data crunchin'
Hey there,
Welcome to Sunday CET. Now that we’ve passed Blue Monday, the most depressive day of the year, we can only look forward to the next 8 weeks until it’s officially spring. Hope everybody’s alright, let’s get to it.
Observations
As over at Nordic 9 we’re closing the books on the 2022 deals, I dug a bit into some average numbers of what was dealt with at what level in Europe in the past few years. I ended up with a big spreadsheet summarised as it follows:
Cheat Sheets
🗣️ Cheat sheets
The most interesting 150 early stage deals closed in Europe in Q4
Investors in Europe: early stage, series A, French angels, American angels
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Good to know basis
👉 Reasons for which investors will say no - they get it or they don’t
🤔 How to position your startup for investors - like talking to grandmothers
🇩🇪 Guide for startups in Germany - basic stuff
👏 Nordic VC 2022 - Pre-Seed to Series A
🇫🇷 French VC 2022 - solid work
💲 Fintech trends - the ones chased by VCs
✨ The biometrics market - year in review
Have you produced useful resources for the community? They can be events, reports or tools - send me an email with submissions at drnovac@gmail.com
Food for thought
In spite of that, Netflix smashed subscriber targets in Q4 2022. Related: just how much marvel material can the Hollywood dudes recycle until they discover that it actually sucks and it’s time to move on.
Other notes
🇩🇪 Downsizing in Europe HelloFresh is pressuring employees in Germany to leave the company - Germany is notorious for entrepreneurs having it super difficult for laying people off. Pressuring them into resigning seems just a cheap managerial way to do cost cutting, isn’t it better to treat a painful situation for both sides in an elegant manner, even though it’d be more expensive? You know, like the Big Tech that’s hated by the EU seems to be doing, for example. (yes, the American way seems weird too). Alas the local legislation is a nightmare because a socialist system hardly envisions that a business can also go down and have problems - and that’s not only in Germany, in France too, or most of the European countries for that matter.
🇩🇪 Europe is the best at innovating by regulating Local regulators argue that Germany is years ahead of the US and EU in its ability to regulate Big Tech, with a law that gives antitrust authorities the power to impose sanctions like forced divestments against companies and the possibility to break them up.
In Germany the purpose of the law is not to stifle entrepreneurs but “foster innovation” in digital markets. I don’t want to leave it to huge companies to decide the rules on which basis you as a competitor enter the market.
Except that, there’s this thing called the market that should “foster innovation” when it works freely, not when some politicians who’ve never built a company in their life decide how innovation should emerge. It’s true, they can provide incentives to encourage it, and startups main problems can be eased out by creating good, favourable legislation for every market player not by dunking on their competition. In other words, your job as a legislator is to stay out of the way as much as possible, not to flex your muscles just because you can or you take it personal on American companies.
🇸🇪 Klarna getting legs in the USA The United States has become Klarna’s largest market by revenue followed by Germany - it’s a big deal as i) Klarna’s lost a lot of money, resources and years until it figured out a proper American GTM and ii) managing a company from outside your core market is very challenging, see another Swedish case at Spotify.
🇳🇴 Safety Wings, one of my favourite Norwegian startups that’s selling insurance, did Borderless, profiling some of the best nomad cities in the world. Europe’s include Amsterdam (NL), Bansko (Bulgaria), Las Palmas (Spain), Madeira (Portugal) and Valencia (Spain).
🇬🇧 Good profile on Checkout.com
🇺🇸 Some bets bite you in the ass You know where Sequoia is also quite exposed, after having lost a great deal of money on FTX? In TikTok, where it holds the largest equity chunks together with Tiger Global. However, if the FTX’s case was poor due diligence, Tiktok’s seems to rather be a macro risk, as the US government is eyeing banning the app altogether in the US.
🕸️ What companies are growing in these uncertain times? Roblox, for example - its key metrics report indicate that estimated bookings in December were at least $430 million, up at least 17% compared with the same period last year.
🇮🇪 Guinness is raising its prices by 12 euro cents per pint to help meet rising costs. The Irish PM said it would create financial hardship for many pubs.
🇪🇺 The number of EU bankers earning above €1 million hits record following Brexit. 1,957, to be more precise.
🇪🇸 Big Four accountants in Spain probed over long hours - a few years ago in Romania there was a case of a girl working for Big Four who died because of overwork.
🇳🇱 Future is here but unevenly spreaded Aldi introduced an Amazon-like store in The Netherlands. You can grab your groceries and walk out - the Swedes have been doing this for 3 years already.
🇫🇷 The business world works on nepotism not on meritocracy, the French edition and the Dutch edition.
🇳🇴 Norway is a rich country The profits Norway is projected to bring in from oil and natural gas sales this year will be six-fold increase from 2021. That’s more than $37,000 in profits per Norwegian citizen, who benefit from the nation’s energy sales via the massive $1.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund.
🇳🇱 Schiphol to lift passenger number restriction ahead of spring break. Heathrow remains the currently number one Euro mess for air travelling in/to Europe.
🇨🇭 The Davos consensus is always wrong. 100% of the time. The trick is to figure out why it’s wrong, and how, and what to do about it - therein lies an opportunity. In other news, Elon Musk says he didn't attend Davos because it's boring af. Organizers, on the other hand, say they haven't invited him since 2015. High school stuff.
Quickies
⚡ Apple is the only American Big Tech that hasn’t announced layoffs yet.
🤑 What’s next after FTX? GTX
🤔 7 companies that generated millions in revenue with 0 employees
✨ 20 entertaining uses of ChatGPT you never knew were possible.
🇺🇸 Uber and Lyft drivers now earn less in fares and tips than taxi drivers. In NYC that is, and, anecdotally, in some European markets.
🇫🇮 Finland schools are testing new ways to teach students about propaganda.
🇳🇴 New Norwegian land could emerge from the Atlantic Ocean.
👋 I am Japanese and I learned to swear in Romanian from VICE Romania articles.
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