Female Foundry Week 93: A new class of venture investing. Let’s talk about: Stealth. LPs put performance first. First Prizes Drop. Community Fundraising Roundup.
Welcome to The Week 93, 2023 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - where investors and female founders meet.
In the news
Paris-based insurtech startup Flitter, co-founded by Hajer Gorgi picks up a €2.5m Seed round led by Global Founders; London-based marktplace Cult Mia, founded by Nina Briance, fetches a £2.5 Seed round led co-led by Fuel Ventures, David Wertheimer and Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab; Italian Dreamfarm, co-founded by Maddalena Zanoni, lands a €5m Seed round; Danish Octarine, co-founded by Nethaji Gallage, raises a €4.35m round led by Unconventional Ventures to transform sustainable dyes in the fashion industry; Tallin-based Fyma, co-founded by Karen K. Burns, raises a £1.7m Seed round co-led by Quadri Ventures, SCV and VeUP for its vision technology.
Finnish VC firm Kvanted, co-founded by Maria Wasastjerna, closes €70m fund to invest up to €3m in 20 industrial-tech startups.
Spotlight
A new class of venture investing.
Over the pond, a Seattle-based investment firm Curious, closed $16m in funding this week with a single intention - to buy struggling technology startups, at a discount.
Curious is not alone. An increasing number of investment firms are raising tens of millions of dollars with the intention of acquiring majority stakes in startups to turn them around. With high interest rates and slashed valuations, VCs now are very careful about where they allocate their cash, leaving a number of reasonably valuable startups at risk of collapse. VCs have dramatically pulled back on their investments this year, with just $73bn invested in the third quarter across the world, down from $106bn during the same period last year. Is this a new category of investments emerging in front of us?
London based Resurge Growth Partners and Tikto Capital, the latter launched by Matthew Bradley, an ex chief investment officer of a London-based VC firm Forward Partners, San Francisco-based Arising Ventures.. and many others are now eyeing the opportunity to bridge the funding gap between the VC and PE markets. For context, the number of exits of VC-backed start-ups to private equity firms has grown to 24% over the past couple of years, tripling as a proportion of such deals since 2010.
Will 2024 be a defining moment for this trend? For now, dealflow stemming from Venture Capital firms is only growing…
Fundraising
Let’s talk about: Stealth.
It has been a busy week! Two conferences and FFOH. I had some great conversations with founders at FFOH this week, but what surprised me is that a couple of founders I came across said they were still building in ‘stealth mode’. Is ‘stealth mode’ still a thing? What is the purpose of ‘stealth mode’ today? What does it suppose to signal? That you are not ready to talk to your potential customers yet? I really do not think that your potential customers care. Honestly. - “Come and see us whenever you are ready”. Is it supposed to keep your potential investors on their toes? Believe me, good investors have deep networks and very little capacity to remember. Is it because you have not figured out what you are building yet? I think it might take years before you do, and even then, ‘knowing’ is a process, never a point in time.
Analysis
LPs put performance first.
As 2023 is coming to a close, it looks like LPs remain cautious, holding their capital close and prioritising investments in funds in top-quartile performance, the latest data suggests. This makes an even more challenging fundraising environment for less established managers. The fundraising landscape has seen a decline in commitments to first-time managers since Q2 this year, partially caused by the overallocation of capital in private markets until 2022 that in turn has been leading to fewer new capital commitments. To give you an idea, the average time to close a buyout fund over the past 12 months in the US has been 16.1 months, the longest since 2009.
First Prizes Drop! State of Gender Diversity in European Venture.
Female Foundry x Slush - Helsinki, 30 November - 1 December 2023
Slush is the official partner for the State of Gender Diversity in European Venture initiative.
The complimentary ticket winner to Slush is: Lydia (1XdGd5). You can view the draw here.
Slush is officially sold out. Congratulations! You should be feeling lucky 😉.
In case you cannot make it, the backup winners are (in order): Eugénie (FMu5LB), Shakiba (5ET9MK), Vanessa (P7lJDD), Shikirti (8Y8K9V), Petra (JDKliF).
Female Foundry x Carta Dinners - London, 21, 28 November 2023
On the 21st and 28th of November, we are hosting two dinners in London in collaboration with Carta to celebrate our State of Gender Diversity in European Venture initiative. To enter the draw, you must have filled in our Survey. Thank you for everyone who has so far completed the Survey!
The lucky winners of the dinner spots are:
Dinner One: 21st of November, 6:30pm - Female founders, VC investors and Angel investors.
Founders: Ligia (zdD8Fv), Nora (il2kf5), Ritika (BhfK76), Nele (iVjGjZ), Federica (HMPd4z), Yuqing (xAVDxq), Lara (FWjGQF) - Backups: Becky (XJbubP), Valerie (KRGh6b), Zhin (sDKp7M). VC investors: Kamelya (D0FeJz), Francois (z08CC9), Celia (v479TR), Iris (rFUhyC), Lene (e4u8xV), Antti (cz8cKp), Marc (C1vRne) - Backups: Voria (P1Ydy7), Kristian (B0F3it), Alexandre (26YVf4), Clara (6KBqss), Samantha (klXekM), Iulia (yoO7Kw). Angel investors: Andy (FOdMC6), Omar (pIwFuD), Carmel (HF0vG6), Marc (SLEQka), Rory (zEQCf8), Lawrence (2sFWu0), Julie (5czLBh) - Backups: Fernando (NfwQZ1), Pauline (9Oojlg).
Please see the Dinner 1 ballot draws here: Founders, VC investors and here, Angel investors.
Dinner Two: 28th of November, 6:30pm - Female Emerging Fund Managers and LP investors.
LP investors: Martin (bSxvTH), Liz (RrWLUA), Andrea (J4CRaH), Franck (tPxXvl), Ola (fT6jkL) - Backup: Veronika (q37Qzk), Won (Y3Vydq). Female Emerging Fund Managers: Karina (eAHqpH), Sekayi (bXGJ4w), Osmin (elldvt), Rubina (2f5EKA), Karolina (7YtyyW), Tsolmon (i0ZOlC), Marta (CUFB63), Alina (DDosHA), Esther (alEQ1d), Backups: Katharina (Rlrn7f), Louise (cNqO8K).
Please see the Dinner 2 ballot draw here: LP investors, Female Emerging Fund Managers.
Congratulations to all the winners! I will get in touch with you shortly.
Community round up: October.
Despite the challenging fundraising conditions, October was a record-breaking month for female founders in the Female Foundry community in Europe, who raised €278.8m across fundraising stages.
Hiring
This week hiring:
The Selection Lab ➯ Junior Customer Success Manager | Fifth Dimension AI ➯ Marketing Manager | Incapto ➯ Sales Development Representative B2B.
See more jobs on the Female Foundry Job Board.
Founder & Investor Meetups
Block Dojo has just launched the applications to its new cohort. Please check it out ➯ here.
Have a great rest of your Sunday. See you next weekend!
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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