vc family - Newsletter #20
Microsoft invests in African startups, Tenderly raises €40M and the CEO of Yuka as the Founder of the week.
✒️
Alice Bardon Catineau
,
Kenza Yahyaoui
,
Baptiste Durand
and
Loup Audouy
.
Get to read your weekly vc newsletter along with your Sunday morning coffee ☕️ : News of the week in Venture Capital, fundraisings and acquisitions, internships and job offers in the vc ecosystem and many others. For more information about vc family, visit vc family.
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
On the agenda:
📰 Extra! Extra! Weekly news
🚀 Fundraisings, acquisitions and IPOs of the week
😍 Founder of the week: Julie Chapon (Yuka)
🔎 Internship and job offers
🎁 The Gift
📰 Extra! Extra! Weekly news
🌾 The French government launches the Agritech20 label. France continues to invest in the development of the entrepreneurial eco-system and has announced that it will select 20 start-ups specialising in the agricultural sector each year to help them spring up. The aim is to have 10 agritech unicorns by 2030 and to help this sector, which has accounted for only 6% of fundraising in France over the past six years, to emerge.
🇷🇺 Big Tech continues to impose sanctions on Russia. We already talked about it last week and the Big Tech boycott phenomenon against Russia continues: Airbnb has suspended its activities, Apple and Microsoft have stopped selling their products in the country, Google has blocked its advertising activities as well as the editing of Google Maps, Twitter and Facebook have blocked the accounts of some Russian media and Intel has announced that it will no longer deliver chips to Russia.
🌍 Microsoft to invest $500 million in African start-ups. The company has announced that it will invest in 10,000 start-ups in Africa over the next five years. Working directly with venture capital funds, incubators and accelerators, Microsoft will also launch the Microsoft Startups Founders Hub to establish a local presence in Africa.
💻 Yandex, the "Russian Google", is in trouble. The Russian company, which offers, like Google, a whole range of digital services (search engine, cartography, VTC service, delivery, mailbox, etc.) is accused on Facebook by employees of not taking a stand against the Kremlin and not acting directly against the war against Ukraine. At the same time, the company's share price was divided by five on the New York Stock Exchange.
🛒 GoPuff is coming to Europe to conquer the market. The American quick commerce company, founded in 2013 in the US wants to catch up with new players in Europe like Gorillas, Cajoo, Getir, Yango Deli, etc. GoPuff has already acquired quick commerce start-ups Fancy and Dija to enter the market with a customer and warehouse base and has started marketing and communication campaigns. On the financial side, the company is now valued at $15 billion and is reportedly preparing an IPO.
🚀 Fundraisings, acquisitions and IPOs of the week
🥦 Source.ag (Seed) raises €9M: They democratize access to sufficient fruit and vegetables with A.I. powered indoor farms.
⛓ Tenderly (Series B) raises €40M: It’s an Ethereum developer platform that enables you to build innovative blockchain products.
🧱 Tracktor (Series A) raises €12M: They reinvent the rental of professional equipment for construction, industry and events.
💸 Your Juno (Seed) raises €2.2M: They are building a learning and community platform to support women to invest and feel empowered by their finances.
✨ Find all the fundraising of the week from 500k€ on this Airtable!
😍 Founder of the week: Julie Chapon
This week we present you Julie Chapon, CEO & Co-founder of Yuka.
For those who have been living in a cave for the past 5 years, Yuka is an app allowing consumers to evaluate the impact of their food and cosmetic purchases on their health. Founded in 2017 by Julie Chapon, François and Benoît Martin, the concept of the french startup is simple: just scan the products you put in your cart to see what they contain and know if they are good for your body - if not, Yuka suggests healthier alternatives. An app already used by more than 27 million users worldwide (it is now available in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, the United States, Canada and Australia)!
Julie Chapon fell into entrepreneurship “by chance”. After a preparatory class for business schools, she joined Edhec in Lille (France), then joined a consulting firm to help large companies with their digital transformation. In 2016, after 5 years of feeling lost in a job that did not meet her expectations, luck came her way. Two engineer friends, François and Benoit Martin, invite her to participate to a Hackathon where they decide to develop a connected object with a carrot shape allowing to decipher the labels of food products. The trio won the marathon thanks to their smart vegetable. In order to allow everyone to use this tool anywhere (especially at the supermarket), the carrot became an app. Julie, François and Benoit decide to dedicate themselves 100% to it and the launch takes place 6 months later, in January 2017. Aiming for 10 to 20,000 users the first year, they reach 1 million.
Yuka's business model is quite original. Initially non-monetized, the application has now been enhanced with additional paying features based on the freemium model: a premium and paying version (15 € per year), allowing to scan without network, to search for a food without having to scan it and to detect allergens and undesirable elements, ensures 70% of the turnover. Nutrition programs account for 10% of turnover and the remaining 20% is linked to the sale of a timeless paper calendar of seasonal fruits and vegetables, available for 14.90 €.
Incredible story: In January 2022, Yuka experienced an explosion of new users in the US. While the app was growing at an average monthly rate of about 10,000 users, more than 500,000 accounts were opened in January 2022 alone. In full transparency, Julie Chapon shared her surprise on LinkedIn saying that it took her team several days to understand the phenomenon, which was none other than a video posted by a user on the video platform TikTok and which generated tens of millions views.
The application changed consumers' habits, but also manufacturers'. A recent study showed that 94% of Yuka users stopped buying certain products.
When asked about the secrets of her success, Julie says: "Entrepreneurs are always presented as extraordinary people, born or almost born with an entrepreneurial spirit. This is absolutely not my case. My story is ordinary. I had no specific project, no tools. I learned along the way. I am living proof that anyone can do it!"
🔎 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 website.
Aster - VC Analyst intern (Paris) 👉 Apply here
Eutopia - VC Analyst intern (Paris) 👉 Apply here
Total- Corporate Venture Capital Analyst (Paris) 👉 Apply here
🎁 The Gift
⚙️ Starting a business and wondering how to start ?
👉 Here is a very useful website gathering all the information you need !
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