The one with something new
#55
Hello from a typical Stockholm November weather, welcome to a new edition of Sunday CET.
Let’s get down to business.
Euro strat
Powder:
🇧🇪 Astanor Ventures
🇫🇮 Capman
🇫🇷 FrenchFounders
🇪🇸 Think Bigger Capital
🇬🇧 Start Codon
🇬🇷 Marathon Venture Capital
Observations:
🇪🇺 This article about VC brands and AUM got me thinking a bit about branding in venture capital.
The VCs case is a bit twisted since their main job is money management aka maximizing the return of a portfolio of assets over a 8-10 years span.
And so the performance of their job has one KPI, and that is the return on investment, an important differentiator when they sell to LPs.
However, being a good money manager is not enough to be a good VC. That is because VCs also need to do both a good portfolio selection and its management throughout liquidity events. That requires very different skillsets.
Add on top of that a long game, whose results can come to fruition in long cycles.
Fact is that, like in any business, a brand should reflect the quality of the product and the customer experience. The product here is money wrapped in a consulting business, which makes it a business of reputation and knowledge contribution. And so the brand rep of a VC house is the rep of its people more than that of the institution per se.
And, if you’re a founder looking to raise, it’s not very often that you ask about the VCs ROI on their portfolio.
You usually look at fit based on their track record in your space or you know somebody from there you want to work with.
You assess whether they are nice people, easy to work with, knowledgeable and with a good attitude. And learn what they can do for you and how they can help - then judge through the personal interaction with them and how others interacted with those guys in the past. Learning about the way they approach the road and the tools they use will give you an indicator of alignment. Those factors, together with the personal chemistry, usually increase the odds of building something meaningful that ultimately will increase the value the VCs aim for to have a lucrative business.
Other than that, my observation is that VCs as an industry is terrible at marketing. The websites are mostly bad and all say the same things. The content marketing (ocasionally good) made on platforms they don’t own and control (i.e. Medium), is also an indicator on how VCs are building their own shops.
🇩🇪 Latest in the cloners race from Germany is that Seller X announced €100 million in funding and that it already acquired an Amazon SKU.
This week I learnt about 6 or 7 German startups doing exactly this business, the new gold rush for German entrepreneurs.
🇸🇪 Also this week I learnt more about why Klarna’s CEO is nervous about PayPal eating their lunch in Europe.
Among other things, earlier this year PayPal did a deal with a Swedish company called Paynova for co-selling BNPL products. And it looks like the Swedes, which are listed on the local stock exchange, move up pretty smoothly in Europe where they expect to operate 50 million transactions in 15 countries in two years.
🇫🇷 Yubo raised €40 million for a mobile social network, designed for young people between 13 and 25, who can stream live videos during which both streamers and viewers interact through a live chat.
It is an interesting case and notable for an Europe dominated by American social networks. Yubo makes money by selling access to in-app features, very similar to how gaming companies operate.
As such, it is not surprising that one of the backers in the round is Sweet Capital, which is an investment vehicle created and funded by the founders of the Swedish gaming company King, acquired by Activision Blizzard for $6 billion in 2016.
🇬🇧 Tyler Brûlé of Monocle fame launched a new printed magazine for women 35+ (missed the announcement back in September).
Monocle is cool and successful, I used to have a subscription for quite a few years. Even though I’ve been making a living from tech for the past 20 years, I love print products and believe building good print products is closer to an art rather than just a job.
And Monocle is such a good product - one of the success stories in the European media, and a by the book brand extension into radio, coffee shops and ecommerce. Also remarkable is the lack of their social media, which is part of the strategy.
🇩🇪 The Rise of Communities Building Communities in B2B
🇬🇧 A conversation with Paul Murphy, General Partner at Northzone
🇮🇱 FOMO, YOLO and Analysis Paralysis – the role of gut feeling in VC decision making
🇪🇺 What Biden means for European startups.
🇫🇷 Google signs copyright agreements with six French newspapers
🇸🇪 Ikea is launching cargo eBikes trailers rentals in Europe.
🇫🇷 When the apocalypse happens you want to be in France, because everything happens 5 years later there.
🇩🇪 Here's how Berlin residents can find out if they're paying too much rent
🇩🇰 Lego creates largest set ever: Rome’s Colosseum with 9,036 pieces.
Euro entrepreneurial ideas
Here’s something new in Sunday CET. One of the readers reached out and suggested to put it out there and see what answers we get.
Let’s assume you’re given $1 million to launch a startup company and come up with a product or service within a year.
What is your company name?
What is your product/service?
Your answers will be published next week. Looking forward to hear what you got :-)
Graphs of the week
Disney = Mandalorian
“I feel like things in my country are out of control now” Spain, wow!
Reads
What makes a great VC (if you raise, you should really look at these when talking to VCs)
Quid raises $320M to loan money to startup employees using their equity as collateral
Verizon is literally paying BuzzFeed to take over HuffPost.
Chris Anderson's The Long Tail Was Published 15 Years Ago. Does It Hold Up?
Calendly is raising at $3bn valuation.
Squarespace provides paid member-only newsletters.
Weird how often I get asked by founders and marketers “Does (marketing channel) work?”
Is Nike adopting a luxury model for its distribution?
Google got serious about financial products.
Top 200 most common passwords of the year 2020.
Happy Sunday!
Thanks for reading 🙌
Created every Sunday by @drnovac.
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