Female Foundry Week 120: The Blackout. The Superpowers. Climate stays hot. Female Foundry Visionaries Launch Event.
Welcome to The Week 120, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - where investors and female founders meet.
In the news
London-based Hey Savi, co-founded by Victoria Peppiatt, Angela Vinci and Sarah Daniel, raises a €2.6m all-angel round with a participation of Boardwave, Founders Capital and the WITSEND community for its AI-powered fashion search and recommendation platform; London-based Luna Daily, founded by Katy Cottam, raises a £2m Seed round from Unilever Ventures for its microbiome-balancing body care products; Berlin-based doinstruct, co-founded by Charlotte Rothert and Mona Feder, raises a €7.6m Series A round led by Creandum for its training software for frontline workers; Berlin-based SAIZ, co-founded by Svenja Tegtmeier and Marita Sanchez de la Cerda, raises a €2.5m Seed round led by EnjoyVenture and Salica Investments for its analytics-powered fashion sizing solution.
Spotlight
The Blackout.
The biggest IT outage in history swept the globe on Friday, bringing airlines, ships, hospitals, and banks to a grinding halt. The outage has for sure exposed the fragility and interdependence of global digital technology and has been a perfect reminder about just how much of the world today relies on technological infrastructure. - You would assume that in 2024, a single buggy update would not be able to make so many of the world’s key computer systems go down.
As cybersecurity companies (like CrowdStrike, behind a fiasco, whose stock fell 10% on Friday) are facing fast-moving and complex threats due to factors including AI, and geopolitical and financial forces, requiring rapid responses, is become more and more crucial. - Within hours of the incident, security researchers began to report on leveraging the outage for phishing campaigns.
The event has also raised a bigger concern - with increasing consolidation in the cybersecurity market, the global cyber resiliency is becoming more and more challenging. Research published just a couple of months ago shows that as much as 62% of the global external attacks are concentrated in the products and services ..of just 15 companies.
Fundraising
The Superpowers.
I often ask startups what their unfair advantage is—aka their ‘superpower.’ Your superpower is what will fuel your growth, defend you from competition, and make your customers fall in love with you. The truth is, however, that the majority of startups don’t have superpowers; they have an angle, they leverage the moment, or are simply familiar with the space they operate in.
Today, I want to talk about two topics that startups repeatedly claim as their superpower or unfair advantage: their team and their investors. Investors cannot truly be your unfair advantage (the amount of cash on your company’s bank account surely can!), unless they provide you with unique access to valuable networks. - Even the logo of a top accelerator can only take you so far.
On the team: believe me (if you are not a repeated or exited startup founder), every startup team claims that those logos under their profile pictures, the number of software development years etc. are special. However, unless they provide you with for example unique market access, patentable breakthrough technology or market exclusivity, they are hard to argue as your superpowers!
Analysis
Climate stays hot.
It looks like institutional LPs are not cooling down their appetite for backing climate-tech VC funds, the newly-released data reveals. After the cleantech bubble burst in the early 2010s, VC interest in climate investments waned, with a mere 0.4% of VC funds focusing on climate in 2016. However, driven by tightening regulations, growing ESG government pressures, and headline-making exits (In 2022 alone, BP acquired Archea Energy for $4.1B, Shell acquired Nature Energy Biogas for $2B, and Chevron acquired Renewable Energy Group for $3.15B), climate-tech funds now are clearly in vogue for institutional LPs, and the numbers back it up.
In the first half of 2024, a remarkable 3% of all VC funds globally targeted climate startups—triple the rate from five years ago, pulling in nearly 5% of all LP capital commitments. And that’s just for specialist funds. The real amount of climate-tech dedicated dry powder, if generalist funds are included, is likely much higher.
Community
Female Foundry Visionaries Launch Event.
I’m looking forward to Wednesday this week when Female Foundry Visionaries AI Incubator in partnership with Google Cloud will welcome VC investors, researchers, and thinkers to join the discussion on the latest applications and the future of AI.
We have an exceptional lineup of investors and partners joining us to explore the opportunities for AI-driven innovation. This is also a great opportunity to meet Cohort I.
This is an exclusive, invitation-only event for investors (Seed to Series B), friends, and partners. If you would like to attend, please submit your interest below.
Hiring
This week hiring:
Prewave ➯ Solution Consultant | Anima ➯ Customer Success | Native Teams ➯ Business Development Manager | Rivero ➯ Office Manager and Ops Support.
Founder & Investor Meetups
Thursday, July 25, Berlin ➯ Deep Tech Night - July edition, ➯ Lean Café @ BHT Startup Hub, London ➯ Grow - Demo Day, ➯ Rise FinTech Mentoring, ➯ EdTech Together, ➯ Fintech Insider Open Mic Night.
That’s all for this week. Have great weekend! - 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.
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Check femalefoundry.co for more fundraising tools and investor content. View other Female Foundry articles.
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Thank you Alice and Robin for the research.