Startup equity splits and the Europe/US exit expectations ratio
#48
Hi and welcome to a new edition of Sunday CET.
Last year about this time Sunday CET was open to the public, seems a bit sureal to re-read the first edition.
This email has become one of my life’s pleasures, I love putting it together over the morning coffee every Saturday. It’s my weekend hobby, like a memo sent to myself about the week’s highlights - this is actually how I started it in the first place within a closed circle at that time.
Also humbled that so many people find it useful, and psyched about all the replies, comments and questions I get every week. I want to thank you for that!
Onto the biz, the Euro dealflow is back in full swing at the 100+ weekly deals rate, lots of things are happening and there’s plenty of stories this week. No hot takes from me today though.
Also, for the NBA fans - Miami!
Until next week,
Dragos
Interesting deals
Funds
🇸🇪 Daniel Ek
🇬🇧 Kindred
🇫🇷 Daphni
🇩🇪 P9
🇬🇧 Howzat Partners
🇫🇷 Elaia
🇳🇱 SHIFT Invest
Bets
🇳🇱 Mosa Meat, which produces cultured meat, raised $55 million
🇪🇺 A bunch of European VCs invested in an US social gaming company.
🇪🇸 Submer raised $12M back in May (tipped to the media by the lead investor this week).
🇪🇸 Science Bits raised €2.5 million.
🇩🇪 Accure, a battery intelligence platform developer, raised €2.3 million (Twaice, in the same space, raised €11M back in March).
🇬🇧 Caura develops a mobile app for car owners and raised.
🇪🇸 Swipcar, a vehicle rental marketplace operator, raised €1.5 million.
🇫🇷 Arskan, which develops the mp3 of 3D, raised €1.2 million.
🇦🇹 Zerolens, developer of a digital photo studio, raised from P9.
🇳🇴 Play Magnus looking to get $42M in IPO. (6 months ago they raised $12M)
🇩🇰 Unity Technologies raised more than $1.3B in IPO. Company’s worth $80bn+.
Lists
🇩🇪 A closer look at the 225 European manufacturing startups.
🇪🇺 Speaking of which - manufacturing startups from the Nordics you should check
🇪🇸 A list of 400 fintech startups in Spain
🇪🇺 Nordic startups which were part of Y Combinator
Observations, research, data
🇩🇪 Pitch’s equity split:
Christian Reber (CEO/founder): 33.5%
Index Ventures: 18.9%.
Pitch Software Beteiligungs UG: 18.5%
BlueYard: 14.9%
Thrive Capital: 11%
The Pitch Software Pool UG: 2.7%.
They raised more than $50M before launching a product, touted to be the killer of ppt and keynote altogether. (I played a bit with it and wasn’t impressed tbh but I’m likely not in the target)
🇬🇧 Enterprise companies, one in UK, one in US:
US: 4M ARR
UK: 4.5M ARR
US: Raising: $75M @ $1.2bn
UK: Raising: $20M @ $70M
Their growth rates were the same.
Sounds like a good ratio of the EU/US exit size expectations. Btw, raise in US, build in Europe.
🇪🇺 The VC firms with the most Eastern European startups in their portfolios:
EIT InnoEnergy (The Netherlands) — 18 startups (9% of portfolio)
Point Nine Capital (Germany) — 12 startups (13%)
Seedcamp (UK) — 11 startups (5%)
Kima Ventures (France) — 10 startups (1%)
GFC (Germany) — 6 startups (2%)
🇳🇴 A list of active angel investors from Norway you should know.
🇪🇺 The guide for European entrepreneurs to expand to US
🇪🇺 Up and coming thematic investments in Europe
🇸🇪 A fun read about how Swedish kids doing tech startups were playing poker back in the day.
Fwiw, Stockholm is not exactly a very social city and techie kids didn’t have too many options to have fun. Nowadays there’s some parties going on on regular basis and, as in any small city, if you go to a few you kinda meet everybody.
🇬🇧 VCs doing guerrilla marketing
🇪🇸 Zara launches new app that allows users to book fitting rooms and pay without going to the cash register.
🇸🇪 Spotify is filled with search-optimized spammers, and there’s no end in sight.
🇳🇱 Team Liquid's new EU Alienware training facility from Utrecht.
🇩🇪 BMW Is Determined To Keep Meme'ing Itself
🇪🇸 Cabify launched Bive, a bike subscription service at €44.9 per month
🇬🇧 Human Forest, the British e-bike manufacturer, had an incident involving a customer and a defective bike and they had to fire some people and postponed plans to re-launch next spring using a different e-bike.
TC covers the subject with some good old school reporting, very rare these days in “tech media”. TC’s Natascha is a great writer btw.
🇪🇺 Speaking of good stuff on TC, if you’d missed this, you shouldn’t have.
🇩🇪 German banks index got another hit by new corruption allegations.
🇬🇧 Home Bargains to introduce traffic lights at store entrances to control shopper numbers during the pandemic. Aldi, Co-op and M&S Simply Food already did that.
🇸🇪 Sweden is raising booze taxes to finance increased defence spending. We are literally being asked to booze for our country.
🇸🇪 Also Sweden - the 2021 budget bill is called Working Sweden out of the crisis – together
Indicators suggest that the Swedish economy bottomed out in the spring; it is expected to recover in the second half of 2020, just like the global economy in general. The Government assesses, however, that it will be several years before the recession is over. But Sweden is in a good position to manage the recession, thanks to its low level of public debt.
The recession – but also the Government’s measures – mean that public finances are expected to weaken significantly in 2020 and 2021. At the same time, an expansionary fiscal policy will help to stimulate the economy and accelerate the recovery, which over time will lead to stronger finances again.
🇩🇰 Copenhagen wants to be the first carbon-neutral capital by 2025.
🇳🇱 The Dutch don’t love Europe - and never did.
🇬🇧 Britons living in the EU told they will have their UK bank accounts closed by the end of the year because of the UK’s failure to agree a post-Brexit trade deal.
🇬🇧 London is facing an unprecedented surge for outdoor heaters from restaurants and pubs. Orders have increased five-fold on a like-for-like basis over the previous year because of two waves of demand.
🇫🇷 French Open will allow only 1000 spectators a day.
🇬🇪 Remotely from Georgia is a new state programme to allow foreigners to travel to, or work remotely from Georgia. ICYMI Georgian citizens can travel to the EU and Schengen zone visa-free.
🇫🇮 Finland looks to work-based immigration for growth
🇬🇧 Misogyny could become a criminal offence in England and Wales to protect women.
🇪🇸 Indignant patrons in Madrid's Teatro Royal opera house booed over the lack of social distancing in the upper gallery, while audience members were spaced out in the stalls where tickets are pricier.
Other stuff
Amazon had 13 announcements at this week’s hardware event. This one is awesome (play the video).
Playco raises $100 million at $1 billion valuation for instant games across platforms.
Greg LeMond, a former professional cyclist that won the Tour de France three times, is building an e-bike business.
PWC report on the state of climate tech - since 2013 VC investment in climate tech has grown 5x faster than VC overall.
The famous clock in Union Square in NYC has been reset for a new countdown: the time left for the human race to take meaningful action to avert the most horrific and deadly consequences of climate change.
A recent survey showed that almost 90% of NYC dining establishments didn’t pay full rent in August.
The incubation playbook of Mike Speiser: a great model for managing, investing and building tech companies.
Apple letting Facebook getting online event fees processed without collecting its 30% cut until December 31. Likely a top management discussion, startups in this position are simply ignored.
Nike’s sales almost return to pre-coronavirus levels thanks to digital growth.
The NBA bubble applied to esports, the China edition by Riot Games.
Happy Sunday!
Thanks for reading 🙌
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