Weekly update #37
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.
First of all, a quick celebration. This week we reached 5,000 subscribers for the newsletter! It’s an amazing result, and I hope it will reach as many people as possible in order to help this ecosystem to grow even further in the future.
Before jumping to the main topics for this week, 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.
In order to redeem the free trial, submit an application using this link https://ntn.so/michelemattei, select Michele Mattei as partner and include the following partner key: STARTUP4110P62416. I really hope it will be helpful for many founders out there!
Coming back to us, I’ve been reading mainly two very interesting reports this week, and I wanted to share the main takeaways from both with you. The first one is “Osservatorio sul Venture Capital - Italia Q2”, written by Growth Capital and Italian Tech Alliance . The study is a complete analysis of the investment landscape in Venture Capital, with a focus on Italy, but also a very deep understanding of the European market.
First take away: it wasn’t a good quarter for the startup ecosystem in Italy. Both number of deals and amount invested went down, with a shift only in terms of sectors and verticals.
Expanding the view to the entire 2024 first half, the situation in Italy doesn’t get any better. €671 million raised in 177 rounds, approximately half of the amount invested in the same time period in 2023, confirming a downtrend that seems to have no end. 37% of this amount is related to 2 megarounds.
Europe overall seems to show some signals of recovery. €28 billion in total the amount invested across 5.640 rounds, +18% in number of rounds and +3% in total invested amount compared to 2023. If this trend continues, there is a good chance to top or even surpass 2023.
The second report I read was “H12024 review - Europe sheds some downturn ghosts”, from Sifted . A complete overview of the European startup ecosystem in the first half of 2024, including investments made, verticals and trends. Here are some takeaways.
Early-stage funding saw a consistent increase month by month, climbing 38% from €1.3 billion in January to €1.8 billion in June. The main driver behind this growth was the €25 million+ deals, with 53 tracked in the first half of the year. Although early-stage deals made up 82.8% of the total number of deals in H1, they only accounted for 19.7% (€9.3 billion) of the total funding. Additionally, 43 companies secured debt facilities or convertibles during this period, indicating a growing interest in experimenting with non-dilutive capital throughout the startup lifecycle.
The UK made a strong comeback in Q2 following Sweden's record-breaking start to the year, achieving a historic monthly high of €5.9 billion in equity and debt investment in British tech. Notably, the first eastern European country to appear in the rankings is Estonia, in 14th place, highlighting the slow year for this region.
Northvolt and H2 Green Steel’s funding rounds solidified the infrastructure category as Europe's best-funded climate segment, emphasizing the critical role of debt in the sector. Although subsequent months haven't matched January's figures, there have still been significant rounds: €1.1 billion in debt for German solar startup Enpal and $523 million for UK-based battery company Zenobe Energy. A very good second place for fintech in this case, trying to recover from the last horrible years.
Overall, it was very interesting to understand different points of view on the same ecosystem, with a general feeling of optimism for the upcoming future. You can find the complete Sifted report here, and the one from Italian Tech Alliance here.
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, Revolut founder is set to cash in part of his shares, while EU will close an antitrust investigation on 苹果 . Infinite Reality acquired Infinite Reality Enterprise for $450 million, Bain Capital together with Reference Capital acquired Envestnet for $4.5 billion, and SoftBank Group Corp. bought Graphcore . A lot of new funds this week! Index Ventures raised $2.3 billion for both venture and growth fund, Kembara raised $350 million from EIF, Nextalia SGR closed $150 million, LUMO Labs raised $100 million, but also Freeflow Ventures , OurCrowd and Frumtak Ventures . A lot of activities also on the italian market, where Cosmico Italia acquired Flatmates , and new funding rounds from Newarc , LimoLane and Wopta Assicurazioni . Finally, some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like Dice , Care.fi , CreditLogic , Accend , Lemon.market, Trustap , 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
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 #36
Thanks for mentioning Wopta Assicurazioni ??
Cofounder @ Profit Leap and the 1st AI advisor for Entrepreneurs | CFO, CPA, Software Engineer
8 个月Wow, sounds like a lot of big moves in the business world! ?? Michele Mattei