Female Foundry Week 118: Reversing the tide & making waves. What you don't know. Corporate venture capital favours Series A. Nurturing Visionaries of Tomorrow.
Welcome to The Week 118, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - where investors and female founders meet.
In the news
Paris-based Orus Energy, co-founded by Fanny Sauvée, picks up a €2.2m Seed round led by b2venture and Asterion Ventures to transform the way buildings interact with electricity; Swedish Hypertype, co-founded by Beatrice Baltscheffsky and Teenie Fung, fetches a €600k Pre-Seed round led by Butterfly Ventures and Bust; Spanish traveltech startup Directo, co-founded by Marina Guastavino, raises a a $1m Pre-Seed round led by Kima Ventures.
Seaya, founded by Beatriz Gonzalez closes a €300m climate-tech fund - Southern Europe’s biggest investment vehicle backing European and Latin American impact-driven tech companies.
Spotlight
Reversing the tide & making waves.
According to the data released on Wednesday, US venture capital saw a 47% increase in deals to reach $55.6bn in the second quarter of the year, the highest quarterly amount in two years.
While the increase was largely driven by some of the recent large deals in AI companies, including $6bn secured by Elon Musk's xAI and $1.1bn by CoreWeave, the recent influx of capital into AI startups appears to have reversed the downward fundraising trend. VC investors are increasingly focusing on foundational AI model companies and applications spanning from code generation to productivity tools, and there seems to be a growing trend among VC firms to leverage AI for their decision-making too. There is an increasing number of startups aiming to automate operations for VC funds or funds like QuantumLight - a $200m VC fund launched last year by Nik Storonsky, the founder of Revolut, that openly leverage AI in its decision making. With AI in the picture, will future VC firms be closer to algorithmic hedge-funds or will they be something even more radically different?
Fundraising
What you don’t know.
What a week.
I had a chance to catch up with a couple of founders recently, and there was one moment of discussion I wanted to highlight. As a founder, you need to accept that you will never know enough to make all your decisions—whether it's deciding on your next feature rollout, the timing of your launch, or fully understanding what your investors, partners, and clients are thinking. You won't know your competitors' market expansion strategy or how the market will look a year from now.
Yet, it's equally your responsibility to continuously recognise what you don't know and to maximise your opportunities to learn. I meet so many founders that don’t project curiosity and learning! Adopting a learning mindset—picking up disjointed information that enables you to join the dots—will always bring you closer to your goals.
What do you wish you had known right now? What questions are you asking? Are you speaking to enough people? Stay hungry and stay curious, and the dots will connect themselves.
Analysis
Corporate venture capital favours Series A startups.
A newly released report points out that since 2010, there has been a notable increase in CVCs participating in deals, growing from 10% of all investments having a corporate venture capital fund to 25%. CVCs are also looking to deploy earlier. According to the study, 90% of corporate venture capital funds invest in Series A rounds, with 65% of CVCs planning to continue investing at the same stage and 18% planning to invest earlier. What’s also interesting is that 40% of CVCs surveyed are actively looking for B2B deals focused on AI and machine learning.
Community
Nurturing Visionaries of Tomorrow.
The cat’s out of the bag!
In case you’ve missed it (see the announcement), on Thursday, we officially launched the Female Foundry Visionaries AI Incubator in partnership with Google Cloud, to bring the latest AI tools and thinking to the most innovative female entrepreneurs in Europe.
From accelerating growth to optimising costs, from efficient product development to unleashing new layers of value creation, AI offers an opportunity to unlock new levels of innovation. Those founders who embrace AI today, gain the potential of becoming industry leaders of tomorrow.
It’s a big deal.
AI has been central to Google’s products since its earliest days and so, being able to pair up with Google Cloud team and bring their AI experience and knowledge to the hands of the most ambitious female founders has the potential of driving tremendous impact!
To maximise the opportunity for female Visionaries we partner with, here are our principles:
Our cohorts are small. To make the experience as tailored as possible, we keep cohorts small. Only 6-8 startups are invited to the programme.
We focus on building. Our core belief is that if your business is strong, you will attract capital. And so, our focus first and foremost is on your business growth.
We keep the programme short. Founders’ time is precious. Our six-week programme allows you to build and grow at the same time.
We let you lead. We invest in you (during and after the programme). We give you opportunities, connections, tools, and thinking, but ultimately, we leave it to you to make the most of the programme.
Learn more about companies in our inaugural cohort here ➯ Meet Cohort I.
Are you a visionary female founder who has raised funding through equity or grants and is looking to accelerate its company growth? The applications to our Cohort II launching after the summer are now open.
Would you like to learn more about Visionaries before you apply? In two weeks' time, I will be hosting a virtual AMA session to answer any of your questions. Check back here next week to find out more.
Ticket draw: TechBBQ | 11-12th September | Copenhagen, Denmark
The complimentary ticket winners are: Katie (KsYd3) and Jen (sH8sL). I will get in touch with you shortly. You can view the draw here.
Hiring
This week hiring:
Cylib ➯ Project Manager | AmphiStar ➯ Business Development Manager | Native Teams ➯ Business Development Manager.
Founder & Investor Meetups
Thursday, July 11, London ➯ Allia Impact: Pitch & Party | Friday, July 12, Paris ➯ Démo Day promo 14 - Madame Pitche, Amsterdam ➯ Ask Female Founders: How To Accelerate | Saturday, July 13, Paris ➯ Le PICNIC des entrepreneurs, London ➯ Founders Running Club.
That’s it for now. It’s been a great week! See you next Sunday.
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.