Michael Jackson

Spotify's become the first European tech company founded this century to pass a market cap of $50B. I remember having drinks with a famous American VC at the eG8 event back in 2011 and him telling me that Europe would never produce $10B+ tech companies. So a $50B market cap for a European tech company is a big deal. It shows just how far Europe's tech scene has come, and that European entrepreneurs can aim big too. Hopefully the first of many more.

#startups #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #europe #spotify #valuation #marketcap #unicorns #startupecosystem #stocks #publicmarkets #nasdaq #nyse #vc #venturecapital #vcmath #angelinvesting #seedcapital #seedfunding #growthcapital

Choose Your Investor...this from Kendall Hope Tucker is just waaay too accurate. 👀 🕹 🤣

#venturecapital #vc #startups #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #investors #investment #investing

Stunning drone footage by Lior Patel of European VCs chasing after the latest grocery delivery startup. 🐑

#venturecapital #vc #startups #scaleups #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #fomo #herdmentality #investing #investors #investment #funding #fundraising #tech #technology #innovation

Union Square Ventures, one of the very best in the venture game, just closed out its first fund at 15x after 18 years. Congrats and respect!

It also is a great example of just how long the lifespans of venture funds, even VERY good venture funds, are. I often hear LPs gripe that deep tech returns take too long. In reality they don't take longer than shallow tech does now. A surprising number of LPs don't know the average VC fund now takes close to 15 years to close.

https://lnkd.in/e9bRgABY

#venturecapital #vc #startups #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #deeptech #tech #technology #innovation #money #business #investors #investment #investing #limitedpartners #familyoffices

Share price that investors initially paid to get into Figma, which Adobe is buying for ~$40.20 per share:

Index Ventures - $0.088
OATV - $0.088
Greylock - $0.199
Kleiner Perkins - $0.332
Sequoia - $1.098
a16z - $4.619
Durable - $21.29

$20B is double Figma's valuation from June 2021 and is 50 times Figma’s reported $400M of 2022 annual recurring revenue (ARR). The deal values Figma employees at about $25M each. 

https://lnkd.in/eBSM_bVa

#venturecapital #vc #startups #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #investing #investors #investment #money #business

When you’re fundraising, it’s AI
When you’re hiring, it’s ML
When you’re implementing, it’s linear regression
When you’re debugging, it’s printf()

via Baron Schwartz

There’s likely a climatetech VC bubble being formed in Europe. There are a lot of funds raising substantial amounts of money by Partners who know little about climate issues or tech. Sadly, this feels a bit like a repeat of the cleantech VC bust from earlier this century.

And similarly to the cleantech bust, this could end up hurting the funding of climatetech companies as it could poison the well so to speak. This is what happened after the cleantech bust. LPs wouldn’t touch the space for 10+ years.

The urgency of funding climate solutions (and make no mistake, there is definite urgency) shouldn’t dissuade LPs from performing proper DD on fund managers, or from using common sense when allocating. We absolutely need more money going to climatetech, but it needs to go to people who understand the space.

#venturecapital #vc #startups #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #climatetech #cleantech #environment #deeptech #investing #money

A bootstrapped entrepreneur doing more with far less than well funded competitors. 🥁 😉

https://lnkd.in/eRWziq2h

#venturecapital #vc #startups #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship

Introducing the ✨Icelandverse✨

Well played, Iceland. Well played. 👏🏻 🤣

🇮🇸

Happy Monday everyone!

#venturecapital #vc #facebook #metaverse #zuckerberg #tech #technology #innovation #deeptech

You gotta love Masa. He always swings hard. The world needs more people like him.

This was from the Stargate Project announcement, a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. Initial equity funders in Stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility. Masayoshi Son will be the chairman. Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners. Buildout is currently underway, starting in Texas.

Lots on this remain to be seen - like how much money they actually have committed - but I appreciate the spirit of 'go big or go home'. There's been estimates that OpenAI would need $50B-$100B a year in the coming years, and this fits that scale.

https://lnkd.in/enKFK5DV

“I have an investor relations group of two people...the group that manages $230 billion in cash is seven people“.

Luca Maestri runs a tight ship at Apple. It's easy for staff size to get bloated as companies scale, and many tech companies went on hiring sprees in recent years. This clip is a good reminder that most departments can be smaller than what they are.

Full video: https://lnkd.in/eeSZMkm3

🍎 🇮🇹

#venturecapital #vc #startups #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #tech #technology #innovation #apple #money #business #investing #investors #investment

Philips has helped birth some of the biggest and most important tech companies on the planet.

Nice graphic from Reza Zahiri, PhD, MBA.

https://lnkd.in/eMEnwwqS

A more complete image of the Philips family tree can be found here: https://lnkd.in/ehgaVrmu

🇳🇱 🌷 🧡

This is correct. I’ve publicly said it many times. It also sends some Europeans into an absolute meltdown at the mere mention of the idea.

No one is advocating for Europeans to only know English, nor is this a push to eradicate any languages. Having English as the official language of the EU would simplify its administration, and the truth is that any European child born today that doesn't become fluent in English will be at a disadvantage in life, so make it Europe wide policy that all education is bilingual. It's just common sense at this point. 🇪🇺

https://lnkd.in/evYBNkMh

Simply impressive. Index Ventures is hands down the top VC firm to have come out of Europe (with its origins in Switzerland of all places). 🇨🇭🇬🇧 🇪🇺 🇺🇸

“Europe’s internal barriers are equivalent to a tariff of 45% for manufacturing and 110% for services. These effectively shrink the market in which European companies operate: trade across EU countries is less than half the level of trade across US states”.

Mario Draghi dropping more hard truths on the EU. Growth is a policy choice and Europe all too often choses against it.

As much as some European politicians and bureaucrats like to point the finger of blame elsewhere, Europe’s economic (and security, entrepreneurial, etc.) woes are largely self-inflicted.

https://lnkd.in/eSNnKwNz

Crazy stat: 72% of companies that were unicorns by the end of very frothy 2021 haven’t raised an up round since. 😳

A lot of LPs should be having some hard talks with their GPs.

Slide via Carta.

When the junior VC who sourced the deal and performed the due diligence realises they have no carry and the Partner who's taking the board seat is going to get all the credit.

TGIF!!

#venturecapital #vc #funding #fundraising #investing #investors #investment

It's startups all the way down.

TGIF!

#venturecapital #vc #startups #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship

Apple is more valuable than all the world's unicorns combined. 🤯 🍎 🦄

“You could buy all of the unicorns in the world for less than Apple. The 750 unicorns have a combined valuation of $2.37 trillion. Apple’s market cap is $2.42 trillion. If just one of those companies ends up being worth more than Apple one day, you get the other 749 for free.“

Super interesting read from Packy McCormick on early-stage investing and his fund. Well worth reading.

https://lnkd.in/gyEQQPX

#venturecapital #vc #startups #scaleups #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #funding #fundraising #investing #investors #investment #tech #technology #innovation #deeptech #hardtech #business #money