Female Foundry Week 124: Again and again. The gift. Consolidation under way. Ask Me Anything about Visionaries!
Welcome to The Week 124, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - where investors and female founders meet.
In the news
Amsterdam-based SwipeGuide, co-founded by Annika Björkholm, gets acquired by L2L to create an end-to-end connected workforce solution; Swedish medtech Amferia, co-founded by Saba Atefyekta, snaps a €1.2m Seed round led by Chalmers Ventures to combat resistant bacterial infection; Munich-based Irubis, co-founded by Anja Müller raises an undisclosed Series A round led by BioProcess360 Partners to accelerate the future of bioprocessing; London-based Retrograde, co-founded by Grace Beverley, picks up a €1.8m Pre-Seed round led by Elkstone for its AI talent management platform; Irish startup GoChallenge, co-founded by Dr. Caitríona Mooney, raises an undisclosed round; French femtech Sonio co-founded by Cecile Brosset, is acquired by Samsung for a reporting and workflow solution powered by AI for obstetrics and gynaecology.
Spotlight
Again and again.
OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s‘ new AI start-up raised $1bn in funding this week from high-profile investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia valuing a 3-month-old startup at around $5bn. Sutskever, who departed OpenAI in May, co-founded the new startup in June with the goal of developing AI systems that emphasise research and safety.
Sutskever is not the first ex-unicorn founder to land an eyebrow-raising pre-seed round in recent years. In late 2022, WeWork founder Adam Neumann raised $1 billion for his ‘property project’ Flow (yes, Andreessen Horowitz was also his backer). Launched with a bold vision of ‘reinventing’ communal living, reports now suggest that Neumann’s Flow is in trouble, with one of the six properties invested in by Flow unable to sustain itself financially.
As the bear market continues, serial-founders are even more in vogue. It’s estimated that as much as 65% of Europe’s unicorn founders have founded at least one company before and according to the data, repeat founders also raise much larger funding rounds.
Meet Visionaries Cohort I
GlycanAge
“Our vision is to make preventative & personalised healthcare the standard of care.”
This week, it’s time for GlycanAge, the fourth out of seven companies in Cohort I of the Female Foundry Visionaries AI Incubator in partnership with Google Cloud.
Have you ever heard about glycans? Too bad. Chronic inflammation is a major contributor to poor health. 60% of deaths worldwide are due to chronic inflammation(!).
Glycans are a game-changing biomarker for chronic inflammation, capable of predicting chronic diseases up to 10 years in advance. Meet Nikolina Lauc and Marko Tarnaj, the founding team of GlycanAge, which has pioneered the field of glycobiology and developed the GlycanAge Test.
To date, GlycanAge has published over 300 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, been used in more than 1,500 clinics, sold over 20,000 tests, and operates in 60 countries. The company processes 85% of the samples for high-throughput glycomic studies worldwide and has received over €40 million in grant funding for scientific research.
Current team’s focus?
The team is slowly preparing for an equity round in the next 3-4 months and is looking for intros to big retail brands (think: Randox, Vitality, Thriva).
Want to get in touch? Drop an email to Nikolina ➯ here and follow the team ➯ here.
Check other female-founded companies in Cohort I.
Fundraising
The gift.
I regularly meet founders who spend too much time watching other companies in their space. Remember! What you focus on, either gets you closer or further from achieving your goals. If much of your time in a day is spent watching your competition, it’s not time well spent.
I often see same companies copying ideas that I’ve developed at Female Foundry. I won’t shame those companies here. Why not? Because if someone has copied my idea, it not only reveals their lack of originality, but more importantly reveals a bigger weakness. True innovation (and therefore unfair advantage) fundamentally comes down to who owns the vision.
Because vision cannot really be copied. Vision is uniquely beautiful. It is a reflection of the founder’s experiences, skills, knowledge, perspectives, memories, perception, ambition, and sensitivity. Vision is so subtle that it cannot be fully described in words, yet it serves as a beacon for the founder (and their team). Full of subtleties and depth, vision is not guaranteed. It is a gift.
And so, stop watching your competition and double down on pushing that edge. Look after yourself and let them follow you.
Analysis
Consolidation under way.
BlackRock's $12.5bn acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners in January, marked the largest ever M&A deal in the alternatives space. The data released this week shows that the deal is also an indication of a larger trend.
GPs in alternative markets are rapidly expanding by acquiring stakes in other GPs at a record pace. There has been an 84% increase in GP deal count year-to-date, suggesting that 2024 could surpass the previous record of 114 deals set in 2021. Consolidation in the alternative investment space is definitely on the way and single-strategy managers are aiming to diversify and become multi-strategy platforms to attract more investors.
Community
Female Foundry Visionaries AI Incubator - Ask Me Anything Session.
We have the dates set for Cohort II of the Female Foundry AI Incubator in partnership with Google Cloud! On the 14th of October in Google London headquarters, we will welcome a group of innovative female-founded startups joining us for two intense months of the new Visionaries programme.
If you’re a UK-based tech-driven or science-driven startup that has recently raised a new funding round and wants to fuel its growth using AI, do apply! We limit each cohort to only 6-8 startups to ensure a highly personalised experience.
Ready to apply? Head here ➯ APPLICATION.
I appreciate that it is a new incubator and many of you have been asking many questions about it! On Friday next week, 13th of September at 12PM, we are hosting a relaxed 45-minute 'Ask Me Anything' Session to answer all your questions about the Visionaries experience, programme structure, selection criteria, or anything else on your mind!
This is your chance to get an inside view of what it is like to be a Female Foundry Visionary. If you cannot make it next week, you might find the ➯ FAQ section on the Visionaries’ website answer your questions.
We are looking forward to seeing you all!
Hiring
This week hiring:
Clearly ➯ Chief Technology Officer | Bendi ➯ Software Engineer | EDP ➯ Internship.
Founder & Investor Meetups
Tuesday, September 10, Berlin ➯ Ask Female Founders, Paris ➯ Startup Workshop in Paris | Thursday, September 12, Berlin ➯ Beat Burnout, Paris ➯ MINI LAB' : Apéro lab'.
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.