Weekly update #33
Welcome to this edition of the weekly newsletter. The idea behind this activity is to gather all the information in the startup ecosystem in one place, with a special focus on the fintech market.
Before jumping to the main piece of content I’ve read this week, a quick note from my side. On Tuesday 2nd I will be the guest of Agicap to talk about banking connectivity and how PSD2 ties in with the ERP industry. You can watch the live broadcast here.
Coming back to us, I’ve been reading a very interesting report about a topic that seems to be not a target for startups anymore, at least in public: becoming a unicorn.?
Until 2020, with all the stimulus and liquidity present in the market, becoming a unicorn seemed to be so simple that everyone was trying to become one. But then the valuation bubble exploded after interest rates went up, and those valuations were not possible anymore. One of the results of this chain of events was a specific storytelling in the market that wanted startups to have higher revenue as their main goal, instead of a huge valuation.?
Dealroom.co , in partnership with Armstrong International , released a paper titled “The making of a fintech unicorn: The path to $1B and founder CV”. Inside this report there is a very interesting study about the main variable that defines a unicorn founder, assuming there is still someone out there that want to be one.
One of the most interesting take away I found in this study was the flywheel effect. Over 50% of founders since 2015 are serial founders, or at least second time founders. In this trend, we can also find some other interesting path, like the revolut mafia, that seems to have started more than 100 fintech startups all over Europe in the last 10 years.
Another very interesting takeaway was the median age. I’ve always read reports about the average age of successful founders, finding that usually they are between 40 and 45 years old. The median age of unicorn founders in fintech is 32 years old, with 23.8% of them being between 24 and 30 years old. I believe this data is strongly related to the peak of the trend we saw in this market, and possibly changing also in the future when the market will recover in terms of investments.
Among the various variables taken into consideration in this study you can also find the number of founders at the launch of the venture, the academic background and many others, but none of them seems to be as important as the country of origin. As you can see in this image, launching in the UK seems to have a clear advantage in this market, and I am quite sure that this information doesn’t take anyone by surprise.
To be honest, I am not really sure if being a unicorn is not a target anymore because of the funding environment or if founders are really looking for sustainable business models over the long term. What I see here, is a specific portrait of the typical unicorn founder that limits extensively the pool of people who could potentially do that. You can find the link to the full report here, if you want to take a look.
Finally, an update unrelated to the report that I recently came across while reading some articles in Sifted. Apparently, after some months of decline, funding is finally coming back to the early stage segment in Europe. In the image you can see here, there was a total inflow of investments in May ‘24 of approximately $1.7 billion and a total of 407 deals. Obviously not enough data to declare the winter season over, but at least some light at the end of the tunnel.?
Before jumping to the latest news, a quick request from my side. I will start a small series of podcasts to interview fintech founders and VC managers active in the ecosystem. If you want to be part of it, feel free to drop me a line on Linkedin!
Anyway we saw some very interesting news in the market this week. 苹果 was the absolute protagonist of the week, announcing some very interesting features at WWDC, like tap-to-cash, a peer to peer fintech feature, and Apple intelligence in collaboration with OpenAI . Kraken Digital Asset Exchange is reported in talks with investors to raise $100 million ahead of a potential IPO, and BeReal. was acquired by Voodoo for $500 million. A lot of new funds this week in the VC market! Foresite Capital raised $900 million for his sixth fund, Vsquared Ventures $214 million, and then Day One Ventures and Friends & Family Capital respectively $150 and $118 million, and they were not the only ones. But the most interesting fund in my opinion raised capital in the Italian market, with Italian Founders Fund , a fund launched by former founders and investors, raising $50 million to invest in early stage startups in Italy. We also saw Nozomi Networks raising $10 million from CDP Venture Capital SGR . And finally, we saw some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like AccountsIQ , Light, Sidekick , Bridgit , Pipe , Plenti , Linqto , ZELIQ , Sahl , Accountfy ?and many others.
But let's take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days:
Closed deals
Insights on the VC industry
领英推荐
News on the market
A special look in the Italian market
And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:
Events you don’t want to miss
You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.
Startups raising funds
You want to be present in this list? Feel free to shoot me a DM on Linkedin.
Take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #32
Finally I am exploring partnerships with the newsletter. So this edition is sponsored by Notion , which is offering a 6-months free plan of its plus product to all founders submitting an application for their startups program.?