Female Foundry Week 134: Green light. Red Light. You make what you measure. Early signs of rebound. Female Innovation Index 2025 Dinner with Carta.
Welcome to The Week 134, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - the Future of Venture is Here.
In the news
London-based MannyAI, co-founded by Shruti Grover, raises a €1.5m Pre-Seed round led by Dreamcraft Ventures to optimise fashion industry production cycles; Barcelona-based B'ZEOS, co-founded by Adriana Kyvik, picks up an undisclosed Seed round led by Faber, to advance its seaweed-based, compostable packaging solutions; Finnish startup Serviceform, co-founded by Iranthi Gomes, secures a €2.45m round led by Virta Equity to expand its marketing tools suite for SMEs; London-based Heim Health, co-founded by Kelly Klifa and Sasha Tory, fetches a €2.65m Seed round led by Heal Capital to expand its at-home healthcare platform; Cypriot startup Anymaster, founded by Diana Verkhoturova, picks up a €350k round led by Oxean to expand its service marketplace into Greece; Paris-based Solteo, co-founded by Manon Hias, raises a €1.5m Seed round, from investors including from Axeleo Capital, Kima Ventures, Campus Fund to digitise France’s solar industry; Stockholm-based Kodiak Hub, co-founded by Malin Schmidt, lands a €6m round led by Oxx to advance procurement data utilisation; German spacetech The Exploration Company, founded by Hélène Huby, raises a $160m Series B Round led by Balderton Capital and Plural, to further develop their reusable spacecraft.
Spotlight
Green light. Red Light.
The Swedish electric vehicle supplier, and once a European poster-child of green energy transition, Northvolt filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday this week, after a desperate bid to secure rescue funding fell short, leaving the struggling battery maker with just one week’s cash of $30m and $5.84bn in debt.
This is a major blow to the European investor and greentech community.
Northvolt, with €15bn in subsidies, loans, and capital, had been Europe’s best-funded tech startup and a beacon of hope to challenge Chinese and South Korean dominance in EV supply chains.
As you can imagine, the collapse is very bad news for Northvolt investors. Scottish Mortgage is said to be £315m out of pocket after the Northvolt collapse. Other notable losers include, BMW (who first pulled the plug), Volkswagen AG, Goldman Sachs, who buried $900m in Northvolt investment, and state-owned pension funds that had invested a total of about $520m. - In October, the Swedish government refused a bailout.
Some blame the collapse on sluggish demand for electric vehicles (EVs) in Europe, but the truth is that Northvolt had a €50bn backlog of orders earlier this year.
Let’s face harsh reality. Europe did not see the EV threat coming because the incumbent car industry had captivated Berlin and Brussels. The Washington thinktank Centre for International and Strategic Studies estimates that China has spent $230bn in state support nurturing its EV ecosystem. Its production capacity reached 2,600 GWh this year (world demand for batteries last year was 950 GWh (gigawatt hours), and will more than double again to almost 6,000 GWh next year under current plans.
Meanwhile, Brussels has neither the money nor the legal mandate to replicate this - the companies producing batteries in Europe are mostly Chinese or Korean. The recent Draghi report says the EU needs joint debt issuance and extra investment of €800bn a year to restore wider competitiveness.
How realistic is it?
Fundraising
You make what you measure.
I spoke with a founder this week who has been slowly gearing up for her Seed financing round. She fluently communicated her promising growth, with an encouraging ARR and a clear time-to-profitability. However, when asked about the key growth drivers behind her success to date, she struggled to pinpoint any (!).
I often see founders focus only on top-level metrics like website traffic, MRR or growth, but these don’t always reflect the health of your business. Real growth comes from understanding numbers that truly indicate both opportunities and potential risks. The more precise your metrics are, the better equipped you are to make data-driven decisions that fuel sustainable growth. I am writing this not to make you focus on every metric possible for your company profile, but rather to make you realise what’s actually driving your business forward, and uncover where your efforts are truly paying off—or where they’re falling short. Tracking only total revenue and growth will not give you the full picture. It’s these granular insights that help you make smarter decisions, allocate resources more effectively, and course-correct before small problems turn into big ones. Do you know levers of your growth? Here is a list of often overlooked metrics to get you started.
Analysis
Early signs of rebound.
As the market is steadily improving, driven by easing inflation, it looks like European venture capital market is also on a path to recovery, especially at the pre-seed and seed stages, newly-released data shows. As of September 2024, pre-seed valuations have risen by 51.5% year-over-year to €4.1m, with deal sizes increasing to €800k from €500k in 2023. Also, startups are securing pre-seed funding more quickly, with timelines decreasing to 1.4 years from 1.6 years in 2023.
Seed-stage valuations rose 15.7% to €5.4m, and deal sizes climbed 32% to €1.8m, though the time to secure funding stretched to 3 years from 2.9 years in 2023. Early-stage valuations also saw an 11.3% increase to €5.7m, with deal sizes up 26.6% to €1.5m, while the time to funding extended to 3.1 years.
Looking at the late stage, valuations rose to €11.7m, and deal sizes averaged €3.9m - but despite fewer late-stage deals overall, the focus has been shifting to higher-quality opportunities.
Community
Female Innovation Index 2025 Survey | Female Foundry x Carta Dinner with winners.
I’m excited to meet all the winners who participated in the Female Innovation Index 2025 Survey at the exclusive Female Foundry x Carta dinner this Friday!
The winners of the dinner spots are: Reem (YAPfa4), E-J (bIoAUD), Michele (qjYjmp), Myriam (pm2b2n), Cristiana (KMjWIv), Tara (C2V5NK), Sarah (5uq0VQ), Sofia (ZMgjqS), Rea (iJBQBo), Cynthia (Mh1YsR), Raluca (lRdTag), Bianca (JnwUgS), Ann Marie (lXAgp3), Tonia (o8m7zw), Tamara (uVD7HB), Jessica (ZN8uNB), Sade (HKDbJy), Mariam (mBVJij).
Runner-ups: Sreenath (vSU5VF), Yana (MgpKfY), Anshika (jY6ljW), Deimena (wGrtux), Katrien (oLMGLF), CatherineAnn (rkiHOE), Adi (YbsCWV), Anshika (V50NIZ), Xann (iULFte), Shelley (jq13dT), Olivia (zynob0), Vivian (vNgFm1), Audrey (9KWvvW), Henrietta (Hp7Uc0), Irina (OROzXl), Vivian (bDpVbp), Jen (1SLH8Q), Joan (Dfje0w), Verity (0Zko7T).
*If a winner does not claim the dinner spot, it will be awarded to the runner-ups in the order listed above.
Next Prize Drop: 8th of December
We are 3 weeks away from closing the Survey, make sure you share your perspective by the Survey finishes!
*The survey takes only 3 minutes, but your voice will speak volumes when we publish the report in early March.
Hiring
This week hiring:
Senvo ➯ Growth Marketing Specialist | Datamaran ➯ ESG Enterprise Account Executive | Dexory ➯ Product Marketing Manager.
Events This Week
Monday, November 25, Paris ➯ Find your cofounder event @Station F | Wednesday, November 27, London ➯ Investor Forum | Thursday, November 28, London ➯ Block Dojo Cohort 9 Showcase, Seed Run: 5k with Stride.VC.
It was a good 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.