• reasons to be positive
• trouble for big business
• art and fashion going strong into NFTs

 

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Observations

Some of you know that my rule of thumb for doing this newsletter is that if I don't feel like doing it or don't have something meaningful to say, I will simply not publish it. I do it because it's fun but believe in the 'if it's worth doing, it's worth doing it well' mantra, I usually put it together on Saturdays over the morning coffee, and today's mood is that I have many thoughts crossing my head but don't really feel like expressing them. 

Part of it is that the past few months haven't been exactly the best from a personal perspective. Shit happens sometimes, and we deal with it, it's just part of life. On the other hand, it is easy to get depressed just by scanning the news headlines on any given day. And you surely see that the economic environment is deteriorating and that there's an idiot next door killing people indiscriminately while politicians still try to figure out how to contain him.

I have been travelling a lot lately and have met many people from different countries, with different backgrounds and from different parts of the society. Dealing with those guys gave me the confidence that things are not as bad and made me optimistic about what's to come in Europe. 

Here's why:

• There's a lot of entrepreneurial opportunity out there. Anyway you look around, in any society from any country, it is so easy to spot how stuff can be done better and how to build a lucrative business around it. For example, these past months I had to extensively deal with the healthcare system - I now have plenty of observations of processes and asymmetries that can be improved and/or exploited as well as ran into startups that can/will be scaled from one geography across the continent. We're still living in a society where old models predominate and figuring out a business from the opportunities around you require initiative, patience and persistence. If you complain there's no more startups to build or to invest in, you are simply not paying attention or you live in a bubble.

• Software is still eating the world. The covid period changed dramatically the consumer behaviour as it forced the incorporation of technology in the day to day lives - working, learning, commerce are some handy examples. The appetite for adopting new tech-enabled things that make our lives easier has never been higher. If you look at the big picture though, you will realise that most of the society parts are still run in traditional ways with traditional means - finance, health, infrastructure and so on. Or take the governmental bureaucracy as an example, even in Sweden, where I live and which is one of the modern, more tech-advanced in Europe, there are so many things that can be done better with smart software solutions. 

• The money to be put to work is *plenty*. There is tons and tons of capital available in Europe, in all sorts of shapes and forms. And I don't mean only VC - not everybody is suited for raising VC money - but there's a lot of equity-free ways of financing that were simply not available until today, solid alternatives to banks that only make a living from mortgaging your life in order to provide you with some working capital.

• More and better professional investors. Europe has come a long way in terms of dealing with startup investors. The provincial mentality is still there, make no mistake, but there's also more risk takers with solid background and acting professionally when it comes to doing their job. Some of them chase founders, some of the chase sectors and some of them chase what's in their closed networks - but all of them chase opportunities with sizeable returns. If you build something than can make you rich over night, be sure you will have those guys knocking on your door and telling you nice things just to have you take their money. And some of them can also be useful besides their money, now more than ever.

• Young people know stuff. Kids growing up these days have instant access to information and are super comfortable with using technology and putting it to work. That means they are more educated earlier in their life, before even going to high school or unis. They also pay more attention and seem to care more about the world we live in - this should put them in a good spot to find opportunities and create value in the society, even if they follow traditional career paths. The information asymmetries from the past decades are quasi-nonexistent today, only ignorants don't to know how to find information and are manipulated with it today. The more access to information, the more educated and the more educated, the better the contribution to the society will be.  

• Travel exploded. Sure, it is a post pandemic effect but we're at higher pre-covid levels already. Two main benefits: i) consumer money goes into the economy, and, a rather intangible one, ii) more travel means more cultural exposure and spillover effects i.e. more openness, more learnings from other societies and applying into home markets ultimately leading to more business initiative, and/or hiring international talent. I strongly believe that cross border travel, international hiring and access to information are the main counter parts to the increased nationalism, idiotic politicianism and local isolations that started to become a serious thing in Europe with Brexit.

I have no idea what the future looks like and it is hard to predict things to the dot. But you can anticipate and look at contexts and signals and the above make me be positive for the future.

 

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Cheat sheet and intel reports

Web3 in Europe
• interesting startups doing NFT in Europe link  
• interesting web3 startups  in Europe link
• investors backing web3 startups link

Fintech in Europe
• revenue-based financing startups and investors link
• BNPL startups and their investors link
• startups building consumer fintech link

Recent intel pieces
• Early stage VCs cashing out link
• Follow-on and exit deals link
• The Swedish investors nobody talks about link
• Lightspeed's first venture deal in the Nordics link
• Notes about the Euro VC market link

The most active investors in Europe in Q1
• in Europe (late stage | early stage | angel investors)
• in the Nordics
• in DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
• in France
• in the UK
• the Americans

Note: the reports are available for Nordic 9 paying customers only. You can become one from here.

 

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Does Google have too much power?

 

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Watercooler talk

🇳🇱 Just Eat Takeaway (JET) is in trouble - Half of JET's market value was wiped out this year, as it faces growth slowdown and plenty of criticism from investors over its dealmaking. Management in a reshuffling moment, the GrubHub divestment deal has no end in sight (it beat Uber for acquiring it two years ago and had no idea what to do with it ever since) and the company loses big time market share in Europe. Sure, food delivery is a hard business, and it's easy to blame the hyper competition and the macro, but look, the others are doing reasonably well in spite of that - 1, 2, 3. As a coincidence, this whole brouhaha reminds me of how JET's CEO Jitse Groen was giving business advice to Uber's CEO when Uber entered the German market last year. 

🇫🇷 Frédéric Arnault - The CEO of Tag Heuer and son of LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault believes the watch brand can surpass €1 billion in annual sales.

🇸🇪 Daniel Ek, Spotify's founder and CEO, said he'd buy $50 million worth of Spotify' stock. A symbolic gesture as the company's share price went to their lowest point ($95.22) since it listed as a public company on the NYSE. 

🇩🇪 Peter Thiel, who's been a long-time Trump guy, is winding down his money contribution to the US political cycle - for now. For those of you who don't know already - he was born in Germany but moved with his parents to the US when he was 1, was part of the gang that did PayPal back in the 1990s, and then became an investor, known as Facebook's first outside investor when he acquired a 10% stake for $500k in 2004. Quite active in Europe too, including via some mainstream funds such as Founders Fund or Valar Ventures.

🇪🇺 Boomers - You won't dig this unless you've been around the startup world from Europe in the last 15-20 years.

🇪🇺 We Work launched a pay-as-you-go model for workspace and meetings in 8 European countries. $40 a day for a hot desk in Stockholm, one of the most expensive co-working space cities in Europe.

🇻🇦 The Vatican is working on the development of an NFT-gallery accessible through VR and desktop of the Vatican’s collection, which currently averages six million in-person visitors a year. They say it should be a social not commercial experience, meaning they'll charge for tickets to check out a digital expo but not for selling the NFTs.

🇮🇹 Gucci will start accepting payments in crypto at its five American stores. Sounds like a marketing initiative, on top of its SuperGucci NFT line, that produced some $80k in sales since February.

🇩🇪 Germany's biggest post-war fraud German authorities have raided the offices of Morgan Stanley from Frankfurt as part of a €5.5 billion tax fraud investigation - in the same context, in the past few weeks alone there have been raids on the German branches of Barclays and the investment bank Merrill Lynch.

🇪🇺 Europe's value creation part 36286 Germany’s secretary of state urged the European Union to allow regulators to break up tech companies.

Btw, have you noticed that all PR comms from EU regarding tech is about policing, fighting, regulating or fining the market contributors? All those are value destruction mechanisms - how does that fit in the value creation mindset that Europe would so much love to have but cannot in spite of the billions it deploys.

🇬🇧 Chelsea was finally acquired by the American investors led by Todd Boehly for £2.5 billion in a deal that involves an additional capital raise of £1.75 billion

🤔 The Elon dude - Love him or hate him, Elon Musk is one of the defining guys of the 21st century, with a unique combination of science understanding and business nose that's very difficult to find in today's entrepreneurs DNA. An hour watching what he has to say in this interview is a well spent one.

🤑 Last name Billionaire - Famed VC John Doerr is giving a gift of $1.1 billion to Stanford University to fund a school focused on climate change and sustainability. 

🤡 On Deck and the product market fit. On Deck is that American startup that built an education marketplace for people looking to complement their formal education, and then raised VC money to pivot into killing Y Combinator last year. Didn't kill YC just yet but it laid off a quarter of its staff (75 people) this week because at the end of the day they need to produce revenue and being an investor is easier said than done.

 

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How was your week?

💎 Hedging Now that the startups thingie seems to not be such a sexy asset these days, you can do a lil' hedge and spend 30 million on an alternative asset called The Rock.

🇨🇭 Coffee ain't drugs Swiss police seized a half-ton of cocaine in Nespresso plant's coffee bean shipment outside Geneva.

🇫🇷 Moulin Rouge If you're in Paris next month (June 13, 20 and 27 more specifically), you can spend the night in Moulin Rouge for just €1 a night for two guests. Not sure why you should, but you could.

🇮🇹 Justin Bieber was banned from from buying or driving a Ferrari for changing his car’s colour to neon blue. Among other rules enforced by Italians upon buying a car, an owner cannot sell their car in the first year & that they inform the manufacturer before selling thereafter, so that it has the option of buying it back. Unauthorised mods are also forbidden. 

🖖 Are you a Liam or an Olivia Liam was the most popular name for boys, and Olivia for the girls in the USA in 2021.

 

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