Nicolas Rose

Tomorrow I’m lucky to be hosting a panel with three exceptional founders: - Gilles Gaillard - Co-founder of Animaj, raised 100m EUR (in equity and debt) in 2023 to build an AI-powered animation studio that counts 𝗮 stunning 15 billion (!) YouTube views per year. Animaj acquires animation and cartoon franchises to turn them into digital-first content and amplifies their distribution using AI. - Baptiste Jamin - Co-founder of Crisp IM, 42 alumni, also can be called the “King of Bootstrap”. He started building chatbots in 2015, 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗼𝗹. Crisp centralises all customer interactions through live chat, chatbots, and a shared inbox. Today Crisp serves over 600,000 companies without raising any funds. - Vincent SIMON - Co-founder of Relationchips and founder of Simundia. Vincent is a serial entrepreneur & investor who founded a coaching platform that raised over 15m EUR & is currently working on a no-code sales workflow platform. What do they have in common? They started their career as freelancers and worked their way up to become highly successful entrepreneurs. 👉 Join us at Le Wagon tomorrow at 7pm to hear their story. We’ll also host a networking session for you to meet people from our community who are working on projects that might interest you. 🔗Link to register in the comments.

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I’ve been anticipating more creative M&A stories ever since Swile acquired employee benefits platform Bimpli, a subsidiary of Groupe BPCE in 2023. At the time, I dubbed what Loïc Soubeyrand, Swile’s CEO and Founder, successfully executed a Private Reverse Merger (or PReM). It’s when a smaller, fast-growing but loss-making private tech company acquires a private incumbent that’s larger, slow-growing, but profitable. Sure enough, 2024 has already brought us three new PReM stories. Last week, sennder (Nine years old, Series D company) announced its acquisition of C.H. Robinson’s European Surface Transportation operations (109 years old, global logistics platform). It is set to double the company’s annual revenue from €700m to €1.4bn (so also qualifies as a Merger of Equals) and catapult it to the top five European companies in its industry. Back in February, Cohesity (11 years old, Series F) announced its merger with the data protection business at Veritas Technologies LLC (41 years old, international enterprise) in February to form a new company that will work with 96 of the Fortune 100 and 80% of the Global 500. And in May, computer vision company Metropolis Technologies (7 years old, Series C) announced its acquisition of parking network SP (SP Plus). The deal will make Metropolis, originally a software company, the biggest parking network operator in North America. Like Swile, Sennder, Cohesity and Metropolis have accelerated their path to greater scale and profitability with their PReMs, while offering to the incumbent a potential exposure to a growth story trading at higher multiples, creating a win-win scenario for both sides. This approach can also offer scale-ups… ✔️ A faster path to liquidity and a premium valuation as a larger company and possible category leader ✔️ A de-risked business with a reduction in future dilution ✔️ Better terms for raising debt with a profitable business in the future (And by the way, two years after the Swile / BPCE merger, the integration is still going incredibly smoothly. One added benefit that we hadn’t anticipated back then: having the agility of a startup while having the support of a large banking group.) We’re not fully in the clear with private markets and the IPO market is tight, but these companies are more proof that creative M&A should be high on scale-ups’ agendas.

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Time to step up Germany 🇩🇪 🇫🇷 Corporations have pledged to invest €15bn in France at the “Choose France” summit — an annual event held since 2018 to facilitate foreign investments in the country. A large chunk of the money will be dedicated to AI. Microsoft stole the show after announcing its largest investment in France to date, a €4bn cash envelope to build more data centres — and expand existing ones — across the country by the end of 2025. The focus is on increasing the capacity of GPUs, which are needed to run large AI models. Amazon also announced that it’ll invest €1.2bn to further develop its French cloud and AI infrastructure. Quantum computing was also on the agenda. IBM pledged to invest €45m to expand the company’s research efforts in France. Up to 50 quantum researchers and engineers will be recruited in the country in the next year.

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New fund Modelling in VC workshop. On Assumptions Sheet Construction. Join us, together with Marc Penkala, on May 16th. Check it out if you are: 📌 ​Emerging Fund Managers 📌 VCs in Established Fund 📌 Family Office employees 📌 CVC employees 📌 High Net Individuals investing in venture capital funds. We've prepared a 2-hour educational session on all things related to: ✏ How to build a comprehensive assumption sheet ✏ How to analyze different assumptions ✏ How assumptions influence fund performance ✏ The effects of strategic levers on fund outcome ✏ Hands-on exercises where you'll work collaboratively ... and more that you can discover here. https://buff.ly/49HK2Bk #venturecapital #fundmodelling #familyoffices #vcfunding

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Interesting and inspiring list, except.. I see perhaps 3-4 female names on here. I'm hopeful that roll forward 5-10 years, this will shift given how many phenomenal women there are in private markets who are founders, entrepreneurs and heads of mega private equity firms! My goal is to increase that visibility with the SecondaryLink Women of Secondaries podcast feature powerhouse women in the Secondaries industry as a start! Check out the podcast here: https://shorturl.at/bqKMX #womeninsecondaries #womeninprivatemarkets #womeninpe #secondaries

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A Prime Number is a concept that is simple to explain and yet becomes deceptively difficult (or rather, impossible ?!) to list as a progression. But what might Prime Numbers have in common with Startups and Founders that succeed at scale ? It turns out that there are surprising parallels between Prime Numbers and Execution Moats (Yes, there is such a thing as an Execution Moat. In fact, it might be the deepest/widest of moats out there). Watch/Listen to our latest episode on the Practical Nerds podcast as Patric and I take a more philosophical route to discuss why Execution Moats are such a superpower.

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I'm delighted to announce the launch of the TempoCap Liquidity Indices, which, on a quarterly basis, track the largest European VC-backed exits since January 2020. We are tracking three main types of exits: all cash, cash and shares, and public listings.   We struggled to find this information in a single place or in a comprehensive format, so we decided to compile it ourselves from a range of data sources. Of course, we may have missed some exits, so please don't hesitate to get in touch if we have.   Here are a few notable trends from the data: 🔴 On all cash exits: A limited number of these were above $1 billion in Europe over the last nearly five years - we counted only five. Out of the top 15 cash exits, six were companies from the U.K., four from Germany, three from France, and two from Scandinavia - including the largest, Tink. 14 out of the top 15 exits were to strategics (with only one PE buyer), and 60% of buyers were U.S. companies. The average time to exit from the founding date was ten years. 🔴 On exits for cash and shares: There have been a limited number of these above $1 billion in Europe over the last circa five years, too —we counted only four. The U.K. had five companies out of the top 15, and interestingly, two each came from Poland and Germany, while the largest, Wolt, is Finnish. Again, 60% of buyers were from the U.S. The average time to exit from the founding date is nine years. 🔴 On public listings: Here, all 15 listings were above $1 billion—but some didn't stay above that level post-IPO, and three are no more! Out of the top 15, seven (or nearly half) came from the U.K., three came from Germany, and the largest, UI Path, came from Romania. The average time to IPO from the founding date was 11 years. We have researched various sources to ensure that we have the most accurate information possible, but if you've spotted something that needs to be corrected or a company that needs to be added, please let us know at [email protected].

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Business Consulting: What We Do and How to Benefit from It Following the post about Russell's case, I realized that many people are not aware that we also offer business consulting services! This direction emerged quite organically. When I was a director at Altair Capital, I accumulated a lot of experience but had neither the time nor the motivation to share it with anyone outside our portfolio companies. When I started my own fund, I stopped declining requests, initially from friends and close acquaintances, and then from a broader circle, which led to even more inquiries. Therefore... A year ago, we created the Mento Business-Consulting agency. Over this time, we have assembled a team of 7 people and completed more than 10 projects. We have identified what we can easily handle: ⁃ Building financial models ⁃ Allocating options for the team ⁃ Developing business strategies ⁃ Packaging companies for investment attraction ⁃ Forming a board of directors If you have any requests related to the development of your business, feel free to write to [email protected]. And yes, I also occasionally provide personal consultations. My areas of expertise include: ⁃ Auditing current strategies ⁃ Entering international markets ⁃ Developing investment strategies ⁃ How to attract investments ⁃ Launching a product/startup within a company ⁃ Forming a venture strategy for family offices For consultations with me, please send a direct message.

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We are at PEI London this week and let’s discuss how we create differentiated value for your portfolio companies, leveraging technology, and operations. #ebitdar #valuecreation #operatingpartners #technology #businesstransformation #digital #zerobasedesign

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Welcome ecoLocked to the Climentum Capital portfolio! We are proud to have led the €4M funding round together with Matterwave Ventures, and delighted to have existing investors Counteract, Startup Family Office, Sabancı Building Solutions, and VOYAGERS.io joining the round. The investment will support ecoLocked’s mission to revolutionize the construction industry with carbon-negative building materials. Concrete production accounts for 8% of global CO2 emissions, making innovations in this field crucial for achieving net-zero goals. ecoLocked is leading the change by converting carbon captured from biomass into functional, carbon-negative building materials. This funding will accelerate ecolocked's efforts to turn buildings into carbon sinks, scaling their innovative biochar-based solutions and enabling 1Gt carbon removal by 2040. Doerte Hirschberg Morten Halborg Stefan Maard

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