thanks in advance.

As always, ping me for questions or comments, I try my best to answer every each of you.

* We're also running a promotional event over at Nordic 9, simply add the code SSN9 in order to get a 10% discount at the checkout. It's valid until June 4 EOD.

 

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Interesting deals

Later-ish stage

🇨🇿 Manta, developing an enterprise data lineage platform for global customers, raised $35 million series B round led by Forestay Capital, with participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, SAP.io, Senovo, Credo Ventures.

🇫🇷 Ouihelp, developer of an online residential assistance platform designed to help seniors in their regular activities at home, raised $32 million series B from Creadev, XAnge and Future Positive Capital.

🇳🇱 SingularityNET, building a decentralized marketplace for AI algorithms, raised $25 million series A led by LDA Capital.

🇵🇱 Nomagic, robot manufacturer for order fulfillment that provides smart pick and place solutions, raised $22 million series A from Khosla Ventures, Almaz Capital, EIB, DN Capital, Capnamic Ventures and Manta Ray.

🇬🇧 Converge, doing SAAS for decarbonization of construction activities, raised $18.6 million series A from OGCI Climate Investments, joined by TO Ventures.

🇫🇷 Moka Care, building a B2B solution providing the employees of other companies access to mental health therapy, raised $15.8 million series A led by Left Lane Capital, joined by Singular, Origins and angel investors.

🇬🇧 NatureMetrics, ESG startup using DNA to monitor biodiversity and advise businesses on their OPEX planning decisions, raised $15 million series B round backed by 2150VC, Ananda Impact Ventures, BNP Paribas, and Blue Ocean Partners.

🇩🇪 Knowunity, operating a digital learning platform for students, raised $10.5 million in a Series A round co-led by Redalpine and Stride VC.

🇩🇪 inne, healthcare developer of a measuring device that determines fertility, extended series A in a $9.8 million deal led by DSM Venturing.

🇨🇿 Spaceflow, selling Space as a Service (SPaaS) to real estate owners and connecting users to their buildings, raised $8.4 million series A from a Swedish strategic investor.

🇷🇴 Machinations, developing a browser-based platform to design, prototype and handoff game systems, raised $3.3 million series A round led by Hiro Capital.

 

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Earlier stage

🇬🇧 Shellworks, biotech startup developing compostable packaging solutions, raised $6.2 million seed from LocalGlobe and Founder Collective.

🇩🇪 How Fm, SAAS developers of a platform acting as a digital coach for worker onboarding, training, and performance support, raised a $5.4 million seed round led by Join Capital, and joined by Kindred Capital and Capnamic Ventures.

🇫🇷 Lynx, producing a a mixed reality (AR+VR) headset sold for $720, raises $4 million in Series A funding led by Somnium Space.

🇫🇷 Actiondesk, YC alum developing a spreadsheet-like solution that connects with the databases, CRMs and SAAS tools, announced a $3.9 million seed round from Tiger Global, Bling Capital, Speedinvest et al, closed last month.

🇫🇷 Seafood Reboot, producing plant-based seafood from ingredients of algae origin, raised $3.4 million from Demeter Investment Managers, SENSEII Ventures, Founders Future and Beyond Impact.

🇫🇷 Aive, developing a tool used to automate qualitative video creation and distribution at scale, raised $3.2 million seed from multiple French angel investors.

🇬🇧 Neurolabs, software developer focusing on the use of synthetically-generated data to develop object recognition models in a faster, cheaper manner, raised $3.2 millionseed from LAUNCHub Ventures, Techstart, 7percent Ventures, and Lunar Ventures.

🇬🇧 Flexa, building a digital recruitment platform, raised $2.9 million seed from Ada Ventures, Auxxo and HERmesa.

🇩🇪 Twain, developing an automated tool for sales people, closed a $2 million seed funding round raised from investors led by Sequoia Capital, and joined by System.Oneand multiple angel investors from Germany.

🇬🇧 StackZone, developing a secure, cost-efficient, and self-service cloud management platform for multi-account environments, raised $1.9 million pre-seed.

🇬🇧 Comparesoft, developing a Machine Learning platform that compares all types of asset management software, raised $1.6 million pre-series A from Blackfinch Ventures.

🇪🇸 Dedomena, developing a SAAS that enables data-driven companies to extract superior value from their data assets, raised half a million in a preseed round.


Please note that this is just a deal selection - the complete dealflow is available here.


Also notable:

Y Combinator extended its application deadline for incoming startups to the summer program and some of the late Euro entrants include: 
- Kaya (UK) - marketing analytics platform developers
- Tranch (UK) - BNPL provider
- Windmill (France) - developer of an OSS platform to quickly build production-grade multi-steps automations and internal apps from minimal Python and Typescript scripts.

 

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Active investors

🇦🇹 Speedinvest (8 deals this month)
🇫🇷 Eurazeo 
🇫🇷 Demeter
🇩🇪 Earlybird
🇩🇪 Picus Capital
🇩🇪 Ananda
🇬🇧 Notion Capital
🇬🇧 Ada ventures
🇬🇧 2150 vc
🇷🇴 GapMinder VC
🇺🇸 White Star Capital
🇺🇸 Acequia Capital


🇫🇷 Aurélie Jean (co founder at DPEEX)
🇩🇪 Michael Wax (CEO at Forto)
🇩🇪 Andreas Mihalovits (professional angel)
🇩🇪 Jonas Rieke (COO at Personio)
🇪🇸 Felipe Navio (co founder at Jobandtalent)
🇪🇸 Hugo Arévalo (founder at Tuenti)
🇪🇸 Iñigo Juantegui (CEO at OnTruck)
🇺🇸 Allison Pickens (works for BCG)
🇺🇸 Bryan Meehan (CEO at Blue Bottle Coffee)


Fresh powder

🇺🇸 Bain Capital set a €5 billion hard cap for its sixth Europe-focused fund. This year, Bain backed Palette, Ankorstore (both French) and Fidel API (Brits) in Europe.

🇺🇸 a16z announced raising $4.5 billion for its fourth fund, a16z crypto fund. Some of their crypto deals backed in Europe recently include Nym (Swiss), Matter Labs(Germany), Angle Labs (France) or Nansen (Norway).

🇫🇷 Cathay Capital raised €500 million for a new health tech fund dedicated to investing in the convergence of healthcare, life sciences, and technology.

🇬🇧 Synthesis Capital closed its first fund with more than $300 million to be deployed on the next generation of businesses creating value across the entire food value chain.

🇬🇧 Crane Venture Partners raised $140 million for its second fund, covering seed to Series A in Europe.

🇳🇱 Shift Invest expands impact fund to €110 million to back deals related to food and agri tech, green industries, energy transition and sustainable mobility and logistics. 

🇩🇪 Point Nine Capital, Seedcamp, La Famiglia VC and others exited from Back via an acquisition deal of an undisclosed value made with Personio. Back is a German software company that organizes & automates employee requests on one intuitive platform and had raised some $3 million since 2018, interestingly also from Personio's founder and CEO Hanno Renner.


Also notable:

🇬🇧 Akriti Dokania jumped ship from Octopus Ventures' London office to the San Francisco one of Ridge Ventures, where she joined as a partner. 

🇺🇸 Sequoia Capital sent a memo to their portfolio startups stating the obvious - the capital ain't cheap anymore and there'll be a market downturn impacting consumer behaviour, labor markets, supply chain, followed by a longer recovery that they can’t predict how long will take. Nobody can actually predict that.

💲 Median cash pay for a partner at a VC firm, including base salaries and bonuses, rose 10% to $928,000 in 2021. That's without considering the carried interest - the money split among the partners from the company's profits.

 

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Other stories

🇵🇹 Portugal, which is considered an European cryptocurrency tax haven, will not apply taxes on Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, according to a Parliament's ruling from this week. 

🇬🇧 Wembley Stadium adopts blockchain ticketing starting with Ed Sheeran's concert.

🇮🇱 Adam Neumann of WeWork's fame raised $70 million from the likes of a16z for a carbon credits blockchain startup - the pitch deck is here. Btw, are you even in the startup world if you haven't watched the Hollywood version of what stands behind Neumann's rep?

🇬🇧 Raising a Series A or B round in the bear market? Here's what some British VCs had to say.

💭 We’re seeing a lot of traction (currently bootstrapped and profitable), but we’ve been getting rejected by VCs because our product is not defensible. What does it mean to be defensible? Here's a good explanation. 

NB: VCs using sophisticated words instead of plain English for passing feedback across, is a signal to avoid them when building a startup - they likely do it because they want to feel important not because they intend to be helpful. This equally applies to early stage dealers who don't know exactly what to buy because they don't know what later-stage investors are in the market for.

👓 The Three Body Problem presentation is an attempt to put a framework around the changes that are occurring in the Startup ecosystem, the LP community, and how VC firms need to strategically reorient themselves if they want to survive. link

🩸 I was arrested for knocking on Luna boss's door link

 

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Nordic 9 fun facts

• we're curating an average of more than 1000 deals a month (1126 in April)

• last year we tracked deals made by 10k+ investors in Europe, a third of which are angel investors. This year we're at almost 5k, out of which 1.5k are angels.

• their geo breakdown:
- UK: 1021, out of which 479 angels
- Germany: 1014, out of which 524 angels
- France: 778, out of which 387 angels
- Sweden: 735, out of which 418 angels
- Spain: 379, out of which 172 angels 

• we're fundamentally different than the standard data providers as we don't scrap other people's work and/or don't outsource the data gathering to Asia. We built our own software systems and procedures from scratch, and have the final output manually verified by people who know how to read a balance sheet and can make a difference between an equity and a debt deal. Not a very scalable process but it does the trick, our data is clean, timely and actionable.

• our weekly intel is customised for a specific audience - we know what kind of information is relevant to our customers, be them investors, corporate heads, sales reps or startup people. 

• we are informed - we are on top of whatever is happening, we know what is going on, understand market cycles, supply and demand and what the cost of capital means. Understanding and providing context for it is what makes our data valuable.

• we eat our own dog food - we are obsessed with the quality of our data and use it every day ourselves, for either making our own investments deals or helping others getting funded.

If you would like to become a Nordic 9 customer, please click here.

 

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