Female Foundry Week 126: From the ground up. Measure your mistakes. A few notes on SAFEs. Part of the story. CogX Summit x Female Foundry.
Welcome to The Week 126, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - where investors and female founders meet.
In the news
Norwegian real estate startup Ei Solutions, co-founded by Marit Bjerkreim, raises a €268k Pre-Seed round from Bane Nor Eiendom and others for its green compliance automation platform; French Inbolt, co-founded by Albane Dersy, raises a €15m Series A round led by Exor Ventures to make production lines more efficient; Irish Reform RX, co-founded by Yvette McGaffin secures a $5.1m round led by Clarendon Fund Managers for its connected Pilates reformer; French Jinko, co-founded by Faustine Aussedat Bouvier, raises a €2m Seed round, led by 360 Capital to accelerate the development of personalised care services; Also French Samp, co-founded by Shivani Shah, raises a €6m Seed round led by Promus Ventures to provide real-time insights into industrial sites; Paris-based insurtech Akur8, co-founded by Brune de Linares (Garnier) de Linares, raises a $120m Series C round led by One Peak to enhance its insurance pricing platform with two new modules.
A super-angel investor, Vera Baker who backed over 30 impact startups in Europe, joins Next Generation Asset Manager 4P CAPITAL as a Partner to invest in climate, health, and education companies - at the intersection of fast, valuable growth, and positive outcomes for humanity.
Spotlight
From the ground up.
The rapidly raising demand for generative AI is driving a sharp rise in electricity demand, far surpassing previous tech innovations and straining energy infrastructure.
It’s estimated that global data centre power use will triple this year, jumping from 15 TWh in 2023 to 46 TWh by 2024, and could reach 800 TWh by 2026. The latest forecasts also project that by 2028 in the US, home to a third of the world’s data centres, 9% of the country's electricity supply will fuel data centres.
As demand for energy is heating up, investment firms such as DigitalBridge, Blackstone and KKR are pouring billions of dollars into new infrastructure layer energy projects.
On Monday this week, BlackRock revealed plans to collaborate with Microsoft on a $30bn artificial intelligence investment fund to develop data centres and energy projects to keep up with the rapidly growing power demand driven by AI. Once launched, the fund is set to become one of the largest investment vehicles ever seen on Wall Street.
The news follows other mega-deals in energy infrastructure announced recently, such as Blackstone’s $40bn infrastructure vehicle backed by Saudi Arabia, and Brookfield’s $28bn infrastructure fund raised at the end of last year, its largest fund vehicle kind so far.
As Nvidia, AMD, and Intel are rolling out their next generation of AI accelerators, the focus is now shifting from compute and memory towards power consumption per chip. Further, as each new generation boosts computing performance, it also consumes more power than its predecessor, bringing the future of energy demand sharply into focus for investors.
Meet Visionaries Cohort I
Automated Architecture
“Our vision is a world where sustainable housing is universally accessible to everyone.”
This week, it’s time for Automated Architecture (in short: AUAR), the sixth out of seven companies in Cohort I of the Female Foundry Visionaries AI Incubator in partnership with Google Cloud.
Did you know that 1.5 million new homes are needed in the UK, and 2 billion new homes are required globally? Meanwhile, labor scarcity is at an all-time high, and the construction industry remains one of the least digitised sectors worldwide.
Founded by seasoned architects—Mollie Claypool and Gilles Retsin, AUAR is addressing efficiency gaps in house building by providing ecosystem of micro-factories, an end-to-end solution using generative design and robotic manufacturing.
To date, AUAR has built proprietary tech at TRL 5/6, secured ecosystem partners in 2 markets and been backed by industry specialists including Miles Ahead and ABB RA Ventures.
Current team’s focus?
Growth. The team is looking for introductions to potential partners(think: Hovell, Citu, Lennar) and is looking to raise a £2m round on a convertible note by the end of Q4 this year.
Want to get in touch? Drop an email to Mollie ➯ here and follow the team ➯ here.
Check other female-founded companies in Cohort I.
Fundraising
Measure your mistakes.
This week, I had a great chat with a founder who recently pivoted her startup but hasn’t talked to her investors about it yet. When I dug a little deeper, I was surprised to find she couldn’t clearly explain what led her to make that decision. As you’re working to find your product-market fit, it’s super important to track both the good AND the bad traction data—think user engagement, conversion rates, and customer feedback, so you can effectively communicate your change of direction with your team, investors, and existing users. Having solid data helps keep your agility, by spotting trends and issues, before they become giant ‘weeds’ - embarrassing to discuss at your next all-hands team meeting, or put in an investor update. Here are a couple of great articles on how to measure your product-market-fit over time ➯ Measure PMF, ➯ Sean Ellis Test.
A few notes on SAFEs.
For years, SAFEs have been favoured among US investors, read: Y Combinator, 500 Startups, and Andreessen Horowitz (Y Combinator is credited with hugely popularising them). As venture funding shows early signs of recovery very slowly—knock on wood—SAFEs are now also gaining popularity in Europe due to their simplicity. Personally, I’ve always been a fan of SAFEs, both as an investor and a founder. They’re quick to issue and super flexible, which allows founders more freedom to grow without the pressure of traditional funding structures. What’s also great is that SAFEs only convert when certain milestones are met, like hitting a valuation cap, which helps keep things aligned for startups and investors.
If any of you is currently looking to raise funding through SAFE, aim for a high valuation cap and a low discount rate. This will prevent investors from converting at too low price. I also recommend checking this article that covers the benefits and key points to watch out for with SAFEs. Looking for a top quality SAFE template? If you have missed it, Cooley has just launched a free SAFE Generator for early-stage startups in the UK—it's a fantastic tool and it won’t cost you a penny!
Analysis
Part of the story.
If you think the only thing European VC investors are focused on these days is AI, you might be surprised. While AI dominates headlines and energy supply is being fuelled by big players (read above), only about 20% of global venture capital was invested in AI companies between June and August this year, newly-released analysis finds. By comparison, in the US, 27% of venture capitalists backed at least one early-stage AI startup from July to September, compared to less than 20% in Europe and about 15% in China.
Community
CogXSummit LDN x Female Foundry
Female Foundry is an official partner of CogX Leadership Summit on AI happening on the 7th of October at Royal Albert Hall, London and we have 2x £999 passes to give away to our community!
CogX's mission is to convene the tech industry, global leaders, change-makers, creatives and policy makers. The one-day Summit will feature 100+ world class speakers, 2 Main Stages, 10 networking spaces and 30+ expert led salons facilitating a vibrant exchange of ideas and collaboration among 2,000+ senior level participants.
To enter the FREE ticket draw, submit your interest below. Deadline: September 27, 10pm GMT. T&C of CogX LDN apply. I will announce the winners here next weekend. Good luck!
Hiring
This week hiring:
Deepc ➯ Strategic Account Director | Estendio ➯ Marketing Manager | Tonic App ➯ Project Manager.
Founder & Investor Meetups
Wednesday, 25 September, London ➯ The London Startup Meetup | Wednesday, 25 September, Berlin ➯ Fast-Paced Ideation Hackathon | Thursday, September 26, Berlin ➯ From Lab to Launch | Thursday, September 26, London ➯ “Big Bang” at London’s Demo Day HQ.
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.
Thank you Alice and Anj for your research.
Check femalefoundry.co for more fundraising tools and investor content. View other Female Foundry articles.