Female Foundry Week 94: Go big and go home. Clarity and purpose. Floating valuations. The First Glimpse of The Data | Female Foundry x HSBC Innovation Banking.
Welcome to The Week 94, 2023 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - where investors and female founders meet.
In the news
Tallinn-based Haut.AI, co-founded by Anastasia Georgievskaya, raises a €2m Seed round led by LongeVC, for its skincare B2B SaaS solution; Helsinki-based Resistomap, founded by Windi Muziasari, picks up a €2m round led by Ananda Impact Venture, to tackle threat of antimicrobial resistance; French biotech Toopi Organics, co-founded by Alexandra Carpentier, bags a €8.4m round from EIC Accelerator, for its upcycling solution; Rotterdam-based Travel Diaries, founded by Veerle Witte, fetches a €1.2m Seed round led by ICE Capital; German Filu, co-founded by Dr. Anna Magdalena Naderer, lands a €5.1m Series A round, co-led by YZR and DN Capital for its vet care tele platform.
Spotlight
Go big and go home.
In the statement released on Friday, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced the sudden departure of its co-founder Sam Altman, and a prominent figure in the fast-growing AI sector, quoting a loss of confidence from its board.
The news came as a big surprise not only to the tech world, but it looks like to Altman himself. A day before his ousting, Altman spoke at the stage of the APEC summit in San Francisco, only ten days ago, he revealed his biggest plans yet for making OpenAI’s technology go mainstream, including the launch of an online store and customised chatbots. Altman’s co-founder, Greg Brockman, was also dismissed on Friday, and given that Open AI’s board was made of six, including Altman and Brockman, the faith of the company, and to certain degree of the world, was decided by four people on Friday morning. Quite striking.
Meanwhile, Altman’s nemesis, Elon Musk, released a new chatbot this week called Grok. Grok’s launch has now been hugely overshadowed by the OpenAI drama.
We will see how the early departure of Altman will impact the future of OpenAI, for now, Mira Murati who, ironically, previously worked at Musk’s Tesla, is taking over the OpenAI ship.
As of this morning (Sunday) the situation is still developing; Apparently, the OpenAI board is now in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO, with an agreement for the board to resign. It looks like OpenAI’s investors, including Microsoft, who weren’t given advance warning or opportunity to influence the board’s decision to remove Altman, are now weighing in..
Fundraising
Clarity and purpose.
Another busy week! I met a few great founders this week and had some fantastic conversations.
If there is one skill that I wish founders would spend more time on mastering is communication. It might sound trivial, and yet, when you think about it, as a founder, you constantly talk to strangers: customers, investors, vendors, potential hires, partners, advisors .. the list is long. I truly believe that the destiny of your company is closely related to how good you are at communicating. The ability to convey your thoughts concisely and accurately, might turn to be your secret weapon. I must be honest, I get quickly bored with poor communicators. I need to be very motivated, otherwise, I just switch off. I am not a native English speaker, I have an accent, and I constantly strive to be a better communicator. Luckily, good communication is not about accents and it is relatively easy to train. The key are consistency and insight. Only you know what is going on in your head. Do your words match your intentions? I have found this set of short videos with a few tips on how to get started. Watch here ➯.
Analysis
Floating valuations.
There is a growing debate in the VC industry about the importance of frequently adjusting valuations of portfolio companies to align with prevailing market conditions, especially in the context of down rounds. Currently, there is no industry standard for how often VC firms should report the valuations of their portfolio companies, but an increasing number of LPs are advocating for more standardised and frequent revisions of company valuations.
Many VCs challenge the trend, saying that markdowns are arbitrary and adjusting valuations is meaningless until the company is sold or goes public. But many LPs want to see these updated valuations, even if they only reflect paper losses and gains, arguing that they provide a necessary snapshot of a venture fund’s performance.
Given the current fundraising conditions for VCs, the pressure from LPs for more comprehensive performance data is likely to only intensify. This is particularly relevant as startups that raised capital at the market peak of 2021 are expected to re-enter the fundraising market in the upcoming months.
Community
Let’s get together| Female Foundry x HSBC Innovation Banking
📣 Announcement! Female Foundry is partnering with HSBC Innovation Banking to host an in-person event in London on the 12th of December.
Join us for an evening of celebration and get the first glimpse of the data we have been discovering as part of the State of Gender Diversity in European Venture initiative we are leading, before the official report launch in January!
The evening will bring together VC investors, female founders and angel investors and will be a great opportunity to meet before 2023 ends.
We have a limited number of FREE tickets available, so do not wait and reserve your spot now.
Hiring
This week hiring:
Cult Mia ➯ Chief Operating Officer | Izix ➯ Data Scientist internship | Umami ➯ Stage marketing et communication H/F.
See more jobs on the Female Foundry Job Board.
Founder & Investor Meetups
Wednesday, November 22, Paris ➯ Gérer STATION F, le plus grand campus de startup au MONDE, London ➯ AI Forge Incubator: Cohort One Demo Day | Thursday, November 23, Amsterdam ➯ Network Event: StartUp Essentials.
Enjoy Sunday. See you next week!
Agata
Written by Agata Leliwa Nowicka, an investor, a startup adviser, a two-time entrepreneur, and a founder of Female Foundry based in London.
Suggestions? Drop me an email.
Check femalefoundry.co for more fundraising tools and investor content. View other Female Foundry articles.
I am happy to hear, Leila! Thank you.
Thanks for this useful newsletter