Female Foundry Week 125: Radiant Future. Keep the pace. On vacation. LIVE Sessions: Maximise Value of Your Data.
Welcome to The Week 125, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - where investors and female founders meet.
In the news
French biotech Abolis Biotechnologies, co-founded by Valerie Brunel, raises a €35m Series A round led by BOLD and Evonik Venture Capital to boost microbial ecosystem engineering; Glasgow-based Solasta Bio, co-founded by Shireen Davies, raises a $14m Series A round led by Forbion for green insecticides; Lithuanian startup Deverium, co-founded by Erika Maslauskaite, secures €2m in EU funding to tackle cross-border identification challenges; Oslo-based Vind AI, co-founded by Helene M. Bøhler and Hilde Kristin Njøten, raises a €3m Seed round led by Norrsken VC to support global shift to energy from wind; UK-based NanoSyrinx co-founded by Dr. Alexia Hapeshi, raises a £10m round led by BG, Octopus Ventures, and M Ventures for nano syringe delivery platform; UK-based biotech CardiaTec co-founded by Thelma Zablocki, raises a $6.5m Seed round led by Montage Ventures for cardiovascular drug discovery; Berlin-based Ucaneo co-founded by Carla Glassl, raises a €6.75m Seed round led by Smart Energy Innovationsfonds to accelerate development of CO2 removal tech; Antwerp-based Beebop.ai, co-founded by Sandra Trittin, raises a €4.9m round led by Angular Ventures to integrate residential devices into the power systems; London-based DELLI, co-founded by Marie Petrovicka, raises a $6m Seed extension from Balderton Capital and HV Capital for its online platform for independent food and drink; Amsterdam-based Bazoeki, co-founded by Suzanne van der Vliet, secures €450k from angels to expand its platform for buying good puppies from vetted breeder.
Spotlight
Radiant Future.
Two leading European funds have recently announced major fundraises within the span of just four weeks, both with the same goal: to support the next generation of European founders. Atomico closed its largest-ever fundraise this week, totaling $1.24bn, to invest across two new funds. Four weeks ago, Balderton announced a $1.3bn raise for its early-stage and growth-stage funds.
This is great news for European founders and surely a strong signal of confidence in the venture capital space: assuming each fund holds approximately 10% of their companies at exit and targets a 4x return, the total expected exit value for these four funds is around €60bn. - For context, the average exit value for a European startup today is €23m, and the total value of exits in 2023 in Europe was €1.4bn (albeit a slow year for liquidations).
Across the pond, a NY-based giant Insight Partners closed a $10bn fund this week and recently released data shows that even though the number of deals fell from 9,082 in Q1 2024 to 7,691 in Q2 2024, the lowest total since Q3 2016, venture capital investment rose from $75.4 billion in Q1 2024 to a five-quarter high of $94.3 billion in Q2 2024. Are we all in for a radiant future?
Meet Visionaries Cohort I
Avenir
“Making boring, easy.”
This week, it’s time for Avenir, the fifth out of seven companies in Cohort I of the Female Foundry Visionaries AI Incubator in partnership with Google Cloud.
Can you believe that a typical financial analyst spends an average 4 hours preparing a regulatory report? That’s 26 working days per year!
Meet Andrea MacDonald, Jeremy Bensoussan and Stefan Rotarus, the founding team of Avenir—a platform specifically designed for asset managers that, thanks to the team’s proprietary AI algorithm, reduces the lengthy (and boring!) process of creating complex financial reports to just 20 minutes per report!
To date, Avenir has built relationships with over 100 financial advisory firms, onboarded 8 firms onto its platform, and has over 72 more on its waiting list! Its backers include Techstars and SFC Capital.
Current team’s focus?
Growth. The team is looking for intros to financial advisor networks (think: M&G Wealth, Tenet, Sense) and is slowly preparing for its new equity round in Q1 2025.
Want to get in touch? Drop an email to Andrea ➯ here and follow the team ➯ here.
Check other female-founded companies in Cohort I.
Fundraising
Keep the pace.
I spoke with a founder this week who is currently preparing for her first institutional round. She has been gaining good sales momentum, yet nowhere in her pitch or materials did she mention how she plans to execute on the pipeline that the potential of her startup relies on.
As you grow, and grow with pace, especially as a small team, you must demonstrate operational excellence. Investors are not just backing your product; they are backing your commercial momentum and what comes with it, they are backing your ability to execute flawlessly. And so, as you prove your potential for growth, you must also demonstrate nimble and accurate execution. A well-oiled operation will not only attract funding but also translate into sustained growth.
Work towards proving these three: demonstrate strong traction, prove growth velocity, and seal the deal by showcasing your execution at the centre of your fundaising pitch.
Analysis
On vacation.
It seems like startup investors around the world chose flip-flops and sunbathing on the beach this August, as global private equity and venture capital funding dropped to $15.18bn, marking a 31.3% decline from the previous year. The number of deals also fell by 36.6% to just 790. On a month-to-month basis, the decline was even steeper, with funding plummeting nearly 35% compared to July and the number of transactions sinking by 38%.
US companies secured eight of the top 10 funding rounds in August. In terms of sectors, tech, media, and telecommunications attracted nearly 60% of total venture capital investments, while the industrial sector raised 14.7%. However, the software sector, a traditional VC favorite, accounted for only 10% of deals.
Community
Female Foundry Live Sessions: Maximise Value of Your Data.
With all of the growth opportunities created by AI, it's easy to get lost, but here's the key: your journey with AI starts with your data. But where should you start?
At the next LIVE Session, I will be joined by Katsiaryna Stankevich, the Solution Architect and data expert at Searce. Kat has spent recent years helping startups at all stages, including those in the Visionaries cohorts, navigate the most challenging aspects of data integration, quality, and capture.
During this interactive session, you will learn about:
The best tools and platforms for collecting and storing data, how to determine which data is valuable to collect, how to assess data quality, and the best practices for data management.
We'll also discuss suggestions for creating efficient integration between different data systems as your startup grows, and answer any questions you may have on the topic!
Looking forward to seeing you all!
Hiring
This week hiring:
Planet A Foods ➯ People & Culture Manager | Pigment ➯ Entreprise Account Executive | Aegir Insights ➯ Data Analyst.
Founder & Investor Meetups
Are you a climate tech startup with a diverse founding team in Europe? Take part in a startup competition by Impact Shakers Microfund to win €10k in investment. To be considered, apply by the 14th of October ➯ Here.
Monday, September 16, Paris ➯ Paris Startup Night | Tuesday, September 17, London ➯ CX Meet Up London Sep 2024 | Wednesday, September 18, London ➯ London Demo Day | Thursday, September 19, Paris ➯ Happy Hour Fintech.
That’s all for this 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.