Female Foundry Week 141: Big. Small. Bigger. Meet Visionaries Day. On Founder Match. VCs bet big on life sciences.
Welcome to The Week 141, 2025 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - the Future of Venture is here.
In the news
Barcelona-based biotech Koa Biotech, co-founded by Sira Mogas, secures a €2m Seed round led by Swanlaab Innvierte Agrifood-Tech to accelerate early disease detection for fish farms; London-based biotech Modern Synthesis, co-founded by Jen Keane, lands a €5.5m Seed round led by Extantia Capital for bio-based alternatives to animal and plastic-based textiles; French climate tech Epyr, co-founded by Léa Dardenne, picks up a €3m Seed round co-led by AENU and Daphni to scale its innovative thermal energy storage solutions; German deeptech startup assemblean, co-founded by Xiaojun Yang raises a €1.8m Pre-Seed round led by b2venture to revolutionise manufacturing automation; Lithuanian startup BrachyDOSE, co-founded by Neringa Šeperienė, fetches €50k from Estonian Business Angels Network; UK-based Cult Mia, co-founded by Nina Briance, lands a £4.5m Seed round led by Fuel Ventures & H&M for its online fashion marketplace.
Spotlight
Big. Small. Bigger.
Cherry Ventures launched its largest fund to date this week—a $500m fund with a bold ambition to back Europe’s first trillion-dollar business, joining a select group of European mega VC funds that have successfully raised fresh capital despite a still-slow fundraising environment.
The gap between emerging, $20-50m, funds and mega funds is widening, and it’s not just in Europe.
It’s not unusual for mega VC funds to rack up huge LP commitments in any given year. For context, in 2017, SoftBank raised a $93bn Vision Fund 1, while total funding for US VC stood at a (mere) $46.8bn.
However, it is the first time in a decade that experienced VC fund managers are scooping up more capital than emerging managers. Emerging firms outside of the top 30 closed on $9.1bn, or 14% of all US VC commitments in 2024, and just nine VC firms took half of all the money raised by US funds in 2024.
Europe is on a similar track.
Europe’s VC market saw its third consecutive annual decline in dealmaking in 2024, with deal value dropping 7.9% to €56.7bn. The raise of mega-funds in Europe has been accelerated by the wider downturn. Investors with four or more funds accounted for nearly two-thirds of capital raised in 2024. Europe’s VC market is becoming more concentrated.
Visionaries
Meet Visionaries Day
The Soft Launch of the Female Innovation Index was not the only major event at Female Foundry last week.
On Thursday, after weeks of building, discussions, connections and learning, we concluded Cohort II of the Visionaries AI Incubator in partnership with Google Cloud. The evening brought together a targeted group of potential partners, clients and investors to the companies that joined Visionaries.
In the coming weeks I will be sharing more details on six bold and ambitious companies that were invited to the Visionaries Program.
Fundraising
On Founder Match.
I came across four founders, yep, four founders over the past three weeks, who decided to part ways with their co-founders. All founding teams have known each other for at least three years, and all have raised institutional funding. It’s hard for me to judge what went wrong in the process for all of them. But founding team conflicts are real and often. It’s how you evaluate the potential founder in the first place and how you deal with those conflicts is key.
I meet a lot of founders, especially those from non-technical backgrounds, who prioritise technical skills when searching for a co-founder. It’s a trap. Tech is always going to evolve, just like your product, vision, and growth roadmap. You need to be cautious about focusing too heavily on specific skills, particularly when it comes to technical co-founders. First and foremost, you should assume your business is going to scale. Even though AI is making large tech teams seem like a thing of the past, as a startup, you’ll always need to communicate with customers who may be behind on technology, as well as outsourcing partners. So, your tech co-founder must be comfortable driving company value in those situations.
Another observation I’ve made recently is that many founders aren’t as clear as they should be about their startup goals and what they want to get out of the venture. This is the crux of the issue. Be upfront and honest about these to see whether you are fully aligned. Are you looking for a multi-million dollar exit? Are you starting a company to escape corporate politics? Are you here just for flexible working hours? Or to build cool tech? What are your personal and career goals for this venture?
Analysis
VCs bet big on life sciences.
Europe’s life sciences sector is off to a strong start this year, with venture capital investments already surpassing half of last quarter’s total, newly-released data shows. In just a few weeks, €1.2bn has flowed into European life sciences startups, making up 55.7% of the region’s total deal value and over a third of global life sciences investments (!).
While funding is up, the number of deals is shrinking as investors focus on fewer but larger late-stage companies—a trend expected to continue through 2025. Some of the recent deals include London-based Verdiva Bio’s $411 Series A, Apollo Therapeutics’ $226.5m Series C, and Numab Therapeutics’ $196.4m Series C.
For context, life sciences VC funding peaked in 2021 at €9.8bn, driven by COVID-19-related demand. Last year saw several new European funds, including Forbion’s €2bn raise and Imec.xpand’s €300m raise, increasing deployment into startups. With AI-driven innovation opportunities, life sciences dealmaking in Europe is expected to keep going up!
Hiring
This week hiring:
Abolis Biotechnologies ➯ Technicien Système Réseaux | Abound ➯ Compliance Officer | Carmoola ➯ Chief of Staff | Twin Science & Robotics ➯ Channel Sales Manager | Prewave ➯ Product Analyst.
Events this Week
Tuesday, February 11, Paris ➯ HEC Venture Lab Presents | Thursday, February 13, London ➯ Anthropic London Founder Evening, Paris ➯ Climate Coffee in Paris | Friday, February 14, London ➯ London Fintech Breakfast, Berlin ➯ AI Builders Monthly Berlin.
Have a great week ahead. See you next Sunday!
Agata
Written by Agata Leliwa Nowicka, the Managing Partner of the Visionaries AI Incubator, an investor, a startup adviser, a two-time entrepreneur based in London.
♡ Thank you Alice for helping out with the research!
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