September update from Isomer Capital
A snapshot of the top European funding rounds and exits in August:
203Â funding rounds were completed (-40% MoM / -30% vs. 3 month average)
€1.9bn was invested into European Startups (-60% MoM / -75% vs. 3 month average).
47 exits occurred, 64 undisclosed, 1 was valued at €1bn
The UK raised €609.1m across 48 deals
Taking a look at some of the August events in the Isomer portfolio also showcases exactly the trajectory Europe is on 📈Tilt, live shopping start-up, raises $18m Series A.
Isomer Portfolio Highlights
🇬🇧 Axle Energy, energy software company, raises $9m Seed
🇮🇹 Casavo, prop-tech company, raises €20m Series D extension
🇳🇱 Timeseer.AI, data operations company, raises €3m Seed extension
🇬🇧 Tilt, live shopping start-up, raises $18m Series A
🇩🇪 Reliant AI, gen-AI data analytics, raises $11.3m Seed
With that, let’s get on to the big events and what they left us with 👇
Isomer Insights & Events
New Wave: Isomer Event
Isomer's, Freddie Macpherson recently created an event, hosted by Isomer as part of our ongoing initiative to support early-stage venture capital (VC) professionals in building their networks and fostering collaboration within the community.
This initiative is designed to encourage co-investments, facilitate knowledge sharing, and help non-Partners to enhance their branding and network. The event brought together 91 attendees from 63 different venture capital firms.
The panel focused on LPs and ways in which non-Partners can effectively engage with them. Our panel was hosted by Allison Graf from Frontline Ventures and featured Isomer's Associate Freddie Macpherson and Dave Neuman from Molten Ventures.
The panel covered several key topics, includingÂ
Collaboration Preferences: How LPs prefer to work with non-Partners and the best practices for establishing strong, long-term working relationships.
Outreach Strategies: Tips for non-Partners on how to approach LPs and make a positive impression.
Positive Signals: What LPs look for when meeting someone in the VC world, highlighting traits and behaviours that stand out.
Ineffective Engagement: Common pitfalls and ineffective strategies that VCs should avoid when engaging with LPs.
Impactful Relationships: Real-life examples and anecdotes where relationships with non-Partners have significantly influenced LP allocation decisions.
Words of Wisdom: Panelists also shared their one-sentence pieces of wisdom, providing valuable takeaways for all attendees.
Last year was the first edition of this event and focused on personal branding strategies for VC professionals. The series is making a meaningful impact on the community, as demonstrated by the strong turnout and engagement from attendees.
We look forward to hosting more of these events in the future, continuing to support and empower the next generation of venture capital leaders.
AI tools used by Isomer CapitalÂ
To date, we have committed to over 40 fund managers, and we speak regularly to them on a wide range of topics, including what tools are available to power up their operations. We are implementing some of those tools ourselves and here is a summary of what we are using internally:
Enhancing deal flow:
Over the last months, we have worked closely with Lynq to develop a tailored solution to capture and organise the information we gather from our interactions with the VCs we research (latest entries on our CRM tool, presentation decks, quarterly reports etc…). We then use it to produce a weekly deal-flow email to update the team on the research and deal activity.Â
In addition, a function enables asking specific questions to find the answer in any of the internal documents we gathered on the GP (LPA, decks, dataroom etc…)Â
Research, information gathering and content production
For our desk research, we mainly use Perplexity, an AI-powered research and conversational search engine that answers queries using natural language predictive text and cites links within its text responses.Â
We also use ChatGPT to produce content and re-write parts of some documents or internal memos.Â
Notes taking
As we have many meetings (in Q1 2024 alone we had 155 one-to-one meetings with VCs and 7 LP advisory committees) we try to improve our note-taking to ensure we capture most of the information. We have started using Granola, an AI notepad, capturing conversation and structuring notes automatically (bullet points, follow-ups etc…). We also sometimes use Otter to take some notes during our Zoom meetings.Â
These are all interesting tools and we continue to explore new ones like Synthesia that could improve our outbound communications. Also, these tools come in addition to the tools we are already using such as Notion (gathering all the internal information with AI query tools to improve workflow) and Affinity (capturing and organizing our interactions with people and organisations outside of Isomer).
We are always on the lookout for relevant AI tools and making sure they are implemented properly. Also, we are careful not to upload any confidential information on AI platforms that could be used to train their models.
So, if you use any tool that you find useful and that could be interesting for us, please share!Â
Isomer in the News
EUVC: Mid Year Review 2024: European Fundraising Sentiment with Chris Wade, Isomer Capital
EUVC: Achievement of the Year Finalist: On resilience and making difficult decisions - Tour Radar story
Isomer Report:Â Commercial Opportunities for Venture Capital with Artificial Intelligence
EUVC: The deep dive on Isomer's 100M€ Secondaries Fund with Joe Schorge and Omalade Adebisi
SuperVenture Interview: What's Hot in European Tech?
European VC Awards Interview:Â Celebrating excellence in venture capital: The European VC awards!
Vestbee: Chris Wade, Founding Partner of Isomer on Mastering the VC game
Upcoming events
🇰🇷 ðŸ‡ðŸ‡° Roadshow (Seoul, 9th September, Hong Kong, 16th, 17th September) - Chris will be meeting with investors.
🇧🇹 Happiness Capital (Bhutan, 10th - 13th September) - Chris will be attending Happiness Capital's Portfolio event.
🇩🇰 Tech BBQ, (Copenhagen, 10th September) - Harry will exchange with the Danish ecosystem and meet investors.
🇫🇷 IPEM - (Paris, 9th-11th September) - Thomas will attend the event in Paris.
🇬🇧BVCA UK Pension Summit (London, 11th September) - Harry and Joe will be attending, Joe is participating to a panel on the outlook for VC.
🇸🇬Milken Asia Summit 2024 (Singapore, 18th-20th September) - Thomas will exchange with industry leaders, leading the charge against humanity's most urgent challenges.
🇬🇧 FRAME by VentureESG (London, 19th September) - Laura will be attending the event.
🇹🇼 Roadshow (Taipei, 23rd and 24th September) - Thomas will meet existing and new investors in Taipei.
🇸🇬 SuperReturn Asia (Singapore, 25th-27th September) - Thomas will attend SuperReturn in Singapore.
🇳🇱 Venture Capital Forum (Amsterdam, 25th September) - Joe will be attending the event.
🇫🇷 WVC:E (Paris, 7th-8th October) - Chloe will be participating in an LP panel covering the topic "Whats in store for the next 12 months"
🇦🇹 Micro GP Summit (Vienna, 4th November) - Chloe will be attending and meeting VCs.
