What it means to invest with high conviction, most popular and profitable European mobile apps, and startup machoism in Spain.
#17
This is the 17th edition of Sunday CET, a weekly curation of what we found interesting in the European investment tech landscape.
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1. More money in the market
2. How others are doing it
3. Interesting bets
4. Data, research, observations
5. What others think
1. More money in the market
🇫🇷 Ardian raised €3bn from investors for its fourth generation private debt platform to provide financing to mid-market companies across Europe.
🇬🇧 Skymind Global Ventures announced the launch of an $800 million fund to back promising new AI companies and academic research from its London headquarter.
🇫🇷 Omnes’s fourth renewable energy fund has so far raised over 75% of its €500m fundraising target expected to provide European renewables developers with growth capital
🇸🇪 Brightly Ventures announced closing SEK 550M ($57M) for its fund aimed at Swedish tech startups
🇩🇪 Berlin-based Merantix, a venture studio investing in AI companies, has raised a €25 million fund.
🇬🇧 Bloc Ventures announced securing £20 million for making investments in the deep technology market from Europe.
🇪🇸 Seaya Ventures kicks off its third fund, called Seaya Ventures III Venture Capital Fund FCRE
Bonus:
Microsoft’s venture fund M12 officially opens European office, in London, led by Matthew Goldstein.
Silicon Valley VC 7BC Venture Capital expands to Europe, recruiting its first venture partner in the U.K.
2. How others are doing it
🇩🇪 How to Get Press Coverage (for a startup, that is)
🇬🇧 Curious to see how investors pitch their LPs for raising money? Here’s an example.
🇬🇧 Establishing an ideal customer profile (ICP)
🇬🇧 What it means to invest with high conviction
🇩🇪 Startup quiz
Founded in 2002
Plug-in on top of Microsoft Office Powerpoint
750,000+ paid users
$100m+ Revenue - almost 99% margin
29 FTE
Founders owned, no external backers
Answer: think-cell
🇳🇴 The one pitch slide everyone gets wrong - link
Bonus
Tips on negotiating a job offer - link
Giving $ to entrepreneurs is an effective national growth strategy.
Not in Europe
3. Interesting bets
🇧🇪 Belgium
blockchain platform-as-a-service company | €1.9 million | KPN Ventures
🇩🇰 Denmark
AI-based meta search engine | $1.5 million | Vækstfonden, PreSEED Ventures
🇪🇪 Estonia
precision-forestry start-up | $1 million | TMT Investments, Change Ventures, EigenKapital
startup that created eSports style competitions for math students | $500k | Change Ventures
🇫🇷 France
tech toolkit for the non-profit sector | €7 million | XAnge, ISAI, business angels
augmented reality video game studio | €1.6 million | Finovam Gestion, Nord France Amorquage, Nord Capital Investissement
🇩🇪 Germany
health startup connecting doctors and patients through its app | €6 million | Kamet Ventures, AXA
🇮🇱 Israel
🇪🇸 Spain
mobile e-sports platform allowing users to make money by betting on games outcome | €3 million | angel investors
medical consultations provider via a mobile app | €2 million | Target Global
🇸🇪 Sweden
digital platform that lets small medium businesses to compare and book customized transport options | €1.7 million | Atlantic Labs
software video recognition tool | $300k | angel investors
🇨🇭 Switzerland
industrial 3D printing solution provider | $4.3 million | Wingman Ventures, Investiere, the Technology Fund.
🇬🇧 UK
restaurant intelligence platform | $10 million | Smedvig Capital, angel investors
developer of a toolkit for back-office process automation for the global logistics industry | $7 million | Mosaic Ventures, Crane Venture Partners, Y Combinator
banking APIs for developers | $4 million | Lightspeed Venture Partners, Founders Fund, SciFi VC
bank as a platform which provides technology to FinTechs that need custodial accounts and access to interbank payments | £3 million | Seedcamp, angel investors
economy network for luggage storage | $2.5 million | VentureFriends
platform using Machine Learning and AI for delivering authentication, risk analytics and fraud prevention to the payments and FinTech sectors | £2 million | Force Over Mass Capital (FOMCAP), TrueSight Ventures, Springboard
AI-powered customer feedback company | £400k | Techstart Ventures, TrueSight Ventures
4. Research, data, observations
🇬🇧 What were UK’s FinTech top investments in 2019
🇫🇷 … and what the 2020 French fintech landscape looks like.
🇪🇺 European mobile app consumer spending in 2019 was more than $11 Billion. Other tidbits:
* The App Store generated $6 billion in gross revenue and 6.5bn number of installs.
* UK, Germany, France, Russia, Italy are top grossing countries
* The biggest generator of downloads was Russia with 5.3 billion installs (4.3bn from Google Play). Turkey ranked No. 2 for downloads w/ 3bn.
In case you were wondering - DAZN is a live boxing app, while Azar and LOVOO do video-based dating/social networking.
🇹🇷 For two years, Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey. After a clever legal fight, it’s now been restored.
🇪🇺 Apple is worth more than Germany’s 30 leading companies. The Germans are worried.
🇫🇷 How Paris became a cycling success story—and built a roadmap for other cities
🇫🇮 How Finland starts its fight against fake news in primary schools
Bonus:
the time it takes for a piece of content to reach 50% of its total lifetime engagement - thread
* Twitter: 20 mins
* Facebook: 5 hrs
* Instagram: 20 hrs
* LinkedIn: 24 hrs
* YouTube: 20 days
* Pinterest: 4 mos
* Blog post: 2 yrs
market adjustments - reports of pending layoffs in recent days now include:
* 3M
* Nissan
* JPMorgan
* Netflix
* Xilinx
* TripAdvisor
* UBS
* Pier 1
* 23 and me
* Lyft
This year’s Super Bowl costs are on average between $5.2 million to $5.6 million apiece to air a 30-second ad.
Google has started charging law enforcement and other government agencies that are seeking emails, location information and search queries. Fees range from $45 for a subpoena to $245 for a search warrant
5. What others think
🇬🇧 Ben Evan’s presentation of macro and strategic trends in the tech industry
🇸🇪 Q&A with Stefan Ytterborn, seven-time serial entrepreneur, founder of POC (ski helmets) and now of Cake, electric motor bikes.
🇩🇰 Thoughts on the early stage market in Denmark from an active pre-seed investor
🇪🇸 Do Spanish startups have a macho problem?
🇪🇺 Brexit should be the catalyst to create the United Tech of Europe
🇪🇺 This is the year a major European city will ban cars from its centre (Oslo already did it btw)
🇬🇧 Being a Noob (PG) - thread’s pretty good too
Bonus:
Clay Christensen, one of my heroes back in my MBA days, passed away. Here are 11 of his most essential articles.
Happy Sunday!
Thanks for reading 🙌
Reply with submissions, comments, corrections, and ideas.
Created every Sunday by @drnovac. Please share it with people who may find it interesting - thanks!