Female Foundry Week 142: First is Secondary. The shopping window. Unicorns don’t raise. Visionaries: Edge Connect.
Welcome to The Week 142, 2025 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - the Future of Venture is here.
In the news
Madrid-based LIBEEN Smart Housing, co-founded by Sofia Iturbe, lands a €25m round led by Andbank for its smart-housing solution; London-based Renew Risk, co-founded by Ashima Gupta, raises a £5m Series A round led by Molten Ventures for its renewable energy risk modelling solution; Swedish AI–BOB, co-founded by Elin Mårtensson, picks up a €2m Seed round led by CapitalT to help construction projects detect compliance issues with AI; Another Swedish startup Agteria Biotech, co-founded by Maia Lidbeck, raises a €6m round co-led by Industrifonden and AgriZeroNZ to reduce methane emissions from cattle; German Planted, co-founded by Cindy Schüller, bags a €5m round from TechVision Fonds, WENVEST Capital and others for its ESG platform; German Spark e-Fuels, co-founded by Julia Bauer, picks up a €2.3m Pre-Seed round led by Nucleus Capital to deliver renewable energy to aviation; Copenhagen-based fintech ReBloom, co-founded by Camilla Molina Nysum, raises a €400k Pre-Seed round from angel investors to revolutionise private secondary trading.
Barcelona-based VC firm Nina Capital, founded by Marta G. Zanchi, announces the close of its €50m Fund III to invest in early-stage health technology companies across Europe, North America, Israel, and Australia.
Spotlight
First is Secondary.
Yep. I could write today about the AI events and announcements that happened this week across Europe, instead, let’s leave it for another week and talk about secondaries!
It looks like direct VC secondary deals in Europe are becoming more expensive as primary dealmaking recovers, newly-released data shows. Perhaps you will be a little surprised to hear that in December, the median discount for secondaries was just 3%, a sharp contrast to 46% a year earlier.
What drives the trend? Secondary discounts emerged in 2022 due to a lack of exits, high interest rates, and cautious VC investors, but as valuations have been stabilising, expectedly, sellers have been becoming less willing to accept steep markdowns.
Growth-stage companies have been the most positively affected by the change. In October, a Lithuanian (female-founded) unicorn Vinted, secured a €340m deal at a €5bn valuation, up from €3.5bn in 2021 (the peak of the market!). In the same month, UK-based fintech challenger Monzo’s valuation rose to $5.9bn after a secondary transaction.
Investor interest in secondaries is also growing.
There are currently at least 257 secondaries funds in the UK and the US and both established players and new firms, like Flywheel Capital, are putting bigger bets on the secondaries space. In June, Lightspeed Venture Partners applied to the SEC for registered investment adviser status, enabling greater secondary investment. Established players such as StepStone—which raised its largest-ever $3.3bn fund dedicated to VC secondaries in June—Lexington Partners, which closed its latest secondaries fund at $22.7bn in January, and Hamilton Lane, which also held its largest-ever close for its secondaries flagship fund at $5.6bn in June, have all doubled down on the secondaries game.
The growing size of secondaries funds—both VC-specific and broader ones covering private equity—shows the VC secondaries market is maturing. Demand is driven by liquidity constraints, investors seeking lower-risk venture exposure with quicker returns, a more diverse LP base needing faster liquidity, and better pricing alignment between buyers, sellers, and GPs and tightening discounts bring an interesting dynamic to this fast-growing market.
Fundraising
The shopping window.
I normally write here mostly about the fundamental yet intricate aspects of company building and fundraising. Today, I want to speak about something that, in the grand scheme of things, might come across as trivial, yet often is the only means to getting to know you. As a few of you might already know, I myself am not the biggest fan of publicity when you haven’t figured out your product yet, awards when you don’t have traction, or wasting time on overall, substance-less self-promotion.
BUT what I do know and what I want to talk about this week—and I see many founders get wrong—is being clear and consistent in the messaging of the cheapest shopping window you have: your website. On average, I probably spend about 3 hours a week (no more than 2 minutes every time) glancing through startups’ websites.
What I see is: First, a big group of startups where even on the very first page it’s not clear what the company does. Second, there are no points of differentiation— I have no idea what makes you different from anyone else. Third, there are blog posts, dates, etc., that make you look ‘dead’ or at least outdated. Fourth, it’s too easy to guess what stage you are at. (It shouldn’t be that easy to tell you’re bootstrapped)—make yourself look and feel well-funded - It will never hurt. And lastly, I have no idea who is your audience. Always prioritise your target customers and NOT investors!
Analysis
Unicorns don’t raise.
An estimated 517 global unicorns—private companies valued at $1bn or more—haven’t raised funding since 2021, the latest data shows. The accumulation comes amid a sluggish period for tech IPOs and acquisitions, with no tech unicorns going public so far this year, even in high-growth sectors such as data and analytics or e-commerce. Why is this a concern? - Historically, companies that go four years without raising funds face slimmer chances of securing new rounds.
SaaS has been particularly hard-hit. At least 45 US SaaS unicorns have not secured new funding since 2021 and seen their valuations drop by even 25%. In e-commerce, 36 US unicorns have not raised any fresh capital and in the AI and analytics space staggering 56 US unicorns have gone without new rounds despite raising more than $18bn in the past. While many of the unicorns had raised huge rounds during the 2021 funding peak, many for sure are looking for exits.
Meet the Visionary
Edge Connect
“A single source of truth to capitalise on private markets data.”
This week, I would like to introduce you to Edge Connect, one of six companies in Cohort II of our Visionaries AI Incubator in partnership with Google Cloud.
Can you believe 90% portfolio data of asset managers is manually extracted, leading to slow decisions that cost millions?
Meet Polina Kyriushko and Arnaud Blois, the founding team of Edge Connect—an AI-driven end-to-end portfolio data management platform specifically designed for private equity firms and asset managers, delivering instant portfolio insights.
To date, the Edge Connect team has raised £500k Accel Startup Fund, Pareto and angel investors from major Private Equity firms.
Current team’s focus?
Growth. The team is looking for intros to buyout, growth equity and private credit firms and is slowly preparing for its new equity round in Q3 2025.
Want to get in touch? Drop an email to Polina ➯ here and follow the team ➯ here.
Check other female-founded companies in Cohort II.
Hiring
Hiring this week:
Pigment ➯ Senior Analyst Relations Manager | Byway ➯ Mobile Application Developer | Qura ➯ Founding Product Manager | Zepz ➯ ➯Communications Manager | The Exploration Company ➯ Project Manager.
Events this Week
Monday, February 17, London ➯ London Fintech Breakfast | Tuesday, February 18, Berlin ➯ Women's AI Breakfast | Wednesday, February 19, Berlin ➯ World Wild Web Hack Night, London ➯ AI Demo Day, Helsinki ➯ Female Founder Stories | Thursday, February 20, Stockholm ➯ Nordic CTO Summit.
Have a great week ahead! See you next weekend.
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!
Suggestions? Drop me an email.
Check femalefoundry.co for more fundraising tools and investor content. View other Female Foundry articles.