Female Foundry Week 133: Missing Out. Should you be a startup? American investor deals up. Female Innovation Index 2025 Dinner with Carta.
Welcome to The Week 133, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - the Future of Venture is Here.
In the news
Great fundraising week! London-based Naturbeads, co-founded by Giovanna Laudisio, raises a £7.8m Series A round led by Eos Advisory, to scale its innovative biodegradable alternative to plastic; Copenhagen-based NitroVolt, co-founded Suzanne Zamany Andersen, picks up a €3.5m Seed round from investors including BackingMinds, EIFO, EQT Foundation and others to accelerate the decarbonisation of ammonia production using green hydrogen technology; Berlin-based LocalStack, co-founded by Gerta Sheganaku, lands a $25m Series A round led by Notable Capital, to expand its cloud development platform; Munich-based Klim, co-founded by Nina Mannheimer, raises a $22m Series A round led by BNP Paribas, to scale its precision farming technology that aims to reduce environmental impact; Paris-based Trace For Good, founded by Léa Gillet and Laura Bréban bags a €3.5m Seed round led by inov to help companies better manage traceability and compliance data; Berlin-based tozero, founded by Sarah Fleischer and Ksenija Milicevic Neumann, bags a €11m Seed round led by NordicNinja, to build the world’s first lithium recycling plant; Barcelona-based Biorce, co-founded by Clara Bernardes, picks up a €3.5m Seed round led by YZR Capital and Mustard Seed Maze, to scale its AI-driven platform aimed at revolutionising clinical trials; Also Barcelona-based Impress, co-founded by Diliara Lupenko, raises over €110m from Trinity Capital Inc., CareCapital, LBO France and others to accelerate its expansion of orthodontic clinics and services across Europe; Bulgaria-based Team-GPT, founded by Katya Vaptsarova and Maria Valchanova, secures a $4.5m Seed round led by True Ventures for its AI-driven collaborative workspace tailored to enterprises; Dutch biotech startup Phlox Therapeutics, co-founded by Eva van Rooij raises a €1.9m Seed round from the Dutch Research Council and others to advance RNA therapies for genetic heart diseases.
Spotlight
Missing Out.
Swedish buy-now, pay-later giant Klarna filed its initial documents for a US IPO on Tuesday, with the highly anticipated offering expected to value the fintech company at up to $20bn. Klarna's IPO will be one of the largest next year for a European company, with only the likes of Revolut, which is valued at $45bn and widely expected to go public next year, expected to top that listing. - Another Swedish company, that was expected to follow suit, Northvolt, recently put its IPO plans in cold storage as it has been scrambling to secure the funding it needs to stay afloat.
The Klarna filing comes at a time when VC-backed IPOs by European companies have been declining, with only 15 listings in Europe this year, compared to 187 in 2021. Despite this overall drop in IPO activity, the combined value of companies going public in 2024 has increased to $13.8bn.
Since 2018, around 50 European tech companies have chosen to list on US markets. According to the recent report, this shift has resulted in Europe ‘losing’ approximate $440bn in market value between 2015 and 2023, based on the companies' IPO valuations and their subsequent growth.
In September this year, a group of European stock exchanges — including Euronext and Deutsche Börse — along with startup associations, urged the EU to wrap up the capital markets union it’s been discussing for over a decade. They emphasised that open, well-functioning, and integrated European capital markets are essential for a thriving single market. They argue such markets would enhance the EU’s competitiveness, innovation, sustainable growth, and job creation.
For context, currently, the EU has 35 listing exchanges and 18 central clearing houses, while the US only has three and one, respectively. However, Europe makes up just 11% of the global stock market capitalisation, compared to the US at 43%. The next wave of European tech IPOs will likely include high-growth companies like Vinted, Bolt, Celonis — and many of these are expected to head to the US.
Over the past decade, Europe has cultivated a thriving start-up ecosystem, filled with entrepreneurs determined to make a significant impact. Many European tech companies, however, are forced to seek funding abroad, as the current market in Europe does not provide enough late-stage growth capital. This puts Europe at risk of missing out on the jobs, patents, taxes, and economic returns these companies could generate. If the situation remains unchanged, it’s difficult to see how Europe can maintain its technological and geopolitical relevance on the global stage.
Fundraising
Should you be a startup?
This week, I spoke with a founder who has been struggling to gain any traction with a corporate on her target client list. At first, I found it surprising, as her company seemed like a perfect match between the product line of the firm and her solution. After diving deeper, however, it quickly all became clear.
If you're a startup selling to corporates, how you position yourself can make or break your commercial conversations! Let’s be honest—unless you’re speaking to a venture or investment arm, there’s little incentive for a typical corporate to engage with you because you're ‘a startup’. The opportunity cost of talking to you, rather than a more established player in your space, is much higher—after all, you might not even be around next year! This is why, as soon it becomes clear in your conversations that you're just starting, it’s crucial for you to convey that you're here for the long haul, well-backed, and confident about the unique value you can deliver—making it clear that their efforts to engage with you will be worthwhile.
Remember, most corporate stakeholders don’t view startups as sources of innovation and growth; instead, they see them as a RISK. And so, as much as being a startup founder might be cool, it’s hardly ever a good idea to position yourself as such outside the venture ecosystem bubble.
After all, are you building a startup? Or are you building a business?
Analysis
American investor deals up.
This year’s US investor participation in European deals is on track to be the second-highest in the last decade, according to newly released data. So far, 1,603 deals worth €27.5bn have seen US investor involvement. While the total number of deals may be lower than last year, the share of deals with US investors has actually been rising. About 21.4% of European VC deals have included US investors this year, up from 19.5% last year, which was the lowest since 2020. The only year with more US participation was 2022, at 22.5%.
Community
Female Innovation Index 2025 Dinner with Carta.
Thanks to everyone who has taken part in our annual Female Innovation Index Survey so far! Your insights will help us create a vivid and accurate picture of the state of innovation and investment driven by female-founded companies when we publish the report in early March.
Carta has been a great supporter of the Female Innovation Index and on the 29th of November, we are hosting a dinner in central London in collaboration with Carta to celebrate the Female Innovation Index 2025.
We have 16 dinner spots to distribute to lucky winners! If you still haven’t filled it the survey yet, do it now for a chance to get a dinner spot!
*If the winner does not claim the prize, it will be awarded to the runner-ups in the order listed above.
Next Prize Drop: 24th of November
We are 4 weeks away from closing the Survey, make sure you share your thoughts!
*The survey takes only 3 minutes, but your voice will speak volumes when we publish the report in early March.
Hiring
This week hiring:
Nordic Seafarm ➯ Business/Finance Controller | Pigment ➯ Business Development Representative | Cylib ➯ Junior Partnership Manager.
Founder & Investor Meetups
Monday, November 18, Helsinki ➯ Scaling Nordic Innovation: Strategies for Global Impact and Influence | Tuesday, November 19, Berlin ➯ GROWTH NXT - Berlin | Thursday, November 21, London ➯ GoodTech Ventures Showcase | Friday, November 22, Paris ➯ Nourished Collective Opening & Thanksgiving Fest.
Have a great week ahead! 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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♡
Thank you Alice for the research!
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