Female Foundry Week 44: Ratio of VC deals to exits shoots up. Extending runway with angels. CLV. Debrief on Web Summit. University endowments at crossroads. TOKEN2049.
Welcome to The Week 44, 2022 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - where female investors and founders meet.
In The News
Brussels-based logistics technology startup Shippr, founded by Alexina Smet raises €10m Series A round led by Force Over Mass Capital to expand its services across Europe; Switzerland-based venture capital fund Privilège Ventures launches its fourth, CHF 20 million, fund to support female-founded startups across Europe.
Reddit, Twitter and Instagram are diving into NFTs. Read full story ➯
Let’s have a look at the five key Venture Capital trends of Q3, 2022. Read full story ➯
Spotlight
Ratio of VC deals to exits reaches 'unsustainable' levels.
After record-high levels of global IPO and M&A activity in 2021, recent volatile market conditions have significantly impacted the exit ambitions of many startups (and their investors). In the US Venture Capital market, there have been 15 funding deals for every exit as of Q3 2022, a striking jump from a ratio of 12 in 2021. The figure reflects the sharp decline in global IPO activity and a considerable fall in cross-border, unicorn, mega and SPAC IPOs. Even though the number of closed exits via acquisition in 2022 sits higher than any year prior to 2021, the jump in deal-to-exit ratio has much to do with the high number of rounds being completed in this particular market. The current lack of liquidity via public markets is going to add significant pressure on late-stage startups to raise additional VC financing and to accept investments at much lower valuations compared with previous rounds. Read full story ➯
Fundraising
Raising extension rounds with angels? Key things to look out for.
In the current market conditions, more startups are requiring additional capital to extend their runway. Raising cash from existing and new angel investors might be an efficient way to boost your cashflow and if the process is run well, it might require lower dilution and bring more knowledge. How do you find the right angel investor and how should you run an efficient fundraising process with an angel so it works for you? Miruna-Ioana Girtu reports. Read full story ➯
What is Customer Lifetime Value and why it matters.
When it comes to assessing your subscription business’s growth, a simple metric like return on investment is not enough. Do you want to know how to gain customers, boost profits, and save your budget? Among all metrics, there’s a special one that is a foundation of all business models and tells you what value a customer brings to your company during the customer life cycle, helps you predict future revenue, and measure long-term business success: Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). How do you calculate CLV and get insights that inform your product and business strategies? Read full story ➯ I would also recommend this article for a more extensive view on CLV. Read full story ➯
Analysis
Key takeaways from Web Summit 2022.
This week I joined Web Summit, the largest tech conference in the world. With over 70,000 people attending - my daily wait for lunch averaged 55 minutes and the days were packed with investor-startup meet-ups, thematic panels on the hottest topics in technology, investing and startup building, and of course, epic side events. Among many, some of the speakers included Tim Draper, Charles Hoskinson, Olena Zelenska, Changpeng Zhao, Sebastien Borget, Alison Loehnis, Geoff Ralston, and key quotes and questions raised included: ‘VCs unfazed by rising inflation’, Read full story ➯ ;‘Meta and metauniverse – is VR monopoly justified?’; ‘Now it’s time to build’; ‘The real progress we need is not better machines but for all of us to be better humans’; ’Web3 revolution will be bigger than the impact of Internet’;‘There hasn’t been a better time to start a company’.
University endowments are at crossroads and what it means for GPs.
University endowments have been a well-known and reliable backer of venture capital funds, allocating more budget to this asset class over the recent years. Unlike insurance funds, endowments are not constrained by capital charges, hence they are able to take a long-term investment horizon and higher risks in return for higher expected returns. Increased exposure to VCs has helped some endowments to outperform in recent years, but now, some of the US-based high-performing university endowments, the biggest Venture Capital backers also in Europe, are facing their worst performance since the financial crisis. What will this mean for the future relationship between GPs and this class of LPs? Read full story ➯
From the Community
TOKEN2049 is kicking off next week in London.
Female Foundry is an official Community Partner of TOKEN2049, an annual event that brings together entrepreneurs, investors and developers creating the future of Web3 and we offer 10% discount on all tickets to this epic event to our subscribers. With 10% discount, you save £239.8 on the late-bird prices - instead of £2,398.80, you will pay £2,159.0 this year. Grab the last tickets remaining! Tickets ➯
Hiring
Check Female Foundry Job Board, and join female-founded startups.
Shippr ➯ Business Developer | GoHenry ➯ Marketing Promotions Manager | Frontdoor Labs ➯ Founder Associate
Find more female-founded startup jobs here.
That is it for this week. Have a great weekend!
Agata
Written by Agata Nowicka, a founder of Female Foundry, a serial entrepreneur, and an investor based in London.
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