Female Foundry Week 110: The signals. The biggest fear of all. On timing. Cleantech comes on top. Female Foundry x Tech.eu Summit
Welcome to The Week 110, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - where investors and female founders meet.
In the news
French biotech SeaBeLife, co-founded by Morgane Rousselot raises €1.5m from multiple investors to combat visual degeneration; French AI-powered SaaS finance platform Payflows, co-founded by Pauline Glikman bags a €25m in Series A round led by Balderton Capital; Berlin-based Ovom Care, co-founded by Felicia von Reden, Dr Lynae Brayboy and Dr Cristina Hickman, secures a €4.8m round led by Alpha Intelligence Capital to advance AI-driven fertility care; London-based Camion, co-founded by Lorna Walker, picks up a €2.7m Pre-seed round led by EQT Ventures to for it energy-transition startup; Danish Rodinia Generation, founded by Trine Young picks up a €3m Seed round from the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark for its garment waste management solution; Berlin-based biotech startup Cultimate Foods, co-founded by Eugenia Sagué, fetches a €2.3m Seed round led by High-Tech Gründerfond; UK-based Pollen Careers, co-founded by Sophie O'Brien, raises a £112k Pre-Seed round through SeedLegals to diversify the job market; London-based Treefera, co-founded by Gabrielle Bourret-Sicotte lands a £12m Series A led by AlbionVC for its AI-driven environmental compliance solution.
Spotlight
The signals.
Tech giants have been announcing well-anticipated Q2 earnings over the past couple of weeks—a significant signal for the entire tech ecosystem. There have been a few ‘firsts’ and fat numbers worth pointing out. Google's parent company, Alphabet, crossed the $2trn valuation mark last Friday after making a 15% jump in first-quarter revenue and announcing its inaugural dividend of 20 cents per share alongside a hefty $70bn stock buyback. Another tech giant, Apple, has made stock buyback a major focus.
Despite surpassing analysts' earnings projections for its fiscal second quarter in this week's announcement, Apple disclosed a $110bn stock buyback. Apple's $110bn stock buyback is the largest in history, surpassing its previous record of $100bn set in 2018—indeed, Apple is responsible for the top five share repurchases by US companies (!). - For context, Meta completed a $50bn buyback earlier this year and a $40bn buyback in 2023. Microsoft's most recent buyback dates back to 2021, totalling $60bn.
Why does this matter? Share buybacks occur when companies use their own cash to purchase shares of their own stock, effectively reducing the total number of outstanding shares in their companies and theoretically increasing the value of the remaining shares. Companies tend to repurchase shares when they have cash on hand and the stock market is on an upswing - to avoid the probability of share price actually falling after the repurchase.
Many companies use buy-backs to signal a greater confidence in the company value -growth stocks must demonstrate continued growth to satisfy shareholders. Once growth slows, as seen with Apple, buybacks or dividends can help retain investor confidence. Unlike Alphabet and Microsoft, Apple has not experienced a cost surge as it has not made significant AI investments. However, the slow rollout of AI services has been met with investor scrutiny, contributing to a 10% decline in its share price this year.
Markets finally turned positive late last week due to better-than-expected results from big tech - Apple shares jumped 7% on Friday after the announcement. Let the momentum continue.
Fundraising
The biggest fear of all.
Founders regularly ask me what my biggest fears were when founding and scaling my previous businesses. I sense that many expect me to say: "running out of cash," "getting the market wrong," "falling out with my co-founder," etc. Yet, my biggest fear to this day is that one day I will run out of ideas. Everything is in motion, and as a founder, you must constantly look for ways for your business to evolve too! Always aim to set yourself into a higher gear of motion, and to do that, remember to nurture your creativity to generate new ideas. I find inspiration in people I meet, in art, during exercise. Also, remember, no idea is a bad idea until tested. What kills good ideas is mediocrity—my second biggest fear. But more on that maybe later in the coming weeks.
On timing.
On this first week of May, I want to send a short reminder: if you have less than five months of runway and planning to fundraise, start your investor conversations now! Closing a round currently takes 8-10 weeks minimum—that’s if you speak with the right investors, have built growth momentum, and have all data in place. With simple math: if you start tomorrow, you have 13 weeks to close your round before every second European VC heads off on holiday in August.
For those not planning to fundraise and operating in the B2B space, do you understand how the budgeting cycle works in your industry? - In the UK, you are looking at either January, April, or September for the majority of budgeting cycles.
Analysis
Cleantech comes on top.
Newly released data indicates that cleantech investment is surging, defying the venture capital slowdown. Europe's cleantech startups are poised for a record year in venture capital funding, with Q1 witnessing the highest deal value since Q2 2021. So far, €6.8bn has been invested in cleantech startups this year, marking a 467% increase (!) from 2023. It's important to note though that mega-rounds of industrial tech companies, such as H2 Green Steel’s €4.75bn funding round (of which a €300m was equity), electric vehicle charging startup Electra’s €304m Series B, and electrolyzer manufacturer Sunfire’s €215m Series E, drove this surge. Deal value has already exceeded half of last year's total, potentially surpassing the 2022 record of €12bn. What’s indisputable, perhaps due to higher regulation (exemplified by the Net-Zero Industry Act), Europe leads in cleantech funding globally, even despite a decrease in overall deal count, indicating growing investment selectivity.
Community
Female Foundry x Tech.eu Summit
Female Foundry is an official partner of Tech.eu Summit taking place on the 16-17th May 2024 in London and we have a 25% discount code for subscribers of the Female Foundry newsletter! To get it, just drop me an email by responding to this newsletter.
FREE ticket draw: Tech.eu Summit complimentary £600 + VAT ticket winner is Nazia (cMs6a). Congrats! I will get in touch with you shortly. You can view the draw here.
Hiring
This week hiring:
Dexory ➯ Sales Development Representative | 32Co ➯ VP Operations and Strategy | Morphoses ➯ Digital Designer Intern.
See more jobs on the Female Foundry Job Board.
That’s all for this week. Have a great week ahead!
Agata
Written by Agata Leliwa Nowicka, an investor, a startup adviser, a two-time entrepreneur, and a founder of Female Foundry based in London.
Suggestions? Drop me an email.
Check femalefoundry.co for more fundraising tools and investor content. View other Female Foundry articles.