Smart Society Ventures

Sightline Climate's H1 2024 climate tech investment report highlights the growing need for capital in series B and growth. A few key findings ⬇ - 📉 Overall funding for Series B and Growth dropped 24% and 33% respectively, in H1’24, compared to the same time last year. This leads companies to be stuck in the 'Valley of Death,' where early stage ventures struggle to scale- and must either conserve capital or get increasingly unfavorable funding terms. - ⏲ The time to raise Series B has increased 2.5x since 2021, now averaging over 2 years to complete. The companies that do get to Series B are seeing larger deal sizes on average, but with the number of Series B deals down 28%, more and more companies are finding themselves stuck in the Valley of Death. To read more about how we are investing in European scale ups decarbonizing our economy, visit our website: https://lnkd.in/g_Uk5AE8

The way to keep UK companies in the UK is to address the growth capital gap. Making it punitive to leave is dangerous and risks destroying the strong early stage ecosystem the UK has worked hard to build. https://lnkd.in/gddEwusd

🌟 Introducing our summer interns! -Matthew Coffey joins us as an incoming 2nd year MBA at London Business School -Simran Gill, CPA joins us as an incoming 2nd year MBA at London Business School -Connor Irvine joins us as an incoming 2nd year MBA at London Business School -Sean Moore joins us as an incoming 2nd year MBA at London Business School -Isabel Runge joins us as an incoming 2nd year MBA at London Business School -Aashrey Tiku joins us from the Insead MBA -Yanis Zaim joins us from Northwestern University in Chicago We're incredibly excited to have these talented students on board to drive our mission of funding European 🇪🇺 scale ups ⬆ in the decarbonization space 🌍

Our Managing Partner and Co-Founder Brynne Kennedy responds to the claim by some that there is not a scale-up funding gap in European funds. Check out the data and her perspective ⬇

London Tech Week continues tomorrow at the London Stock Exchange - where I'm excited to be speaking about the incredible opportunities to invest in the Nordics. Not to mention the opportunity to see some amazing pitches from 16 leading startups that competed and won to join us - organized by Tech Nordic Advocates. We've got an amazing panel lined up, chaired by Hazel Moore where I'll be joined by the stellar crew of Henry Goodwin, Priya Guha MBE, Alexandra Wyatt, and Rita Cherradi. Can't wait! 🎉 Tech London Advocates & Global Tech Advocates Smart Society Ventures

One of the themes that we follow at Smart Society Ventures is the explosion of data in our physical assets. In today's post, I dig into the investment and decarbonization opportunity to connect the data in our physical world (across our grids, equipment, trucks, cars, ships and more), and two of our portfolio companies (Caban and Pratexo) doing just that. Our physical world represents 40% of GDP and more than 70% of emissions. Countless unicorns were created connecting the networked world. The opportunity to connect the physical world could be even larger!

Some may see Europe’s economic data as a reason to count the continent’s innovation economy out. At Smart Society Ventures, we see it as an opportunity to engage with policy makers & invest in the next generation of #scaleups that will drive job creation, economic growth & net zero. Let’s look at some data showing the European innovation opportunity: > Europe (incl the UK) currently has the highest rate of per capita AI engineers in the world > Europe is attracting huge recent AI investment rounds (see, Mistral, Wayve etc) > Europe has net tech talent inflows, one of the only regions in the world that does > Europe has incubated the highest per capita rate of climate tech companies since COVID, providing a pipeline for the next gen of scaleups and unicorns > Repeat founders now account for 30% of the tech ecosystem The foundation is there. Now, let’s increase investment in scaleups and innovation to grow, grow, grow. The time is now! https://on.ft.com/3wF8Dcz

Why don't we talk more about #innovation as a key part of achieving net zero? Last week, I attended the Climate Action Sustainable Investment Forum in Paris, and found little discussion of startups, scale-ups and venture capital among government and asset managers. Yet, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and Allianz estimate that 75% of emissions reduction needs to come from new technologies in the prototype or early adoption phase. This means we need a massive increase in decarbonization scale-up capital and expertise. But, Europe continues to lack this. European pension funds invest 200x less in venture capital than US pension funds. And, just 8% of European VC fund Partners have scaling operating experience vs. 60% of VC fund Partners in the US. In our second Smart Society Ventures blog, I discuss some of the things needed in Europe to solve this. Hint: It starts with dialogue :)

Our Managing Partner and Co-Founder Brynne Kennedy kicked off our Smart Society Ventures Blog today! Or the Smart Society Blog. Stay tuned for insights each week on our firm themes: > Investing in decarbonization tech and accelerating net zero > Filling Europe's scale-up capital gap and creating tech champions > Growing financial assets managed by women First up - What's the decarbonization tech investment case?👇 https://lnkd.in/gQ86m9Za