• doing lists of important investors
• startup valuation as a market signal
• great strategy in the online grocery business

 

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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
• Pre-crisis valuation deals link
• Intelligence revenue SAAS link
• Early stage VCs cashing out link
• Follow-on and exit deals link
• The Swedish investors nobody talks about 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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The world as is

 

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The future is here, un-evenly distributed

 

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Watercooler talk

🇪🇺 Let's make a VC top because we can. Dealroom published some prominence (NB: for non-English natives, prominent means important) listings with EMEA investors active in 2021. From a quick scan, the top 10 seed investors includes a VC that only invests in the UK and where it did some 8 seed deals, an Israeli one that made 6 seed deals in Europe in 2021, and an American one that did 8 seed deals in Europe last year. Nothing against those guys, they are as important as anybody in this business, but the top is not really helpful if you're curious who is top dog in Europe, as, if I understand correctly, it has a broader scope including deals made also outside the continent, meaning American or Asian added on top of European deals. For context, in 2021 Europe had roughly 100 investors that did at least 10 investment rounds closed at less than $5 million, which is where the seed is usually at. So if I am a founder from Sweden, how is important for me that a top-ranked multi-stage VC from Israel made 10% of their seed deals in Europe, fewer than what at least 100 others did at the same stage?

The methodology is not exactly clear but from what I gather it is based solely on counting unicorns and unicorn wannabes i.e. paper estimations of portfolio values that, as biased as they are, today may be already down at least 30-50% due to the market situation. And this makes the exercise's declared objective funny - "to help founders find the venture capital investors that will best support them". Except that if you ever talk to startup founders they will never mention "unicorn portfolio" as a factor when choosing their investors because they don't really care about it. Unicorns or portfolio value are simply not relevant details in the fundraising process for the founders, particularly at early stage levels.

🤡 Valuation is a market signal. Btw, in the real world investors make the valuations data public as a signaling mechanism to the markets and retail investors. In boom times, the leaked valuation effectively sets a baseline idea of a company’s worth - for example, in Q4 2021, the public markets started shaking out but private market valuations were still marked based on the rounds made by the crossovers (i.e Tiger) which took the cream of the market, whereas a small group of players effectively set the price and the others complained on the social media about it.

🎧 The podcast advertising biz is going up and to the right, with double digit growth overall globally. 47% yoy growth in US to $2.13 billion while in Europe, Swedes and Brits top the charts with the most listeners in their respective countries. In Sweden, the podcast ads market is some $40 million spread over some 10,000 podcasts in Swedish.

🇫🇷 Sorare did a licence deal with MLB in the US that will allow it to produce baseball cards for each player, and it will also launch a new free-to-play NFT game. Interesting move on the way to attack the juicy gambling business from the US, Sorare will be one of the greatest European tech company that will be huge in America - Alex did a good deep dive on the company last year.

🇩🇪 Great strategy Jokr, the grocery delivery startup founded by the ex-Delivery Hero Ralf Wenzel and launched in South America and US (later expanded to Europe too), launched a mobile app that offers shoppers a personalized experience with automated content curation with product recommendations based on past shopping behaviors and also spotlights local items. On top of that, this week it announced Jokr Media, a retail media platform that allows for doing self-service ads that will give brands the chance to bid for “more personalized and relevant product placements” in its app. Utility around the ecommerce core that also generates additional revenue, very Amazon-ish - super interesting stuff. I think Klarna should do this too.

🇪🇺 Doing business the right way. Elon Musk is working his way with the EU people, in the case he finally gets to acquire Twitter. Tells them what they want to hear, factory tour and nice PR afterwards - this is how business is done. At the same time, Sadiq Khan, London's mayor, travelled to Silicon Valley this week to try and build bridges with tech execs and VCs across the region as he wants them to back more London startups and set up offices in the city. Not sure it's exactly a great time now but nice effort.

🇪🇺 The best is yet to come European gas prices soar after Moscow imposes sanctions on EU energy companies. All this while the German chancellor called Putin to tell him that the war has consequences on the food markets. Good thing that Putin is informed now. Many people still don't realise that the next 24 months are not going to be fun at all - it ain't a simulation, shit is real.

📡 Cyber war The EU and UK formally accused Russia of a major hack of Viasat’s satellite systems just before it invaded Ukraine, aiming at disrupting Ukraine communications in the lead up to war. That provoked collateral damage - massive problems for tens of thousands of users throughout all Europe. They also accused Russia of several other attacks during the invasion, including the 13 January defacements of Ukrainian government websites, and the deployment of Whispergate malware. It was a coordinated investigation with the Americans as the US also put out its own statementdirectly blaming Russia.

🇪🇺 The European Union formally introduced legislation that would destroy end-to-end encryption, forcing platforms to scan all user messages upon request. They do this for getting hold of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and “grooming” behavior - trying to solve a problem by creating a new set of problems, this is really bad. 

🇬🇧 WFH at the supermarket Tesco trials renting out office space to workers in London.

🇬🇧 The Brits announced their own satellite launch for this summer - Prometheus-2, a Ministry of Defence mission that will see the launch of two cubesats from Spaceport Cornwall in Newquay. Pretty neat.

🇸🇪 Alternative energy In Sweden there's record interest in building offshore wind power that could cover a very large part of the increasing electricity demand.

😇 Jason Calacanis, who calls himself the greatest angel investor on Earth (he is not), is seeking to raise tens of millions of dollars to join Musk’s bid for Twitter. The minimum investment required to participate is $250k, while the fees he collects for the deal will total about $18,000 and that as manager of the fund, he’s asking for 10% of the carry, or the gains that come from the investment - not bad for sending a few emails around.

🤖 Google had its annnual I/O conference this week - I have been following Google since their beginning, ever since they were trying to make a business by selling a white label search engine to Yahoo to justify PMF for raising VC money. And I have to admit, for the first time in a long time their non-advertising strategy sounds coherent and makes sense, as they seem to align resources and efforts towards a cogent direction. Let's see if they can also implement.

💲 Show me the money Still at Google - this week it announced it had signed paid dealswith more than 300 publishers in Germany, France, and other European Union countries to provide access to news. The cyborg needs data and it ain't Wild Wild West anymore to get it for free for the pretext of being a distributor as some analysts naively think - here's why.

 

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How was your week?

🇸🇪 Nice PR piece for Northzone's PJ Pärson about how business used to be done back in the day. link

🐴 TIL - Today I Learnt VCs are like donkeys. They need to be put in their place. Btw, the social media has plenty of anecdotes about how those guys are doing their job.

🤡 Ain't over till the fat lady sings People seem happy that Tiger Global lost 2/3 of its portfolio valuation due to the market turmoils. Alas, they may not realise that the investment business is a long term process that's cyclical and not a conjuncture that usually scares off newbies and panics the inexperienced sorts. 

🍲 Getting a restaurant reservation is hard As people continue to re-enter “normal” life, restaurants are full again - and many diners have found that getting the reservations they want feels harder than ever. In big American cities, that is.

🇬🇧 People living in a different century A pub in the Cornish countryside in Britain called Star Inn at Vogue received a cease-and-desist order from Vogue magazine owner Condé Nast demanding that they change the name of the pub. The message was arguing that a link between the two businesses “is likely to be inferred” - the answer to the request was a “categorical no”. link

🎵 Eurovision Last night it was the Eurovision Song Contest final - frankly, I alway found it boring af but it is an European thing that attracts 180 million viewers.  

🖖 Not a joke. Calling a man ‘bald’ is sexual harassment.

🧑‍✈️ Passenger with no idea how to fly airplane lands safely after pilot gets sick.

🍹 Darth, the slurp juice milkshake ducked

 

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