Sequoia & Founders Fund coming East and Early
A look at some of the implications on US money coming to Europe and the top early-stage deals across the continent in the last 2 weeks.
For any UK founders at the pre-seed/seed stage, there is the opportunity for you to pitch some of Europe’s top VC’s in the coming weeks. Dubbed ‘the demo day without an accelerator’, the Seed Stage will be next held on 20th April - you can apply here.
Rounding up the last two weeks of deals it’s been really interesting to see Founders Fund and Sequoia active in Europe, with the latter investing in Norwegian Tillit’s $3m seed round. Two iconic US funds with a multi-stage focus coming East and Early. What does this mean for European entrepreneurship and Venture Capital?
I think three things we can expect over the next few years:
More US capital flowing to Europe. If the industry greats are leading, then the rest will follow. More European offices will be established in hubs such as London, Paris and Berlin.
More niche & local funds. Fairly obvious this, but whilst larger funds with expansive geographical coverage are operating it will become more and more difficult for existing funds to win allocation in top companies. The main counter to this will be focused and niche funds that can demonstrate a deep understanding of the founders’ industry or stage.
Larger Outcomes. As the ecosystem matures, through more growth-stage and multi-stage capital - the ecosystem will most likely produce larger outcomes. In recent weeks Europe has seen UIPath valued upwards of $35bn and Deliveroo eyeing a $7bn IPO in London.
Overall, we are certainly headed towards an exciting decade of European entrepreneurship. Might some of the companies below be the next case study of success? 👀
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
Raised: $14m (Seed)
Description: Position by the founders as a “knowledge hacking” app. Uptime presents five-minute “knowledge hacks” from books, courses and documentaries. TechCrunch has more here.
Investors: Lord David Alliance and other Angels.
Raised: $3.7m (Seed)
Description: Based in London, Hoxton Farms is growing cultivated fat as an ingredient for the meat alternatives industry. TechCrunch has more here.
Investors: Founders Fund, BACKED VC, CPT Capital, Form Ventures and others.
Raised: $3.7m (Seed)
Description: Jigsaw is a dating app that is based around the premise of hiding user faces with jigsaw puzzle pieces, obscuring the full picture. As users match and interact through messaging, pieces are removed and the full profile revealed. The company is looking to expand on its early success in the UK and establish itself in the US. TechCrunch has more here.
Investors: The Relationship Corp and UK/US Angels.
Raised: $3.7m (Seed)
Description: Collaborative tax management for in-house teams. Loc.tax is building a ‘tax operating system’ that enables in-house teams to stay on top of international tax, risk, and compliance workloads.
Investors: Cavalry Ventures, Seedcamp, The Fund, Mustard Seed MAZE and others.
Raised: $3.1m (Seed)
Description: FourthRev builds online learning programmes that lead to qualifications from leading universities, certifications from top technology companies and digital technology jobs with a global network of employer partners.
Investors: Charlie Songhurst, Reach Capital, Emerge Education and others.
🇳🇴 Norway
Raised: $3m (Seed)
Description: Tillit is a fintech startup that is building something akin to buy now, pay later for B2B purchases.
Investors: Sequoia Capital, LocalGlobe and Visionaries Club.
🇸🇪 Sweden
Raised: $3m (Seed)
Description: Insurely is an Insuretech startup aiming to help customers find, choose, and manage their insurance easily. They offer data aggregation through their API enabling anyone to offer an Insurance product to their customers.
Investors: Luminar Ventures.
🇩🇪 Germany
Raised: $Unknown (Seed)
Description: Everdrop manufactures sustainable and environmentally conscious cleaning products. Their previous round was done by HV Capital and Vorwerk Ventures in September.
Investors: Felix Capital and HV Capital.
Raised: $3m (Seed)
Description: Luminovo is a SaaS provider building the electronics operating system for EMS, OEMs, and distributors to accelerate technological progress.
Investors: Charlie Songhurst and other Angels.
Raised: $3m (Seed)
Description: PowerUs is a digital career platform for technical blue-collar workers to empower them in their careers and help them find better jobs.
Investors: Y-Combinator, HV Capital and angels.
🇨🇾 Cyprus
Raised: $3m (Seed)
Description: Colossi Games is a new mobile games developer based in Cyprus founded by a team of industry veterans. They are striving to create genre-defining games by combining socially engaging elements with familiar mechanics to create enticing and unique gameplay experiences daily for a midcore audience.
Investors: EQT Ventures and Play Ventures.
🇪🇪 Estonia
Raised: $1.8m (Seed)
Description: Binalyze is a company aiming to create robust, easy to use, effective, and high-performance solutions for addressing the modern needs of Digital Forensics and Incident Response.
Investors: Earlybird Venture Capital.