Female Foundry Week 135: SaaS is dead. Pivot with conviction. The Expats. Female Innovation Index 2025 Dinner with Carta.
Welcome to The Week 135, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - the Future of Venture is Here.
In the news
Dutch-Swiss Cradle, co-founded by Elise de Reus, raises a $73m Series B round led by IVP to advance the field of protein design by leveraging generative artificial intelligence; UK-based Laennec AI Limited, co-founded by Dr Arathy Varghese, secures a new funding round from SFC Capital and OVC Ventures for its AI-powered medical devices; French darwin, co-founded by Aurore Falque-Pierrotin, raises a €1.5m Pre-Seed round led by Asterion Ventures to tackle biodiversity challenges.
Spotlight
SaaS is dead.
..at least how we know it.
In 2011, Marc Andreessen’s famous essay ‘Why Software is Eating the World’ predicted that software would unlock new value creation opportunities by replacing complex, on-premise systems with scalable, user-friendly solutions.
Andreesen’s vision was revolutionary. It took us from tangible to intangible. From concrete to abstract. It inspired a new generation of tech entrepreneurs and investors, who fell in love with SaaS.
However, from promise to practice, the truth is that traditional enterprise SaaS model (let’s focus on scale) has largely relied on complex and rigid systems, with high setup and ongoing costs that kept businesses tied to outdated processes that hindered innovation. - A 2022 survey revealed that SaaS tools cost enterprises about $3500 per employee annually and 42% of IT professionals struggle to track underused SaaS licenses (today an average enterprise business uses 371 different SaaS aplications) leading to companies wasting up to 30% of their SaaS spending (!).
The era of SaaS has now ended.
In the new era, AI can design any software and the value proposition of companies designing software therefore becomes irrelevant.
In this new era, software (and AI for that matter) is commoditised. B2B clients no longer need to follow rigid, pre-programmed processes. Instead, they can simply define their desired outcomes, and AI takes care of the rest. Through AI agents that can autonomously complete tasks, learn, adapt, and optimise, businesses have a level of flexibility and efficiency that was previously unimaginable. And so, the new era of value creation is not just about simplifying tasks; it’s about fundamentally rethinking how work gets done in the first place.
And so, where does it lead us? The future of work will not be about software, or even AI software, the future of work will be about entire ecosystems, collaborating with other AI agents to continuously improve and adapt to evolving business needs in real-time.
In this agentic future, the focus will shift from maintaining complex systems to defining outcomes. And so, now over to you. As a founder, where do you fit in this future? What’s your value creation?
Fundraising
Pivot with conviction.
I spoke with a founder this week who realised she wasn’t getting much traction with early adopters, was looking to completely rethink her business but didn’t know where to start. I was puzzled. Pivoting doesn’t mean giving up on your vision; it’s about recognising when something isn’t working and making the necessary changes. It doesn’t always require abandoning your business idea entirely—often, it’s about shifting focus, tweaking your approach, or addressing an adjacent market. The conviction of direction is baked into this process. If you’re heads down, building and testing your value proposition, then through a process of speaking with potential customers, would-be customers, and market stakeholders, chances are you already know what your next move should be. That inspiration you are looking will come from what you already know.
Analysis
The Expats.
The proportion of companies founded by European expats is on the rise, the newly-released report shows.
In 2021, the share of new US companies with at least one founder from Europe climbed to 11%, reaching a peak of 12% in 2022. Although the percentage has since stabilised at 11%, it remains higher than it was a decade ago. On the other hand, the proportion of European companies founded by US expats has always been lower, but still significant, averaging around 6% over the years.
It is estimated today that European founders are driving at least 10% of innovation in the US with at least 800 companies being founded in the US each by European founders.
Community
Female Foundry x Carta Dinner.
It was so much fun to meet eighteen of you at the Female Innovation Index 2025 Survey Dinner in partnership with Carta this Friday! Here are a few snaps from the event!
Next Prize Drop: 8th of December
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:
Telness Tech ➯ Sr. Product Manager | Simpler ➯ Head of Marketing (remote) | Quora ➯ Sales Development Representative.
Events This Week
Monday, November 02, Barcelona ➯ GenAI Pitch Night & Drinks | Wednesday, November 04, Stockholm ➯ informal AI founders and builders eating food together | Thursday, December 05, London ➯ Shaping the Future of AI Innovation and Investment.
That’s all for this week. Enjoy your 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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