Lauma Sīle

The highest valuation in a financing round might be attractive but often it is not the option you should chose. Because it will hurt you later. 1.) With an established valuation you also create an expectation for the exit price. E.g. if you raise at 50m you need to build a 500m company - ask yourself how feasible that is in your industry with your model 2.) The highest bidder might not be the best fit for you in terms of know-how and/or on a personal level. Given you will be "married" to your investor for a longer period of time a 100% match is important. 3.) Often raising at a more aggressive valuation takes longer, so you will put the money to work later than with a less competitive but faster round. It is worth asking yourself if some or maybe all of the additional dilution of a lower priced round will be offset by putting the money to work earlier and spending less time on fundraising. 4.) The high price might come with additional asks that can hurt you later 2x liq pref, additional guarantees.... So don't raise the price at all cost

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Another good tip for first-time founders: Always set clear KPIs for your tech team. Vague goals lead to vague results. Set specific, measurable targets so everyone knows what success looks like and how to get there. Clear KPIs keep your team aligned and help you track where improvements are needed to reach your goals. Google’s OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are a good example of how measurable targets can drive a team toward fast, focused growth. “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” — Zig Ziglar

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Both EQT Ventures / Contrarian Ventures’s ‘Climate Brick’ and Planet A Ventures / Norrsken VC / Speedinvest’s ‘Playbook for Climate Hardware’ are indispensable guides for climate founders. I read both cover to cover - here are my key takeaways... DON’T EXPECT A LINEAR JOURNEY - Every case is different. Lots of factors - from geography, to business model, to asset resale value, to government support - will impact a company’s scaling journey and financing mix. Be courageous and forge your own path. BUILD A GREAT BUSINESS AND INVESTMENT WILL FOLLOW - Create value for customers, focus on unit economics, shape your business model to align core competencies with customer value creation, and investors will want in. This might sound obvious but ZIRP enabled startups - especially in SaaS - to sacrifice fundamentals at the altar of growth and promoted the idea that raising money is an end goal in and of itself. It is particularly important to get the fundamentals right in hardware by focusing on efficient and profitable scale above all else. YOU HAVE A LIMITED NUMBER OF CHIPS TO ALLOCATE ACROSS THREE RISK AREAS - Market, technology and engineering risk. Your chip stack gets smaller every time you raise a new round of financing. E.g. if you lots of engineering risk you better not have much market and technology risk! CLIMATE HARDWARE HAS A NARRATIVE PROBLEM - Rightly or wrongly, the venture zeitgeist holds it to be true that hardware / physical technologies are more capital intensive, lower margin, and have longer exit horizons than software companies. If you build a truly great business and are sophisticated with how you finance scale then these statements are false. Not only that, but it has never been more expensive or difficult to scale a software business, nor have exit timelines ever been so long. Hardware companies have to work harder to tell a compelling equity story but it is possible and it is getting easier. Both reports have committed to developing their work over the long-term which is exciting. There are a couple of things I would love to see next: 1) The key thing I am hearing from downstream investors is that climate hardware companies learn quite late about the value of high quality project development, execution and EPC talent. How early should founders think about hiring these people? 2) Valuations are a function of capital raised and multiples don’t make much sense, ranging from low single digits to infinity in the Climate Brick. Can we think about progress and success in a different way? For example, what about a simple reframing of valuation to prioritise minimal dilution? Case studies are key here, and as investors and founders become more sophisticated about the capital stack we will see more of them. Huge thanks to everyone involved in this amazing work! Katya Constant Rokas P. Ted Persson Florian Schabus Kim D. Jessica Burley Christian zu Jeddeloh Sophia Escheu Links to both initiatives in the comments.

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🌍 Navigating Seed Financing in Scandinavia! 🚀 Curious about how to secure early-stage funding for your startup in Scandinavia? Whether it's leveraging government grants, tapping into angel investors, or joining startup accelerators, there are numerous strategies to explore. Discover the unique opportunities available and how they can propel your business forward. Dive into the nuances and build your roadmap to success with insights from industry experts. Unlock the full potential of your startup journey here: https://lnkd.in/e4zycRvK #StartupFunding #Scandinavia #Entrepreneurship #SeedFunding #Innovation #BusinessGrowth

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After months of hard work Fabian Beringer and team proudly announce the official launch of Vidlab7 today 🥂 They have managed to secure €3.5M in Pre-Seed Funding led by EQT Ventures and I am pretty excited to be part of this journey as angel investor. 🚀🚀🚀 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐕𝐢𝐝𝐋𝐚𝐛7 𝐝𝐨? Revolutionize sales processes ❗ In detail: VidLab7 empowers companies to leverage SyntheticMedia and Generative AI to skyrocket their #ConversionRates and #Revenues like never before. This includes everything from Personal Avatars to Fictional Avatars and Real-Time Avatars… and so much more.... 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐲 #𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨, 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐞 𝐚 𝐝𝐦  🙏 Doreen Huber (EQT Ventures), Carl Svantesson (EQT Ventures), Mika Salmi (Megatomic), Beatrice Aliprandi (Megatomic), Jeffrey Forrest (Megatomic), Dr. Marlon Braumann (Elephant Lake Ventures GmbH), Jens Bormann (MUUUH! Group), Ben Ellermann, Tim Rath (YOYABA), Michael Hinderer (JSM Hinderer), Daniel Wild (Tiburon), Felix A. (Tiburon), Johannis Hatt (JVH Ventures), Sven Gasper (Studydrive) and Philipp Mackeprang (Studydrive). #SyntheticMedia #GenerativeAI #VidLab7 #RevenueBoost #Innovation #Launch

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That damn product-market-fit - and what we do about it at KRING 👊 Building a startup is hard. Period. And the reasons for that are not sensational. We all know that getting product-market fit, go-to-market and the team right requires a lot of work. The top 4 reasons for startup failure are: 🧩 Poor Product-Market Fit (34%): This figure highlights the significant impact of misalignment between a startup's offering and the needs of its target audience. Without a deep understanding of your market and a product that resonates with customers, success becomes elusive.    🚀 Wrong Go-To-Market Strategy (22%): Even if you have a great product, how you bring it to market matters. A misstep in your go-to-market strategy can lead to missed opportunities, wasted resources, and ultimately, failure to capture market share effectively. 🦸🏽‍♀️Team Issues (18%): Building a successful startup requires a cohesive and talented team. Team dynamics, leadership challenges, and skill gaps can all hinder progress and contribute to startup failure.    💸 Fundraising and Cash Flow Problems (16%): Running out of funds is a common reason startups fail. Whether due to inadequate fundraising efforts, mismanagement of cash flow, or unforeseen financial challenges, a lack of capital can quickly derail even the most promising ventures. These typical reasons for startup failure is exactly why we have built our venture studio model and value proposition around: ✅ To navigate the product–market fit, we have developed our structured Speedbooting methodology with pretotyping (and created the company pree.to) to enable a proper validation of the market fit     ✅ To get the go-to-market right, we also use our Speedbooting methodology (https://lnkd.in/egm6im2s) to validate the strategy and benefit from our network of corporates and advisors to test the business model from different angles ✅ To address team issues we offer specialised recruitment support from a pool of talented individuals ✅ To take focus away from fundraising, we provide multi-round financing and can also support building external fundraising strategy if needed and connect with relevant investors Are you curious and what to learn more about building a venture with KRING? Reach out to our Head of Talent, Agnes Agada 👈 Do you have any reflections to share on how to mitigate the typical reasons for startup failure? We would love to hear from you! #venturestudio #startupstudio #productmarketfit Source: Exploding topics, Startup Failure Statistics 2023. Marina Miteva, Jacob Madsen, Jesper Kring, Thomas Krogh Jensen, Tommy Ahlers, Christoph Brandin, Thomas Hofman-Bang, Ulla Sommerfelt, Jacob Dahl, Kurt Bligaard Pedersen, Peter Mægbæk, Martin Bøge Mikkelsen, Betina Nygaard, Ole Herstal, Søren Thorsen, Jakob Bjerre Kistorp, Anders Colding Friis, Flemming Breinholt, Claus Rehfeld, Peter Midtgaard, Lars Thomassen, Lars Monrad-Gylling, Claus Omann Jensen, Erik Holm, Joergen Raguse, David Heinemeier Hansson

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I’m excited to continue my Scandinavian overview of private market activity, this time focusing on Sweden 🇸🇪 After diving into the data, I’ve identified the 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘸𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 6 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘴. Seeing how these firms drive growth and support innovation across the Swedish startup landscape is inspiring. Here they are: 1. EQT Group - 9 rounds, led by Christian Sinding 2. Creandum - 8 rounds, led by Staffan Helgesson 3. Chalmers Ventures - 7 rounds, led by Pontus Ottosson 4. Norrsken VC - 6 rounds, led by Niklas Adalberth 5. Kinnevik - 4 rounds, led by Georgi Ganev 6. Industrifonden - 4 rounds, led by Peter Wolpert 🇺🇦 7. Volvo Group Venture Capital - 4 rounds 8. NEA Partners - 3 rounds 9. Pale blue dot - 3 rounds 10. Subvenio Invest - 3 rounds 11. Luminar Ventures - 3 rounds 12. Trill Impact - 3 rounds 13. J12 Ventures - 3 rounds 14. Investment AB Latour - 3 rounds 15. Stena Sessan - 2 rounds 16. Swedfund International - 2 rounds 17. Sound Bioventures - 2 rounds 18. Adelis Equity Partners - 2 rounds 19. Mudcake - 2 rounds 20. Wellstreet - 2 rounds As always, you can find this & much more data in our 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺. It provides all the insights you need to: 📍 identify targets 📍 evaluate risk and potential 📍 make confident investment decisions Stay tuned for more updates! 🔎 #dealpotential #privatemarkets #scandinavianinvestments

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Want to build a successful, sustainable company? These are the kinds of milestones you should set: Land X paying customers Increase revenue by Y% Become profitable Reach $Z ARR Instead, too many startups set their milestones based on getting from one funding round to the next. You'll probably have to raise outside capital at some point to achieve those operational milestones. But raising that capital shouldn't be your end goal. You don't need to run on the VC hamster wheel!

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„If you‘re good at something, don‘t do it for free“ It wasn‘t my intention to quote the Joker, but there is some wisdom in this for SaaS founders 😅🃏 A big thank you Anna Nadeina for inviting me to share our journey with ContractHero | Digital Contract Management. We explored our early days: from validating the need for effective contract management, to building our initial pilot. Today, ContractHero empowers hundreds of companies to automate their critical documents and gain powerful insights 📊📈

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1 employee = 500.000.000 USD value! Don't say the expectations for what AI companies can achieve have been dampened. Ilya Sutskevers new company Safe Superintelligence Inc. already has a valuation of 5 billion USD and has just received 1 billion USD in funding although they only have 10 employees. Founders included. Impressive. It's one more player into the GenAI fight that intensifies currently with OpenAI being pressured from an increasing number of competitors of which some, like Anthropic have already shown ability to fight in the same weightclass (Claude 3.5 Sonnet - and now an impressive enterprise version) while others are moving up as well. Another learning is the emphasis on building safe AI in all aspects. It's becoming a still stronger demand that SSI is targeting. It will be interesting to follow the battle. BTW: Building on AI is something to think about for startups as we locally are warming up for the Nordic Fintech week KPMG Denmark #innovation #ai #genai #kpmgnewtech Thomas Krogh Jensen Nicolaj Gudbergsen Anja Løwer Frem Mattias Fras Paul Henninger https://lnkd.in/ddv4G3F7

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Dear Network After spending some time at Fintech 24 and meeting many great people and companies. I wanted to go back in the domain and I’m looking to leverage my extensive social network, knowledge and experience in business, strategy, and investing to help startups, businesses, and financial institutions. From early-stage ventures to established financial institutions, I’m here to provide advisory and consultation services that align strategy, drive growth and innovation. In addition to fintech, product development, investment banking, and venture capital, my team and I also provide management services, including local content advisory, soft landing, project planing for businesses expanding into Saudi and new markets. Whether you need strategic insights, product development support, or guidance on entering new territories, I’m here to help you succeed. Feel free to reach out if you're interested in any discussions or collaborations. www.aec.sa #AEC #aec.sa #Strategy #Fintech #ProductDevelopment #InvestmentBanking #VentureCapital #Consulting #AdvisoryServices #SoftLanding #InternationalExpansion #Startups #FinancialInstitutions #Growth

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Our investors Ted Persson and Sandra Malmberg 👋 at EQT Ventures have created The Climate Brick tool about scaling sustainability focused "Climate Tech" companies. The team analysed 3,000 companies through a set of data platforms and additionally conducted 100 expert interviews. Based on that information, they came up with seven archetypes that have been turned into "Climate Bricks". With plenty of case studies, their work provides blueprints for scaling from pre-seed to Series D across the seven archetypes with details about typical round sizes, valuation, composition of the capital stack and proofpoints needed across commercial, product, technology, value chain, eco system and talent. A much needed manual for scaling "Climate Tech". Web site and manual available here: https://climatebrick.com/

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Investing in people is the best type of investment.

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How a simple idea led to a $55mn fundraise Simple but brilliantly executed Originally Sana AI, a Swedish startup, wanted to help large corporates to get some "order" in their complex and messy internal database/data, acting like an AI-powered learning and knowledge platform. Earlier this year the reality was that it had big clients indeed but was struggling to respond to calls and meetings with these large corporate firms like Electrolux...making it harder to prospect new ones or scale. So its founder simply flipped the business He decided to create a free version of the AI agent that could draft emails, take meeting minutes and complete simple forms that it was selling to enterprise clients, now guess what? 6 months after launching this trial version around 100,000 new workplaces had signed up and teams with more than five members now pay $30 per user per month. And today Sana AI raised $55mn at a $500 million valuation to scale its research lab and help its commercial expansion in the US. It's also now one of the best funded AI startup in Europe (its Series B was done last year) Its founder, Joel Hellermark, built Sana AI 8 years ago and wanted to use AI to create personalised workplace training plans, that, before AI even became "trendy". Not bad huh? https://lnkd.in/eeP4n_fZ

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Emerging vs Established Managers? A lot of discussions by institutional LPs about whether to invest in emerging GPs will end just there. There are exemptions such us AlphaQ Venture Capital Fund of Funds, which actively invests in emerging GPs. Hear what Stephan Heller had to say on the topic on the EUVC 's podcast with Andreas Munk Holm ✅ Looking to raise capital for your #fund and increase the international pool of your LP #investors?   🤝 Need warm #LP introductions?   📝 Selling #secondaries to increase liquidity?   🧐 Looking for co-investments?   ▶ G+QUANT's link for inquiries and fund decks: https://lnkd.in/gjC_EuTE #venturecapital #vcfundraising #lp #gp #familyoffice #fundoffunds #investors #alternatives #secondaries

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This spring we had almost 8,000 Founders apply to come and work with us at Antler in the US. Of that, we had 300 Founders come and work with us in person in our offices, and we ended up invested in 32 of those teams that we were absolutely blown away by. I can't go into specifics quite yet as these companies are still in stealth but a small sample of what these teams are working on: (Comment below what you think are most interesting and I can help you meet the teams) 1. A team with experience at Boeing, SpaceX, Relativity Space, Hermeus and General Atomics are building full commercial scale wing-bodied aircraft. 2. Team of former Starlink and Raytheon engineers building edge computing software for space and satellite interoperability. 3. One of the biggest contributors to the Ape Coin DAU and his co-founder from Performance-IQ working on tokenizing and democratizing public advertising inventory (think billboards in timesquare) 4. Former leader of one of the most successful WoW clans and Founder of one of the highest traffic gaming sites in the world building the consumer metasearch for weightloss with her CTO who led engineering at Esper. 5. Founder who sold his previous company to Nexa3D building the supply chain needed to 3D print footwear right here in the United States. 6. Founder from C2i Genomics building early disease profiling and detection with novel multiomic sequencing (when they succeed will help solve cancer.) 10. Former researcher at Fermilab, Mercury Data Science and the Smithsonian automating the peer review and analysis of scientific documents to build a new SoR for global scientific progress. Couldn't be more excited to be working with Founders who are truly pursuing their life's work. If you’re an active investor who’d like to meet these founders directly, or a founder interested in becoming a part of this elite group, sign up in comments below ⬇️

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A friend asked me; "Who is your ideal customer....?"   And it is pretty simply   My ideal customers are...   Corporate commercial partners of LinkedIn Spend >250.000 DKK on LinkedIn yearly   They have a growth, not fixed, mindset Believe that there is always something that can be improved   Are leaders Lead a team or department Not afraid of trying and testing new ideas in project sprints It is not that there is less to optimize for smaller commercial partners of LinkedIn, the dollar value impact is just less.   A % direct cost saving and a % improvement in the use of the software tools simply has a bigger and wider impact.   Departments I mainly speak with:   CHRO, CFO, Culture and People Leaders, TA, HR, TM Leaders, Procurement. If this is you, you are my kinda person, and I can likely help you   ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ If this post inspired you, make sure to like, comment, and share 🙏 Hit the 🔔 to get notified when I share thoughts and tips for a better partnership with LinkedIn. Stay epic, Simon M. Scavenius

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