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The inclusive way to break into Venture Capital.
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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.
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Program of the day :
📰 Extra! Extra! Weekly news
🚀 Fundraisings, acquisitions and IPOs of the week
💡 Topic of the week: Return to the Future
🔎 Internship and job offers
😍 VC of the week: Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen
👋 High Five!
📰 Extra! Extra! Weekly news
Google’s first retail location opened in NYC: The district of Chelsea in New York welcomed this June 17th the Google store. In the same way as other giants such as apple or amazon. The goal behind it is among other things to promote its hardware products.
China launches 3 astronauts to its new space station core module: China’s first crewed mission since 2012 took place on 17th June. Commander Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming, and Tang Hongbo flew to space as part of the Shenzhou 12 mission to get China’s first space station up and running. China has never been shy about its space ambitions!
It’s a wrap for the fourth edition of Vivatech: The 4th edition of the very popular event in the tech world, Viva technology, took place this week from the 16th to the 19th of June in Paris. More than 1400 exhibitors were participating but half of them virtually. This year the show had the privilege to receive (virtually) Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, as speakers.
Creator of World Wide Web is Selling the Source Code as an NFT: NFTs or non-fungible tokens are blowing up and we haven't heard the last of it! Recently, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, has decided to sell the first internet browser source code in history as an NFT. The NFT will be auctioned for $1000 on June 23rd, but Tim Berners-Lee does not intend to profit directly from this sale. All the money will be donated to charities supported by him and his wife.
Ads are coming to Instagram's Reels, the video format inspired by Tiktok: Ads in Reels videos are being deployed on Instagram since June 18. Less than a year after launching its Reels feature, Instagram (a subsidiary of Facebook) is now trying to monetize it with advertising. Sequences that can last up to 30 seconds will be inserted in the middle of Instagram videos.
🚀 Fundraisings, acquisitions and IPOs of the week
🚗 Tractable (Series D): A startup that uses AI to let users take and submit photos of damaged cars directly to insurance company raised $60M with a $1B valuation.
🗂️ Templafy (Series D): This B2B danish startup provides a platform for companies to store and protect items (documents, presentations, and emails...) just raised $60M.
🤖 BrowserStack (Series B): The website and mobile platform testing for devs raised $200M with a $4B valuation! Sheeeeesh.
🐂 Motif (Series B): The little (and very smart) Boston-based scientists raised $228M to increase their R&D capabilities, scale and commercialize their alt-protein experimentations and products.
📈 B-Cube AI (Token): French Crypto trading bot startup raised $3.2M just after its ICO on Uniswap to go further and develop its technology.
💳 NOVO (Series A): The new freelancer and entrepreneur best friend raised $40M, this is the largest-ever Series A financing of any challenger bank, anywhere in the world.
🏠 Habyt (Series A): Co-living going to be crazy, especially with remote working, Habyt got it and wants to continue its M&A strategy in Europe by raising $20M recently, homefully!
💡 Topic of the week: Return to the Future
by Matthis Dessus
In VC, we have to be open-minded in a scope of 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, or more.
Some relate to a wizard, others to a clairvoyant, or simply to a stupid & lying person.
Anyway, it's necessary to have an opinion, ideas, and convictions about tomorrow's world. But what if we teleport ourselves 50 or 60 years in the future?
I am a huge fan of the cyberpunk environment and by recently binge-watching Love Death & Robot S2 on Netflix (go watch it!), I was wondering how would be our cities, our lifestyles, and our habits in 2070.
I really want to go further on this topic later and create something solid, but let's just enter into the wild with some ideas (which could be funded by robot VC in 50 years, who knows?)
Day Life Robot
It has already begun! Some of you (me included), have or had a vacuum robot. This little boy makes a solid mapping of your house and improves, use after use, its route between your chairs and your rug.
But what if, startups would invent robots for cleaning your windows, folding your shirts, walking your dog (if it's not already a robot), or even taking you a shower.
Some could be scared and it's normal. 20 years before, people were it when we talked about autonomous cars or machine talking.
Today, you go to work in Tesla, go home and talk to Siri while receiving your Hellofresh to cook with your Thermomix by listening to a clubhouse room.
It is not safe to say that traditional street sidewalks will be replaced by the automatic sidewalk in airports.
Glasses x Ocular Lenses
Of course, we've all seen the Google Glasses concept (or not). It's of course, too early and not the good timing.
But come on, let's be honest: having your phone screen directly on glasses. No more neck injury, be able to see where we're going in the street (quite rare nowadays) and finally: free pants pocket.
However, this will bring a completely new way to the best and the worst thing in the world: ads.
By wearing connected glasses all day, we'll enter a new world, where ads could appear, and disappear (I hope).
It will be a new playground where ads could fill a building facade, generate special discounts depending on your geolocalisation and even develop: audio ads.
Enjoy your A/B Testing on FB Ads, it will no longer exist in the future.
Red Pill or Blue Pill?
Feed has been controverted at its beginning, but is it not just because of timing?
In a world where a lot of people couldn't eat and drink enough, eat bad, very bad, and develop bad meal habits, the pill couldn't be the solution?
The magic pill that gives you all the nutriment and stuff for the day. I'm pretty sure that (besides the fact that it could save a huge part of the poor population) it could interest a lot of people.
Students who have not the time and money to buy and cook, people who want to lose weight, hard-workers who don't care about food and just want to hit productivity peak: a lot of potential consumers who could be targeted.
So in order to be prepared to be a cyber investor, keep an eye on future-future inventions and lifestyle changes.
🔎 Internship and job offers
Foundamental - VC Analyst Fellowship (Berlin)
La Famiglia - Analyst Internship (Berlin or Remote)
La Famiglia - Senior Analyst / Associate, Growth (Berlin or Remote)
firstminute capital - Content Associate (London)
42CAP - Analyst (Munich)
Big Idea Ventures - Program Associate (Paris)
SAP.iO - Venture Investment & Intrapreneurship Internship (Potsdam)
Elaia - Communication & Community Internship (Paris)
😍 VC of the week: Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen
The VC of the week is Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen !
Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen is a London-born European VC. He has worked at Balderton Capital for more than 5 years as a General Partner and is now moving on in a new fund that he didn't announce publicly yet!
If we look back at his years of study, we can see that he mainly studied engineering: He graduated from the University of Oxford. He also holds a BSc in Engineering from King's College London.
During the first part of his career, he worked as an advisor to the business team at WhatsApp, as the head of Mobile at Dropbox, and as an Advisor and VP Mobile at Uber.
He joined Balderton Capital as General Partner in 2015, fueled by its expertise in high growth technology and his will to help lead new early-stage investments.
Moreover, Fjeldsoe-Nielsen is a sponsor of the African Wildlife Conservation Fund and other initiatives focused on education in Africa since he is a strong believer in the power of education, especially for the underprivileged.
👋 High Five!
5 resources that WILL help your business, make you smarter, or just showing off during a meal with friends or partners.
You waiting so hard to be back to a normal life, it is (almost) done. But, you don't really know what to do? Sbored is an automatic generator to bring you idea, activity and new habit: Sbored
Want to learn about the incredible acquisition of Twitch by Amazon for $1B dollars? The co-founder Justin Kan explained it there: you're welcome.
Bruno Raillard takes the reverse problem and analyzes why Frst missed some deals. Very interesting, but in french! Baguette
You'd rather watch Euro 2020 than go to Vivatech, the world's rendezvous for startups and leaders? Find a short summary right here
Still, looking to be a billionaire? This tweet is for you: enjoy
Thank you for reading the vc family newsletter to the end. See you next Monday!
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