💡 Euro Vision's for Tech
Atomico releases its annual report for European tech. Plus: More IPOs, massive ROIs, mergers in Southeast Asia's largest unicorns, and D2C trends.
Wrapped Up Newsletter #4
Today’s Menu
Deep Dive: Atomico's The State of European Tech 2020 report
Quick Bits: IPO Class of 2020 + Bytedance's dominance
What Else We're Following: 7 articles about everything from D2C to tech monopolies
Jobs - Internships/Full-Time: 16 full-time jobs and internship postings
Feedback: help us to deliver the right content straight into your inbox
Deep Dive 🤿
Not all things were bad in 2020.
IPOs from the likes of Palantir to Snowflake popped off. The highly anticipated launch of SpaceX finally happened. Parasite shattered the glass ceiling with their Oscar win. Most importantly, you've finally mastered that banana bread recipe you've been cooking up since March.
In times of distress, it's important to stress the small and not-so-small wins. This week, with the release of Atomico's annual report, Europe found a massive win which can be a testament to the growing tech landscape taking place.
The stats are pretty reassuring
📈 All you need to do is search "startups", "investing" and "IPO" in Google Trends to know that 2020 is the year of breaking records. Europe's on track to hit a new record of $41 billion in investments, with 18 companies achieving unicorn status thus far in 2020. Although it's still far below North America's $141 billion and Asia's $74 billion levels, this growth is unprecedented in the Western region. Fundraising round sizes are increasing from a median of $0.7 million in 2016 to $1.2 million in 2020, with new funds, follow-on funds and government funds illustrating a growing appetite for capital deployment in the industry.
🇺🇸 More than 550 U.S. institutions participated in at least one European funding round this year (+4% from 2019; +36% from 2016). That's an increase to more than 1/3 of all European tech deals this year. With the arrival of leading U.S. VCs doing everything from participating in seed level to signing big checks, stateside investments into the European tech sector are expected to hit $14 billion this year. Thank COVID -19 for breaking down geographical barriers and making remote Zoom deals a thing.
🦄 Spell it with a capital B. With the success of proudly European firms like Spotify and Adyen, investors are more eager than ever to find growth opportunities in European tech companies. Europe's companies nowadays have the same chance (1 out of 100) of becoming a unicorn as a U.S. company. Klarna ($10.65 billion), UiPath ($10.2 billion), Revolut ($5.5 billion) and Hopin ($2 billion) are just few homegrown unicorns to remember, but be on watch for startups specialized in fintech, healthtech, SaaS or enterprise software; these trends have yet to fully materialize and are here to stay.
🗓️ Wake me up when September ends...or not because September was a big month for European tech investments. The landscape received a total of $5 billion from all investors, highest ever recorded for a month. It's going to take more than a summer slump to slow down the tide in investments.
🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇸🇪 The city of fish and chips and afternoon tea remains to be the hotbed for VC and startup investments. Since 2016, London attracted $34.3 billion in investments, with Berlin coming in at second ($12.6 billion), Paris third ($11.7 billion) and Stockholm fourth ($7.4 billion). France, in particular, had an exceptional year, as it was one of Europe's largest markets to grow; it's set to surpass $5 billion in capital invested on an annualized basis for the first time. Although rich in talent, Central and Eastern European companies continue to be underserved with a lack of investments into the region.
Bottom line: While investments into U.S. and Asia still dominate headlines, don't neglect the European galls just yet. There might be a decreasing need to go global and increasing need to stay local for European investors if a plethora of opportunities and deals can be found just around the corner. While the waves of lockdowns around Europe continue to rock the region's economy, we can expect deal flows to keep afloat going into the new year because not even the disruption of COVID-19 can slow down this train.
Quick Bits 🌎
Recap in the West: IPO Class of 2020
IPO's are popping off with DoorDash, Airbnb and C3.ai. Sequoia's 11x returns. Tech growth fund Highland Europe doubles down in Europe. Skyflow ain't Skynet. Uber divests and invests into self-driving. Uber is also saying hasta la vista to its aerial ride-hailing ambitions. Paris-based Luko raises $60m to insure your home. The US wants to break up Facebook. Germany now has its own SpaceX. Meanwhile, Elon moves to Texas. $75m to let you Calm down. Subscribe to your car. Revolut goes in on B2B. Unit's open for business. Founder Fund's getting high on cannabis. The robot dog once again changes owners. Apple Fitness+ will make you sweat even more. Cleo aims to advise Gen Z on their finances. Gorillas is going bananas for 10-minute grocery delivery. Google plays damage control after firing leading AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru. Tesla's making an equity offer you don't want to refuse. Tink's tinkering with open banking.
Recap in the East: Highest-Valued Startup in the Room
Bytedance set to be valued at a whopping $180 billion. Nio matches Tesla's equity offering with its own. Amazon looks to invest in India's online pharmacy sector. I Squared Capital acquires and builds a cloud behemoth. JD.com banks on digital yuan. Grab and Gojek's years-long clash might find resolve. MissFresh rides the e-grocery wave. Entrepreneur First supports seed rounds in latest fund. Gojek goes in on GoStore to help mom-and-pops. One of Japan's largest VC doubles down in China and India. Hmlet perseveres to keep co-living attractive. A deep analysis on China's community group buying trend. Softbank wants to go private. Ant Group faces limelight on loans. Temasek gets agile. Bytedance gets educational. Grab-Singtel, Sea, and Ant win big with digital licenses in Singapore. Oyo got some oil in its cash tanks.
What Else We're Following 👀
DTC 2.0: key takeaways and trends into investing in digitally native vertical brands (DNVB) in 2020.
Is the orthodoxy of the co-founder mantra overrated?
A somber, yet revealing look into Tony Hsieh's life, leading up to his recent passing.
Fred Wilson's thoughts on why not to break up tech monopolies.
Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Stitch Fix, Calm...all have one thing in common.
A deep dive on Europe's most valuable private tech company – Swedish fintech Klarna
What to expect while fundraising in 2021 - by Russ Heddleston, CEO of DocSend
Tweet of the Week 🐦
Jobs - Internships/Full-Time 👩🏽💼
We're keeping an eye out for relevant and exciting opportunities for you! If you represent a company and want us to promote an open position, send us an email!
Entry Level (0-3 Years)
JourneyOne Ventures - VC Fellowship - Remote
Envision Accelerator - Associate - Remote
Atomic - Summer Fellow - San Francisco
AmFam Insurance - VC Intern - Remote
Cavalry Ventures - Visiting Analyst - Berlin
Heartcore Capital - VC Intern - Berlin
HV Capital - VC Intern - Berlin
JOIN Capital - Visiting Analyst - Berlin
Experienced (3+ Years)
Envision Accelerator - Chief of Staff - Remote
Newchip Accelerator - MBA Intern - Austin, TX
Tusk Venture Partners - Investor - New York
AI Fund - Associate - Palo Alto, CA
Bessemer Venture Partners - Senior Associate - San Francisco
B37 Ventures - Fundraising Analyst - San Jose, CA
Supernode Ventures - MBA Intern - New York
BCG Digital Ventures - Venture Architect Intern - New York
Heads-up: Ada Ventures just closed its first fund and Cavalry Ventures added another €20m fund – there might be new opportunities popping up there soon!
Feedback
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