Female Foundry Week 148: The Rocky Mountain. Needles in the haystack. Clean energy deal value declines.
Welcome to The Week 148, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - the Future of Venture is Here.
In the news
Paris-based Fairly Made, founded by Laure Betsch and Camille Le Gal lands a €15m round led by BNP Paribas, Solar and Impulse Venture Fund to help fashion brands analyse their supply chains; Eindhoven-based Maps Untold co-founded by Gabriella Gomes Branco, picks up a €350k round from Rabobank and the Leisure Ontwikkel Fonds to personalise travel experiences; Franco-Swiss fintech GRACE, co-founded by Lou Dana raises a €5.9m Seed round led by FinTech Collective and Speedinvest to grow its luxury item protection platform; British medtech Calla Lily, founded by Lara Zibners, fetches a £1m round from National Institute for Health and Care Research for its innovative progesterone delivery device; London-based Legacy Compass founded by Natalia Pazzaglia, fetches £60,000 from Bethnal Green Ventures for its end-of-life planning platform; London-based WeeFin co-founded by Marion Aubert, raises a €25m round led by BlackFin Capital Partners for its ESG data management platform; French Aqemia, co-founded by Emmanuelle Martiano Rolland, picks up a $7.4m grant from France 2030 to expand and and accelerate of its computational platform to target RNA therapeutics; German CinSOIL, co-founded by Antonella Succurro, picks up a Pre-Seed round from multiple investors including angels to tap the power of soil to tackle Scope 3 emissions; Icelandic Evolytes, co-founded by Iris E. Gisladottir raises a €1.3m Pre-Seed round co-led by Omega and Pekron Family Office to scale its K-5 math learning platform globally.
Europe's largest all-women led VC fund Revaia, founded by Elina Berrebi and Alice Albizzati, announces the final close of its second €250m growth fund to back companies from Series B to IPO and beyond.
Spotlight
The Rocky Mountain.
On Tuesday this week, President Trump announced a minimum 10% tariff on all US imports, with UK is now facing a 10% charge, and the EU a 20% charge - the move described by Musk as the step towards ‘a transatlantic free-trade zone’. As the envisioned free-trade agreement currently looks highly unlikely, how the tariffs affect the European startup community?
The Tuesday announcement sent shockwaves across the global stock markets—around $2.5 trillion was erased from the S&P 500 Index on Thursday, March 3. Klarna and Stubhub are now reportedly pausing their IPO plans quoting intense market volatility. Long long-anticipated London IPO of Shein is now also looking less promising.
Startups selling physical products, such as consumer goods, cars, robotics, and medical devices to the US, and already facing tighter margins and supply chain issues, are among the most affected. They may now consider shifting some of their production to the US to avoid tariffs. And they are not alone. Climate tech startups are also due to take a hit as prices for materials like aluminium, steel, copper, and cement are expected to rise, increasing costs for energy projects like wind turbines and solar farms. What about the other tech startups?
For European AI startups, especially those relying on US-made chips, GPUs, or dollar-priced computing contracts, things just got trickier. - There are talks of more tariffs on semiconductors, and so Europe’s reliance on US tech are likely to get even more complicated. - Europe’s need to invest in its own AI infrastructure, chip production, and computing resources has never been greater.
Also, tariffs are also likely going to make fundraising harder for all startups, as investors are likely to become more cautious. US tariffs might reduce US venture capital flow into European startups, as US investors may focus more on local companies. Cross-border investments and M&A activity could also become more difficult, making funding more localised. Consumer spending and company budgets might tighten, and higher interest rates along with inflation might linger for longer making putting more pressure on venture capital funds and startup valuations.
What’s next? In response, UK is planning to reduce its 2% digital services tax to ease tensions with the US, but the EU is taking a stronger stance. France, for example, is considering stricter regulations and higher taxes on big tech companies like Apple and Microsoft, perhaps a move that could soon backfire.
Let’s see what the next weeks bring, one thing is clear though - the global environment for startup founders is becoming more complex, forcing them to reassess where they build, raise capital, and scale.
Building
Needles in the Haystack.
I caught up with a few early-stage founders this week and as an ex-founder of two tech startups, believe me, I get it - starting a company is tough. In the early days, it’s just you, maybe a co-founder, and a small team grinding away, getting your first MVP off the ground and reaching out to potential customers. One of the most challenging things in the early days is figuring out whether you're making progress. With no financial traction, how can you know whether your message is landing?
Here are often overlooked ‘needless in the haystack’:
As you begin to engage with customers, criticism, even complaints, can be an important, albeit counterintuitive, indicator that customers care. Complaints are actually a form of engagement; they show that people are invested in your product and are offering feedback because they see potential. Complaining is actually an indication of value! If customers are staying quiet and not providing any feedback, that is a bigger red flag! → Keep track of all feedback good/bad and the absence of it!
-A few founders I spoke to recently mentioned that they started seeing signs of traction when prospects reached out to them, even without a polished website or demo. The fact that customers were drawn to the idea itself — without the usual bells and whistles — was a clear indication that their product had potential. → Make sure you give your potential customers an opportunity to try your solution, see the demo, book an intro call, remotely, on your website, Linkedin profile etc. As you grow, and if you can, make sure to turn this into an end-to-end self-served product discovery-product sign up-onboarding-evaluation cycle.
Lastly, a big moment for many startups is getting noticed on platforms like Hacker News. However, one of the less flashy but equally meaningful indicators of progress is engagement with your product across your ideal-customer-profile communities, Whatsapp groups, fora etc. → Are you aware of what’s been said in your customer profile communities? Here are some agnostic channels where you may want to make yourself known: Reddit - r/startups – For discussions about startups and entrepreneurship. r/coding – A place for programming help and discussions. Lobster - main focus on technology, programming, and startup discussions. It has a more niche, slightly smaller user base. Product Hunt (a must!) - A platform where users can discover new products, especially tech-related ones, and engage in discussions. Slashdot - tech-related news and discussions. While its user base may not be as large as Hacker News, it has been around for many years and offers a lot of insightful posts and commentary. Stack Overflow - a Q&A platform for developers, Stack Overflow also hosts some discussions, particularly focused on solving coding problems or sharing tips. Quora - While Quora is more of a general Q&A platform, there are plenty of tech, programming, and startup-related questions and answers that can be insightful. GitHub - GitHub is widely used for code collaboration, but it also includes a discussion section. Also, check news .ycombinator .com for a more focused audience, where you can explore niche tech blogs or smaller online communities.
I hope this can get you started!
Analysis
Clean energy deal value declines.
It looks like the appetite for clean energy startups is waning.
Early-stage startups saw a 34.8% drop in median deal value in the past twelve months, while median pre-money valuations have fallen from $48.3m in 2023 to $23.8m in 2024 the new data shows. What’s causing the trend?
Investor caution is mostly driven by regulatory uncertainty, making support from major backers also less certain. Overall, venture capital investment in clean energy across all stages has fallen by 3.1% year-over-year to $17.9bn, with deal count also declining 2.2% to 982 deals—..signalling that early-stage startups are being hit the hardest.
Hiring
This week hiring:
CULTMIA ➯ Senior Brand Marketing Manager | Zelt ➯ Founder Associate | Relay Technologies ➯ Growth Marketing Manager.
Events This Week
Monday, April 07, Paris ➯ AI Builders | Tuesday, April 08, London ➯ London Climate Drinks, Paris ➯ AI Agent Evening | Thursday, April 10, London ➯ Build What Matters.
It’s been a good week. See you next Sunday!
Agata
Written by Agata Leliwa Nowicka, the Managing Partner of Visionaries AI Incubator, a startup adviser, a two-time entrepreneur, and a founder of Female Foundry based in London.
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