European startups at YC
#1
Good morning,
Welcome to the first edition of Monday CET!
I am excited about it, here’s what’s on the menu.
1. Euro startups I liked from YC’s winter batch
2. Active investors
3. New funds
4. Interesting deals
Let’s get to it!
1. Euro startups I liked from YC’s winter batch
Last week, Y Combinator had its Demo Day session with all the companies that graduated from the winter batch.
I always like to look closer at who is usually part of Y Combinator, as the program is quite elitist, with a 1.5% acceptance rate, and the general consensus that the more ambitious founders get in there.
It is a good market-check to see what kind of projects the people are working on, or, maybe more appropriately, what YC finds interesting - both on a global level or from a particular vertical or geography.
Besides the projects per se, applying and getting into YC is also a sign of ambition to build something global from day zero - the program can be quite a catapult for a startup, as it provides access to a fairly big and eclectic network, as well as guidance on how to steer your ship in order to maximise chances to build something meaningful with the right people on board.
Not least important, if founders play their cards right, this also reflects in a higher-than-average valuation at demo day - which is basically a sales expo where investors are auctioning off their right to pay for whatever they get excited about.
It is a virtuous circle - since YC has the reputation of incubating good founders, all the great investors will want to have a look and get involved. The more investors in a place competing for a limited number of startups, the better the deal terms for the startups. And this can lead to valuations of $100 million pre-revenue. So yeah, the program is totally worth it for founders.
Given the Corona situation, this year YC actually changed their strategy and increased the scope of their ops - both of the incubator cohorts size and of the Startup School, which btw it functions as a free funnel for converting founders wannabes (if you’re interested in how YC works as a business, that is).
From what I gathered, in 2020, Y Combinator had incubated a total of 37 startups from Europe, which is 15 more than in 2019, when there were only 24, which is 6 more than in 2018, when there were only 19.
In the winter of 2021 alone, 41 startups were from European countries. That is from a total incubated of 289, which gives us a rate of 15%.
It is a modest percentage in the big global picture and given the European brass’ ambitions to be a top tech hub in the world. But I digress.
The European country breakdown is as follows:
the UK - 15 startups
France - 4 startups
Denmark, Germany, Spain - 3 each
Austria, Norway, Poland - 2 each
Belgium, Croatia, Lithuania, Italy, Slovenia, Sweden and Ukraine - 1 each.
The industry breakdown is as follows:
software, SAAS - 29
biotech - 6
financial services - 6
marketplaces - 3
consumers focused- 2
other verticals: construction (2), sports (2), education, energy, food, hardware, health, HR, logistics, telecom, satellite (space)
Interestingly, some of the participants were already funded before joining YC.
Investors include SMOK Capital (VC from Poland, with two startups also from Poland in the program!) Seedcamp, Episode 1 (both from UK), 42CAP (Germany), Aglae Ventures (France) or StartupLab Founders (from Norway).
Also notable, two of the startups raised money while being part of the program - one raised $5 million and another raised $1.6 million.
Here’s a selection of what I found interesting:
🇭🇷 Wasp
verticals: software services, SAAS
HQ: Zagreb
founded: 2020
I liked the founders of this one, two twin brothers, both talented developers (worked at Google, Palantir etc) and also did a startup before. The project they got in with is a programming language for developing full-stack web apps with (10X) less code - the kind of tech project that needs a strong business-oriented vision to be huge.
🇩🇪 MeetAnyway
verticals: software services, SAAS, video
HQ: Stuttgart
founded: 2019
MeetAnyway developed a super-powerful software tool for digital event organizers operating at multi scale and including networking options among the participants. They’re riding a good wave, with a sophisticated tool - the demo looks impressive.
🇱🇹 Turing College
verticals: education, consumer
HQ: Vilnius
founded: 2020
total raised: $180k
investors: StartupWise Guys
Turing College is an online school for data science in Europe - they position it as Lambda School for science. I am super long on anything disrupts anything in the education space, did a report with interesting startups a while ago.
🇸🇮 Juicy Marbles
verticals: food industry, manufacturing
HQ: Ljubljana
founded: 2019
Alternative food-tech company that developed proprietary protein texturing technology used to produce plant-based whole cuts.
They’re from Central Europe (that means more ambitious and hungry) and the problem they solve is not easy, in a market that is going to explode.
I am actually familiar with a few similar companies from Europe - I did a report covering a bunch of alternative food developers last year.
But those guys look solid - two of them are young biologists and the business guy has an MBA.
🇬🇧 Terra
verticals: fitness, SAAS
HQ: London
founded: 2020
Terra is a software company that developed an API that makes it easy for developers to access fitness and health data from wearables and sensors. It is an important problem and difficult to solve since most of the data providers are silos, especially Apple.
🇬🇧 Alba Orbital
verticals: manufacturing, transportation
HQ: Glasgow
founded: 2012
investors: N/A
Alba Orbital is a manufacturer of nano commercial satellites and sends them to space. Read somewhere that they’re dubbed Space X for Europe.
YC seems a bit out of their league, quite curious why they were in the program, likely they’re looking for American investors via tapping into YC’s network.
Nonetheless, what they do is remarkable.
Over at Nordic 9 I created a detailed report where you can find the profiles of all of the European startups that were part of Y Combinator this winter, structured by country.
💸 Active investors this week:
Below is a list of investors active in deals from Europe in the last 30 days.
Venture companies
Cutover - SAAS (later stage)
Codat - API connecting banks with SMEs (later stage)
Rohlik - online groceries retail (later stage)
Dream Games - gaming (later stage)
🇺🇸 FJ Labs
TaxDown - SAAS for taxes (early stage)
Jobsandtalent - job marketplace (later stage)
Tradebay - B2B marketplace for vegetables (early stage)
Magaloop - B2B marketplace for retailers (early stage)
Blockchain.com - crypto platform
Bitpanda - trading platform
Gorillas - online groceries retail
Zego - digital insurance
Angels:
🇩🇪 Hanno Renner
y42 - no code SAAS
WorkMotion - HR SAAS
Forget Finance - robo advisor
🇫🇷 Didier Valet
❄️ New funds
🇫🇮 Armada - €210 million
🇫🇷 Breega - €110 million
🇸🇪 Norrsken - $140 million
🇳🇱 Vortex Capital Partners - €75 million
🇪🇸 Aldea Ventures - €60 million
🔥 Interesting deals
This is a list of interesting startups involved in deals announced this week.
🇬🇧 LGN
verticals: white label AI, deep tech
HQ: London
founded: 2018
investors: Truck Ventures, AI Seed, Post Urban VC, Trucks VC
raised: $2M
LGN was founded by an engineer formerly at BMW and Apple and two former academics and developed an edge AI tool that reduces data capture and compute needs by filtering data to only record and process edge cases while transferring and storing data in a compressed form.
Deep tech models that can be deployed, for example, at a fleet level for automated vehicles - Jaguar Land Rover is a paying customer and was part of their $2 million seed round.
🇨🇭 Gjosa
verticals: manufacturing, hardware, energy
HQ: Bern (Bienne)
founded: 2016
investors: L’Oreal
raised: N/A
Gjosa developed a showerhead system that allows for saving up to 80% water and energy. They have their own consumer products that are sold D2C and are working with L’Oreal (which also invested equity) for incorporating their tech into a line of beauty products.
Similar tech in the market that raised already some $55 millions: Orbital Systems.
🇫🇷 Stockly
verticals: B2B marketplace, e-commerce
HQ: Bordeaux
founded: 2017
investors: Daphni, Idinvest
raised: $6M
Stockly developed a software platform that acts as an inventory network with e-commerce operators at the center. The tool hooks up with the merchants systems and aggregates the stock of several hundred companies in real time, making it possible for pooling the inventory for multiple customers.
It somehow reconstructs the idea Amazon’s marketplace but with a bottom up approach centred around real time inventory access.
🇫🇷 Augmenta
verticals: SAAS, agriculture
HQ: Paris
founded: 2016
investors: CNH, Pymwymic, Marathon VC, HCVC
total raised: $11M
Augmenta, which originally is a Greek company, developed a camera-based system mounted on the cabin roof of any ordinary tractor or self-propelled sprayer/spreader and uses multispectral cameras and AI to evaluate the foliage status as well as other visual patterns like damaged or flooded spots.
You just read the first edition of Monday CET - an intel-based newsletter covering the European private investment market.
My objective is to research, understand, and explain the fast-changing Euro startup ecosystem, and bring to attention interesting and innovative businesses and practices.
This email aims to provide a cogent picture with my weekly findings.
Monday CET is sent every week, on Monday mornings by @drnovac. The next edition will be sent on April 12.
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