Hi everyone and welcome to the vc family!
You are reading our very first newsletter and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being one of our very first readers!
Every Monday morning, you will find us in your email box with the news of the week in Venture Capital, the latest fundraisers and acquisitions, internship and position offers, the portrait of a VC and many others.
Program of the day :
🍊 What is vc family ?
📰 Extra! Extra! Weekly news
🚀 Fundraisings, acquisitions and IPOs of the week
💡 Topic of the week
🔎 Internship and job offers
😍 VC of the week
🍊 What is vc family?
The inclusive way to break into Venture Capital.
Our goal is simple: to open the doors to Venture Capital.
No more elitist bootcamps. No more incomplete training. No more obscurantism.
We are launching the first MasterClass opened to everyone.
In partnership with G Ventures, the first student investment fund in France, we offer the possibility to the most involved members of the MasterClass to immediately join their first investment fund.
In addition to this MasterClass, you will also find on our website:
Blog articles about trends in the European Tech industry, advice to break into venture capital, tools and resources…
Exclusive interviews with VCs, Venture Capital interns and entrepreneurs.
For more information about vc family, visit vcfamily.co
📰 Extra! Extra! Weekly news
Jeff Bezos goes into space : Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, the aerospace company whose goal is to achieve "millions of people living and working in space to benefit Earth" will take off into space on July 20 for a touristic trip with his brother and a third anonymous person who bought his ticket at auction for the astronomical sum of $28 million.
AI startup investment is on pace for a record year : While the startup investment market is pretty crowded, the AI industry can rest easy. Numerous fundraisings can attest to this, such as Microsoft's $20 billion buyout of the healthcare startup Nuance.
The air taxi market prepares to take flight : It's no longer science fiction. The startup Joby Aviation created 12 years ago is specialized in eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) and is today what is called a unicorn with a valuation of nearly 6.6 billion dollars, positioning itself as the most valuable startup in the air-taxi industry.
🚀 Fundraisings, acquisitions and IPOs of the week
Klarna (Unknown Series) - The Swedish fintech, which specializes in deferred payments aka "buy now, pay later" has just completed a gigantic fundraiser from SoftBank of 639 millions of dollars (527 millions euros). An operation that values the company at 45.6 billion.
Ledger (Series C) - Ledger, a French crypto-asset management platform, has announced that it has completed a fundraising of 380 million dollars (312 million euros), valuing the company at more than 1.5 billion dollars. A new french licorn.
Believe (IPO) - The french startup, leading player in online music distribution and promotion generating €441m in sales in 2020, has successfully raised €300m at €1.9bn valuation on the French public market to accelerate its development.
Fresha (Series C) - Formerly Shedul before being renamed Fresha in February 2020, the British application for booking spas, beauty salons, hairdressers, yoga centers and other establishments around well-being signs a Series C of 100 millions of dollars (83 million euros) led by the fund American General Atlantic. The amount of the valuation following this capital increase is kept secret. This fundraising takes place 2 years after a fundraising of more than € 17 million supported by Partech.
Pasqal (Series A) - Startups working on quantum processors are on the rise! The same day as the French startup C12 Quantum Electronics which raised 10 million dollars, Pasqal, also French, raised 25 million euros to develop a quantum computer. Founded in March 2019, the company is already making leaders in the development of the quantum computer, in competition with the giants IBM and Google, and other start-ups.
YouSign (Series A) - Created in 2013, this French startup offers an electronic signature application and API. It has just raised 30 million euros from Lead Edge Capital to position itself as the market leader for small and medium enterprises and create an alternative to the American giants. After winning over 6,000 customers in France, Germany and Italy (including Shine or Bpifrance), it now wishes to move up a gear by taking advantage of the health context favorable to digitization and the increase in teleworking by equipping more than 50,000 European companies by 2024 and achieve annual recurring income of at least 70 million euros.
Pennylane (Series Unknown) - The Parisian fintech startup founded in 2020, which is developing a SaaS platform for financial and accounting management dedicated to small an medium companie, start-ups as well as accountants, announces a new fundraising of 15 million euros from Sequoia Capital, who already has Paypal, Stripe or Square in their wallet. This is the Californian fund's first investment in France. Pennylane wishes to conquer Europe by investing in the development of its accounting platform and by expanding its tech, design and product teams.
Stack Overflow (Acquisition) - The most popular developer Q&A website, was acquired on June 2 by Prosus, the majority shareholder of WeChat and Tencent, for $ 1.8 billion. With more than 100 million monthly visitors, Stack Overflow is today one of the 50 most visited websites in the world.
💡 Topic of the week: Venture Capital, a closed world?
by Loup Audouy
This section will usually aim to focus on trends in the European Tech industry but since this is our first newsletter and a special occasion, I would like to share our thoughts with you about the world of Venture Capital and why we decided to create vc family.
The observation is clear : it is extremely difficult today to take a first step in the world of Venture Capital.
If you are already in the business, that you want to do your watch and find content on the latest fundraisers, the latest trends and the promising startups, no worries, there is a lot. Venture Capitalists have understood that it is important for them to be very present in the ecosystem, and what better way to build a network and being followed by thousands of people than offering content?
But if you are a beginner, that you are passionate about the startup ecosystem, that you have heard of Venture Capital, but it does not mean much to you, it’s a real pain.
In time, you will find information on your own, but the process will be long and tedious, you will find articles that contradict each other, and it will not have advanced you to solve the real problem: your inexperience and your lack of network.
You could also join a bootcamp. There are several, and their approach is good, they want to finally allow a transmission of knowledge in the Venture Capital world. They offer more transparency in the industry, in particular by publishing free content and advice for beginners, but their approach does not open up the world of Venture Capital since they limit their training to a small number of people despite the hundreds of requests.
Kenza, Matthis and I have all experienced this. Dozens of people I have spoken to as well. Because Venture Capital is attracting more and more people, but still remains as closed.
It is for this reason that we created vc family. Because we told ourselves that at the same time as we were training ourselves, we could share it with all those who are in the same situation.
We wanted to do things well, so we created, in partnership with VCs, a masterclass. To have the best possible content, we have recruited masters in their field on each module of the training. To make the training accessible to everyone, we recorded it so that everyone can do it when they want, where they want.
Will we be able to open up the world of Venture Capital to everyone? We hope for it, it is our challenge and our goal.
If you want to join the adventure, we will be delighted to welcome you to the team.
by Loup Audouy
🔎 Internship and job offers
Soon you will find a complete section to find job and internship offers in Venture Capital, automatically scrapped and available directly on our site.
😍 VC of the week: Marie Ekeland
by Kenza Yahyaoui
Marie Ekeland is the VC of the week ! I am always curious to look for new female profiles on the VC scene and to share their journey with you !
Marie is a French entrepreneurial and investment expert and is the head of not one but two investment funds, Daphni and more recently the 2050 fund.
Marie started her professional career in New Yorks at JM Morgan as a computer scientist, then joined Elaia Partners, the VC fund known for investing in Criteo.
In 2015, she co-founded Daphni, an investment fund specialized in the digital economy and invested in the startup Agricool which markets fruits and vegetables grown in the city.
Because Marie is full of surprises because in November 2020, she announced the launch of her new investment fund "2050" which aims to finance projects in the sectors of agribusiness, health, education, housing and transportation and financial autonomy. Marie wants to invest for a more fertile future !
Besides that, Marie is also known for having co-founded France Digital in 2012 and being a member of the National Digital Council since 2013.
If you are curious to learn more about her new 2050 fund I invite you to discover this interview.
Thank you for reading the vc family newsletter to the end (or not 😂). See you next week directly in your email box!
If you have any questions, send them to contact@vcfamily.co !