More money in the market, sports tech, gaming and aggressive M&A.
#30
This is the 30th edition of Sunday CET, a weekly curation of practical observations from the European investment and startup landscape.
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1. More money in the market
2. Interesting bets
3. Research, data, observations
4. People, books, reads
1. (A lot) More money in the market
🇪🇺 OMERS: $750 million venture fund, 40% to back tech companies from Europe.
🇪🇸 Altamar Capital Partners: €750 million aimed for secondary deals.
🇫🇷 AXA Venture Partners: €200 million fund to invest in seed, early and growth stage.
🇺🇸 Runa Capital Fund: $157 million for $1-10 million checks in B2B SAAS also based in Europe.
🇮🇹 Ambienta: a $150 million hedge fund focused on environmental sustainability.
🇫🇮 Verso Capital: €100 million fund for acquiring biz w/ €5-50 million in revenues.
🇫🇷 Isai: €90 million post-seed fund to back digital startups.
🇪🇸 The Valley: €15 million in venture money for B2B startups at pre-seed levels.
🇺🇸 The Fund: launching in Europe, aiming to invest $3 million.
2. Interesting bets
🇫🇷 digital sheet music developer
🇪🇸 remote professional cardiology
🇸🇪 marketplace operating a database for voices
🇸🇪 manufacturer of ski helmets made of plants (bioplastics and composites)
🇨🇭 digital banking for rich people
🇨🇭 smart locker rooms manufacturer
🇬🇧 software for charities to receive donations via SMS text.
🇬🇧 compression technology for image and video
🇬🇧 B2B account-to-account payment software
🇬🇧 plant protein material alternative to plastic.
🇬🇧 Next gen programmatic ad platform
3. Research, data, observations
🇪🇸 Spain’s most active venture investors were K Fund (6 deals) and Inveready (5 deals) for the first 4 months of 2020. 3 of the 6 K Fund’s deals were announced in April.
Deal flow for April 2020 was about 25% less compared to April 2019.
🇪🇺 Similarly, in the Nordics most active were Industrifonden w/ 8 deals, Vaekstfonden and PreSEED Capital, each w/ 7 deals, and Maki VC and Schibsted, both involved in five deals.
Deal flow for April 2020 was about 20% less vs April last year - here’s an overview with the essentials.
🇪🇺 And from local to aggregate, in the whole Europe:
🇪🇺 Covid-19 VC Barometer week #7 (26-30 Apr)
🇪🇸 Medicsen won the virtual Health & Wellbeing pitch thingie done by South Summit and IE University.
It’s actually one of the better ones from Spain - I had Eduardo pitch over at Tech Tapas a few months ago.
🇪🇸 Btw, if you want to start learning about the Spanish investment ecosystem you can get a 120-page magazine for 100 euro delivered to your door. Print product put together by local journalists, useful if not familiar at all with what is happening in Spain.
🇮🇱 Moovit was acquired by Intel for $900 million.
🇩🇪 N26 upped its series D with another $100 million - tough 24 months ahead and handy for cheap acquisitions either; cash is king. N26 raised about $800 million in less than 7 years since being founded.
Both raising money or dramatically cutting headcount happening these days are made as everyone wants to ensure they don’t need to raise money again until at least Q4 2021, privately or via IPO.
🇪🇺 Have you noticed how aggressive Accenture is in the M&A market? I counted about 20 acquisitions this year only, mostly from Europe, last year it was as active.
They likely sit on a lot of cash and this signals it is cheaper and there’s more room to grow by acquisitions vertically and horizontally than organic in their space. Let’s see if they keep the pace.
🇸🇪 Soundcloud founders, Eric Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung, are working on a new startup gig in the mobility space, backed by Blueyard. Still based in Germany (Berlin).
🇬🇧 The whole 'I'm more founder friendly than the next VC' is pure marketing. So is everything written on Twitter, Medium etc. - take it with a big grain of salt.
🇮🇱 Partners of major Israeli VC funds ask politicians to ignore calls to 'rescue' the local tech sector.
🇳🇱 Five inspirational Dutch women involved in fintech startups
🇪🇺 Mastercard has a new European boss, based in Bruxelles, Mark Barnett.
🇪🇸 Keonn Technologies has released an RFID-based hand sanitizer solution which tracks when people wash their hands, then automatically authorizes or prevents an individual's entrance into a secure area.
🇫🇷 Amazon was forced to close its warehouses until it increases distancing and limits deliveries to 'essential' goods'.
Shit looks more serious than usual at Amazon, you should pay attention to this.
🇪🇺 Ireland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Malta join call by 13 other nations to put the European Green Deal at the heart of the economic response to Covid-19.
Countries outside the appeal are Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.
🇫🇷 One of three conditions imposed on Air France in exchange for a €7bn coronavirus aid package was to stop competing with TGV services where rail offers a viable alternative i.e. a journey time of 2h 30min or less.
Otoh, Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary is pissed and accuses Air France and Lufthansa of being “state aid junkies”.
🇳🇴 Oslo is doing self-driving vehicle trials for its public transport service.
🇳🇴 The ultimate index of indexes about Oslo
🇬🇧 If you know how media business works, you will find the graph below familiar. At times the publishers cut can get to as low as 20-25% as there is usually more than one middleman. Making an ad-based content business sounds fun until it’s not. More here.
🇬🇧 Best versus cheap, on internet searches:
🇪🇺 Countries summarised by their corporate income tax schedule description in the OECD tax database:
Norway: The rules are one line long. Also, they are the same for everyone.
Greece: There are twenty different tax codes, no one knows which version actually applies
Turkey: The rules would be one line long, except that the President can change them for whomever he likes.
France: all the names are in French. There are twenty different surtaxes, surcharges, one-off, temporary, additional contributions that end up being permanent.
Luxembourg: There is a tax. It's very low, don't worry.
Italy: The rules are 8 pages long, more than everyone else combined.
Switzerland: the rules involve math, somehow. Also, the Church.
🇪🇺 EU forecasts Eurozone economy will go down by 7.7% this year. 2021 looks promising though.
More:
Micro Private Equity buys businesses valued at or under $5 million - a market overview.
4. People, books, reads
👩 People
🇩🇰 Mette Lykke
Job: CEO at Too Good To Go
Background: serial entrepreneur
Why interesting?
Post iPhone launch, there’s been a couple of notable mobile fitness companies launched from Europe - one was Runtastic, acquired by Adidas, and the other was Endomondo, acquired by Under Armour.
Mette Lykke, originally a McKinsey consultant, was one of the three founders of Endomondo - she was its CEO upon being acquired in 2015, left in 2017 and started TGTG, one of the still independent players in the food waste ecosystem from Europe (raised about $12M).
📚 Books
Actionable Gamification - Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards
I got it a few days ago - I am a sucker for gamification stuff as I am organising a few virtual tournaments myself.
Written by a doer, with practical insights based on a classification of 8 types of tactics to consider when building gaming mechanisms.
All of them looked from two distinct functions of the brain - one motivated by achieving a quantifiable goal (i.e $) and another by soft, intangible motivations (i.e. ego)
🗞️ Reads
Spotify should pay musicians more? If you’re into music business, this should come in handy.
A good comparison of the top 12 templates of financial models for SaaS startups.
It’s time to switch to offense. Amen to that, we also need to have what to attack, namely a market that is at least predictably functional.
The annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting (WB starts speaking at the one hour mark)
Inside the Clubhouse (wrote about it here)
The great reckoning - shit’s going to get serious in US.
Happy Sunday!
Thanks for reading 🙌
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