EUVC Newsletter | 13.02.23
Entrepreneur First turns 10, LGBTQ+ Support in VC, Gil Dibner foresees an explosion in VC land, where wealth managers are allocating capital and the 7 options for FOs get exposure to tech.
Welcome to the newsletter that rounds up the week in European Venture from a GP/LP perspective.
Firstly, a heartfelt welcome to the 20 newly subscribed venturers who have joined us since our last post! If you haven’t yet subscribed, join the 7,681 angels, VCs and LPs that do 🤗 Funny side note: Think only 20 new subscribers in a week is bad? Turns out it has an effect when David and Andreas are sick as f*** 😁 (it’s 10% the normal growth! 😲)
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Do ping us if you have news, opinions or memes you want us to share. We’re here to connect & amplify the European Venture community 📣
Table of Contents
Who are the angels we should know in CEE?
This week’s events
The Rise of Angel LP Syndicates
Affinity Campfire Conference Berlin
This week’s podcasts
GIFs & MEMEs
LP Musings w Chris Wade: Entrepreneur First Turns 10
Stories of the week
The EUVC Lowdown on LGBTQ+ Support in VC
Gil Dibner: It seems there’s a huge explosion coming in VC Land
Where are the best wealth managers allocating capital in private markets?
The 7 options for family offices to invest in technology companies.
This week’s funds
This week’s hires
Who are the angels we should know in CEE? 😇
We’re now quite a handful of recordings into our Super Angel Podcast and would LOVE to add some CEE Super Angels to the roster!
So if you know angels we meet, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Andreas!
This week’s events 📅
The Rise of Angel LP Syndicates 😇
Date April 11, 2023 | 15:00 - 15:45 CET | Venue LinkedIn Live
Join us as we dive into the rise of LP syndicates in Europe, how such syndicates work & how you can leverage them as an angel 🚀
We'll cover the three hacks of Angel LP Syndicates:
📊 The diversification hack
🕸️ The network hack
💡 The learning hack
And dive into topics such as :
👩⚖️ The regulatory environment
🔎 Case studies
🎯 Real opportunities
The event will be hosted by David and Andreas, the founders of EUVC, and will draw on learnings from pioneering Angel LP Syndicates in Europe as well as having interviewed more than 150 European VCs & Angels for The European VC and Super Angel Podcast 🎙️.
Affinity Campfire Conference Berlin
Date February 28, 2023 | Venue Factory Berlin Görlitzer Park
Lohmühlenstrasse 65, 12435 Berlin
Have you wondered how some dealmakers remain successful in the face of a shifting market? Register today and see what Affinity's Relationship Intelligence event, Campfire Berlin, has in store for you on February 28!
This week’s podcasts🎧
The Super Angel, #05 Alexandre Berriche, Fleet
Today we are happy to welcome you to Alexandre Berriche, one of Europe's absolute premiere Super Angels and Sequoia scout with more than 80 seed investments under his belt. Alex is also the CEO and co-founder of Fleet, a french B2B startup focused on simplifying the equipment, management and renewal of computers and cellphones for startups and SMBs.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How Alex has leveraged Fleet in his angel investing and vice versa
How humbly Alex, as one of Europe’s very top angels, presents himself, his investing and his thinking. Truly remarkable!
The role of round leads, trust, networks and trends in Alex’s investing
Why Alex is finding himself more focused on founder ambition level, and the ability to attract the best of the best, articulating their vision and thinking
The European VC, #153 Edward van Wezel, BioGeneration Ventures
Today we are happy to welcome Edward van Wezel, Founding and Managing Partner of BioGeneration Ventures. Launched in 2006, BGV has managed over 250 million euros across four funds. They invest in medical and healthcare innovations that have high potential to positively impact patients.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Edward’s route from chemical engineering to Venture capital
How BGV thinks about sourcing from all of Europe and why certain geos have risen to be their core focus
On working with universities, research institutes, TTOs and the status of IP ownership in Europe
On building your ideal LP base and the importance of designing for diversity
The European VC,#152 Sara Rywe, byFounders
Today we are happy to welcome Sara Rywe, Partner at byFounders - a €110m early-stage, community-powered, founders-led VC fund. Sara is an entrepreneur at heart with experience from a range of tech startups and has also worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and led the global strategy implementation at Danske Bank.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Going from a simple town in Sweden to partner at one of the leading funds in the Nordics
The story behind the framework and building of a fund pioneering true founder friendly terms
Why impact awareness has become central to byFounders even though it’s not a full-fledged impact or climate fund
An exciting look under the hood of building and running the byFounders Collective to leverage their Angel LP base
The European VC, #151 Ali Karabey, 212
Today we are happy to welcome Ali Karabey, Founding Partner at 212, a venture capital firm that backs B2B tech startups with 85 million dollars of commited capital and 170 million dollars in Assets Under Management. This year are launching their Fund III aiming for 70 million in size.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How the Turkish ecosystem has developed since 212 launched as the first fund in the region back in 2012
How understanding LPs and having a long-term approach to the relationship can make a real difference in your fundraise
How Ali thinks about investing in emerging markets and scale to invest outside of your region of comfort
How Ali has dealt with geopolitical risk and how - in that light - VC’s fluctuations can seem relatively small
GIFs & Memes 🙊
2023 Bootstrapped founders be like:
Credits: David Citron, Sheva
Startup employee perks ‘21 vs ‘23
Credits: David Citron, Sheva
VC caught getting FOMO about a competitor’s deal
Credit: Michael Jackson
LP musings w. Chris Wade 🧠
By Chris Wade, founding partner of Isomer Capital (and European Venture’s #1 LP OG). Get to know Chris in our two-part episode on his journey & thinking 🎧.
Entrepreneur First (EF) 10 year birthday celebrations 🥳
Last week, the EF founders and team celebrated their 10th birthday in London. Aside from me wanting to express that it’s been a true privilege to work with and support Matt Clifford and Alice Bentinck right from the beginning in 2012,their story holds some thoughts and learnings for emerging VC’s.
Factors that have allowed EF to grow from idea to global institution 📈
An ecosystem that supported and willed them to be successful: The idea that EF could create a generation of world-class entrepreneurs was, to some, a pipe dream. But to others (most!) it was a beautiful idea that they wanted to happen and therefore leaned in to support. It’s worth saying that the support came from across the whole ecosystem including VC’s, successful entrepreneurs, leading VC-focused banks and government.
Founders with a powerful vision, but who were all ears to input, advice, and new ideas. In the early years, this factor was critical to enabling the first point. This, to my mind, was perhaps the most important factor in EF’s early success and a rare phenomenon of founders projecting an entrepreneurial vison that countered a historical view on company building but at the same time was humble enough to be receptive to advice. Speaking of advice, it’s also worth noting that they were also smart enough to avoid most of the bad or self-serving input that came their way.
Early successes began to prove their vision: The early demo days of newly created company founders were impressive and generated greater belief in Europe’s role in the global start-up economy. This led to comparisons with Y -Combinator which was the thought leader at the time albeit with a al tradition company incubation model. As one Japanese corporation who visited EF in 2014 observed:
“The quality of EF founders at the top of the Venture pipeline bodes very well for the future of European venture capital.”In retrospect, that comment seems on point 👇
Notwithstanding EF’s conviction in the long term vision, they had the strength to iterate on what the company creation data was saying.
As Isomer Capital was created, EF Fund I was one of our very early commitments. And doing so, we had to look at EF with our minds rather than our hearts. We had to ask ourselves: does this model have the ability to generate LP returns?
The heart said: “yes, yes, yes!” but what did the numbers say?This is where the team truly impressed in having diligently collected significant amounts of data on what worked in prior EF-cohorts and what didn’t.
There’s no way to get around it: company creation from a recruited collection of super-smart young people is as much art as it science. However, the science is measurable and is telling.
I still recall the energy and insights in our conversations with the team about “we got this right, but we got that wrong, and we’re going to change like this”.
Now, the aforementioned EF fund I is one of the best performing in the Isomer VC fund portfolio, so nothing else to say than: “I’m looking forward to the next 10 years!”
This week’s stories 🗞️
The EUVC Lowdown on LGBTQ+ Support in VC
Cathy is the founder of CEW Communication and host of the EUVC Lowdown podcast where she wraps up the week in European VC with a panel of Europe’s best. Reach out to Cathy if you have news to share on the pod.
This week’s episode was fully dedicated to one topic: The support of LGBTQ+ founders and VCs & the new report published by Proud Ventures, a UK-based grass-roots collective of LGBTQ+ investors, VCs, and angels👇
Joining in for the discussion of the report on the EUVC Lowdown podcast were:
Edward Kandel, a FinTech and InsurTech Investor at Founders Factory, a sector-focussed startup accelerator and venture studio for pre-seed and seed stage startups
Dan Bowyer, Partner of Superseed, who back ambitious b2b founders and accelerate them from seed to series A.
Andreas from the EUVC team.
Listen to the full episode below 🎧.
Here are some important key findings from the report:
75% of LGBTQ+ founders and 79% of LGBTQ+ VCs are withholding their identity to some degree from other investors in the ecosystem
Our data set shows that gay founders raised a median of 2.25x more than bisexual founders and 22x more than lesbian founders.
Cis man founders raise a median of 2.5x more than cis women founders and 10x more than trans founders
Our survey data showed that just a ⅓ of VCs who stated they were taking action to support ‘diverse’ founders were doing anything to support LGBTQ+ founders.
On the positive side, many VCs noted their interest to support LGBTQ+ founders, yet were unsure of what to do.
More negatively, anonymous shocking stories showed that discrimination and homophobia are still present in our ecosystem.
The LGBTQ+ community is a collection of people with a wide variety of identities and experiences - no two people are the same
And maybe most importantly, read and consider the summary of recommendations 👇
Gil Dibner: It seems there’s a huge explosion coming in VC Land
This week, Gil shared one of the best analyses of where we are in venture right now and what we might have in store. Fully reproduced below 👇 Join the convo on twitter.
Where are the best wealth managers allocating capital in private markets?
I wanted to share some key excerpt from Michael Sidgmore’s newsletter Alt Goes Mainstream. For this post, he asked some of the largest wealth managers and alts investment platforms that are responsible for over $1.5T AUM how investors will allocate to alts in 2023. Definitely worth reading for most of our subscribers. Read the full post here or the highlights below 👇
Pierre Caramazza, Head of Global Product, Alternatives, Franklin Templeton ($1.4T AUM, $257B AUM in alts)
One of the lessons that 2022 taught many investors is that diversifying beyond traditional asset classes to solve for their long-term goals is probably a good idea. We think this will drive increased adoption of alternative assets for wealth management or individual investor channels in the coming year. Alternatives currently account for over 20% of U.S. pension fund portfolios, but less than 5% of the average wealth portfolio. We expect wealth portfolios will start to grow closer to those institutional allocations, especially as alternative asset classes become more available through product innovation.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself from adding in the below button here 🤭
Now let’s get back to Pierre Caramazza’s insights:
We also think we will see NFTs move beyond collectibles and novelty items and begin to be used as a wrapper for more serious investment opportunities around hard assets such as commercial real estate and cultural assets such as royalty pools.
Wouldn’t that be nice for a change, huh? 😁
Nicky Sugarman, Partner, Private Equity & Venture Capital at Stanhope Capital ($30B AUM)
We have been allocating capital to private markets every year, and 2023 will be no different. Our approach starts with the belief that timing the market is near impossible, and therefore a long-term consistent plan is the correct method. For us this means a defined allocation across private equity, venture/growth, real estate and private credit, incorporating both direct investments and fund commitments. Given the pricing environment we are now in we expect deals to be done at more realistic valuations, although competition for quality assets will be high, and therefore actual deployment may be slower than previous years. We are already seeing this across the board from early stage venture through to large buyout markets, wherein we have continued to partner with managers who have a history of investing through cycles.
That said, although the overriding market for emerging managers will be difficult, we believe there is an interesting opportunity for selectively partnering with new groups who have the potential to weather the storm well and become the leading names of the future, especially in the early stage venture market.
Within real estate we are seeing interesting opportunities across both the equity and debt side, and expect this to continue throughout the year.
For private credit we have been running slightly underweight in recent years, but think now may be the time to get closer to target.
Phil Huber, Chief Investment Officer, Savant Wealth Management ($14.3B AUM)
The last twelve months were a wake-up call to the shortcomings and challenges facing traditional asset allocation. Despite the outlook for the classic 60-40 portfolio improving drastically from where it was a year ago, we still live in a very uncertain world and that requires a three-dimensional approach to portfolio construction. There’s never a bad time to diversify. Broad adoption of alts will only continue to accelerate in 2023.
Asset classes that not only survive, but thrive, in inflationary regimes, will become staples in advisor-driven, multi-asset portfolios.
2023 will be the year of Niche Credit.
Matt Farrell, Senior Investment Manager, WE Family Offices ($13.4B)
We believe that investors should consistently invest in private markets to ensure vintage diversification. However, given broader market volatility, drawdowns in public markets with lagging private market valuations creating a denominator effect, more capital calls and fewer distributions, and potential for more post Q4 markdowns, there is an even greater need to be targeted and selective focusing on sub strategies with tailwinds.
For example, within venture capital, we believe there could be an opportunity within additive manufacturing as companies re-examine their supply chains and inventory production. Biotech/healthcare continues to have tailwinds due to demographics, government spending and consumer preferences.
Otherwise, we believe there could be an opportunity in secondaries, particularly in VC, as LPs reassess private exposures and rebalance allocations. And finally, we continue to favor real assets, although again being highly selective given the run-up in valuations in certain areas. We are evaluating several commodity and natural resource strategies which has tailwinds from energy transition, deglobalization, geopolitical events, etc.
The 7 options for family offices to invest in technology companies.
Having just shared Michael’s article above, I can’t help but want to share some excerpts from this goldie by David Teten (though almost a year old by now)👇
1. Invest in VC funds (or funds of funds) exclusively.
Advantages:
Professional, experienced management, and crucially netting of carry.
Virtually every financial advisor will tell you not to invest directly in stocks unless you’re a professional stock-picker. This is only more true in the illiquid, opaque private markets!
Disadvantages:
You pay a management fee and carry.
You need to do proper due diligence on the funds.
You don’t have the discretion to make decisions on a per-company level.
In addition, smaller investors normally cannot invest in funds because their checks are too small.
Given that quote, another advert insertion 👇 that’ll bypass your adblocker ⛔
2. Invest in companies via syndicates, usually via online investing platforms.
Advantages:
Established platforms provide steady, pre-diligenced, often high-profile deal flow, with standardized levels of deal details and disclosures.
You have full control to choose whether to participate in any specific investment, normally through a special purpose vehicle (“SPV”).
The platform decides on the SPV’s behalf if and when to liquidate the investment and distribute the gains (or losses).
Disadvantages:
Platforms normally charge carry and management fees.
Carry is calculated on each investment and not the entire portfolio, even if you invest in multiple SPVs.
Syndicates incentivize spray and pray activity in the short term. Short term, the incentive is for syndicate leads to syndicate many deals with very low personal commits – or even deferred commit amounts to scouts. See A Word of Caution to AngelList LPs, which discusses how many investments you see on AngelList (and other platforms by extension) are bridge rounds.
3. Invest in funds, and tell them you’re evaluating them based in part on the number of direct opportunities they’ll provide.
Advantages:
No extra cost on your direct investments, except to the extent that the fund charges fees on SPVs.
Disadvantages:
You’ll still face the challenge of getting and responding positively to a request for coinvestors (“syndication”) before others invest ahead of you, since companies which have secured a reputable lead VC tend to fill up their syndicate extremely quickly.
Veronica Wu, Managing Partner, First Bight Ventures, said, “Unless they [FOs] are willing to set up a team to diligence and review deal flow, investing in funds is probably a better option for them. Even top programs like YC don’t guarantee outlier performance.“
4. Invest in a fund’s General Partnership (i.e., the operating company which manages the VC fund), not just as a passive Limited Partner.
Advantages:
Potential long-term upside from the General Partner’s success in general, not just from a particular fund.
Disadvantages:
Far more complex to negotiate. See Should you give an anchor investor a stake in your fund’s management company?
5. Actively look for coinvestment opportunities in any rounds led by reputable VCs.
Advantages:
No management fees or carry. In general, this is by far the most crowded strategy. The reason is simple: The historically best-performing VCs consistently outperform, a consistency which doesn’t exist in most other asset classes. When you can invest alongside these top funds, you’ll likely outperform.
Disadvantages:
Unless you are an active player in that food chain, you are only going to get the dregs.
Adverse selection is a real issue: When VCs are the most confident in an investment, they’ll write a bigger check and invite only their closest allies into the round.
Joining syndicates is a hard strategy to execute well without suffering the “winner’s curse”, because the VC industry has so many followers (price-takers) and so few price-setters.
6. Publicize that you’re focused & value-added in a specific industry, looking for coinvests, and build relationships with all the founders & VCs in that industry
Advantages:
This is the standard approach used by professional VCs who are not lead investors. You’re going to get inbound, high-quality requests more often with this focused origination approach.
Note the bar is high for truly adding value to companies; just giving generic advice is insufficient.
Disadvantages:
You’ll need to actually deliver on your promises.
7. Lead rounds.
Advantages:
Investors who lead get the best deal flow, because they are the engine of our entire ecosystem.
One experienced family office CIO said to me, “If VCs are fighting it out to get into the best deals, family offices [who are not operating like professional VCs] will only get the rejects.”
Disadvantages:
You are competing with institutional VCs, so you’ll need resources and people comparable to those that the independent VCs have. That means hiring people with an expertise level that would allow them to run an independent VC.
Only a small number of family offices have the asset base to justify doing this.
The average VC looks at 87 companies before investing in 1. So you’ll need to budget for a lot of meetings which result in no checks being written, and also look into automating your investing process as much as possible.
This week’s funds 💵
Section powered by Cathy White.
Ovni Capital, a new French venture firm led by veteran investors Arnaud Laurent and Augustin Sayer, announced a first close of its debut €50M fund❤️🔥, focussed on early-stage investments. The firm is looking to back companies with an international approach from day one 🚀
Parisian headquartered fund ParTech has raised a €245M second Africa fund. Now we usually cover the ins and outs of Europe, but I think it would be a shame not to note the sizable second fund dedicated to African startups. Its first Partech Africa fund, launched in 2018, has backed 17 African startups across nine countries and was responsible for attracting 10 percent of Africa’s total VC spend in 2021 and last year. The second fund will pursue the successful strategy of its first fund. I think this is one to watch, and maybe we’ll see a few more funds eyeing the African opportunity before too long? 🤔
There’s no Plan B, only Planet A 🌍The Berlin-based green tech venture firm has closed a €160M fund, which is grounded in deep scientific methodology. The fund has attracted commitments from BMW and German supermarket chain REWE, as well as the entrepreneurs behind Trivago, HelloFresh and Zalando. Planet A will invest across Europe and Israel.
In keeping with the climate trend, Planet First Partners announced a new €450M fund for post-series B companies, backed by the IKEA group.
And you should check out Inven Capital, which has announced €50 million to invest in clean tech and decarbonisation startups. The second phase of its collaboration with the European Investment Bank. The independent venture firm is allied to CEZ, the Czech energy utility.
I do not doubt we will hear of more climate focussed funds this year, I just wonder what other names they can come up with.
Volvo Group kicked off CampX this week, a new incubator track in Sweden where early-stage startups are invited to collaborate and bring their innovations to life. Since launching in 2019, the group has welcomed over 50 startups - with a focus on developing impactful innovations focused on sustainability - via electromobility, autonomous vehicles and other digital solutions.
CEE startup network enabler Wolves Summit has announced a new accelerator to connect Ukraine’s tech ecosystem in the Visegrad 4 Bloc. the V4Region Up Innobooster will help Ukrainian businesses affected by the war to relocate and support founders who want to assist with Ukrain’s reconstruction. The programme is open to V4 and Ukraine-based MVP startups.
This week’s hires 👩💼
Section powered by the InnovatorsRoom.
EUVC is hiring a junior marketing assistant. Hit up Andreas to apply.
We’re also hiring a junior to midlevel IR 👇 Hit up David to apply.
🇬🇧 Northzone - VC Associate - London innvtrs.com/3X0sp9E
🇬🇧💻 SAGANA - Investment Manager - London, Online innvtrs.com/40pFRqs
🇬🇧 Omnea - Founding Commercial Associate - London innvtrs.com/3HZ52cl
🇩🇪🇬🇧 Founders Factory - Founder & CEO - Berlin, London innvtrs.com/3DRpYQ8
🇩🇪🇬🇧 Speedinvest - VC Associate Fintech - Berlin, London innvtrs.com/3Xc5esX
🇬🇧💻 Ahren Innovation Capital - VC Associate - London, Online innvtrs.com/3x7jLfc
🇪🇸 Elewit Ventures - VC Associate - Madrid innvtrs.com/3JS9x9Z
🇩🇪💻 REHAU - Investment Manager - Munich, Berlin, Online innvtrs.com/3l3bWEg
🇩🇪 Cherry Ventures - VC Analyst - Berlin innvtrs.com/3DBptta
🇩🇪 True Growth Capital - Co-Founder - Berlin innvtrs.com/3JVmrE7
🇩🇪 Enpal - Associate Strategy & CEO Office - Berlin innvtrs.com/3Y7ApHd
🇩🇪💻 Vorwerk Ventures - Visiting Analyst - Berlin, Online innvtrs.com/3kYAy11
🇩🇪 Visionaries Club - Visiting Analyst Internship - Berlin innvtrs.com/3x8PE6S
🇬🇧💻 Mountside Ventures - Finance Associate - London, Online innvtrs.com/3HLyr8p
🇨🇦 Intact Ventures - Principal - Toronto innvtrs.com/3HCs2wo
🇩🇪 1Up Capital - Analyst Internship - Hamburg innvtrs.com/3XYI22S
🇩🇪 UVC Partners - VC Analyst - Munich innvtrs.com/3RHKdVV
🇩🇪 Strategic Business Innovator Berlin - VC Fund Managing Partner - Berlin
innvtrs.com/3YnlJ6u
Thx for reading and being awesome 💗 we love you for it.
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