vcfamily - Newsletter #22
Spotify is partnering with FC Barcelona, Akaneo Series D and Carole Juge-Llewellyn, CEO of JOONE 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.
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe
On the agenda:
📰 Extra! Extra! Weekly news
🚀 Fundraisings, acquisitions and IPOs of the week
😍 Founder of the week: Carole Juge-Llewellyn (JOONE)
🔎 Internship and job offers
🎁 The Gift
📰 Extra! Extra! Weekly news
🍿 Netflix wants to end account sharing. In the face of increasing competition from Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, etc., the American streaming giant is going to take steps to limit, and eventually end, account sharing. The first is to charge about $3 to add users who do not live under the same roof and who will thus have their own password. The second measure is the possibility to transfer a profile to another account, while keeping the lists, history, etc., to make the migration easier. This announcement echoes Netflix's recent disappointing results in terms of recruiting new subscribers.
💰 The Galion Project launches an investment fund. The French entrepreneurs' club continues its development and launches a fund that will invest between 1 and 4 million euros in a dozen start-ups per year. Called Galion.exe, the fund is owned by 250 entrepreneurs and has already raised €30 million with the aim of reaching €80 million. The fund intends to rely on its network of entrepreneurs to find high-value start-ups.
🚘 Stellantis launches a venture capital fund. The automotive group, founded a year ago after the merger of PSA and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, has announced the launch of a 300 million euro fund as part of its Dare Forward 2030 strategic plan. The objective is to invest in innovative start-ups, to integrate them into the group after a few months and to market the software created by them. The aim is to reach 20 billion euros in 2030 with the sale of these products.
⚽️ Spotify is partnering with FC Barcelona. The Swedish streaming giant has announced an exclusive partnership with Barcelona football club, with the logo appearing on the club's football shirts and the name of the club's football stadium being changed to Spotify Camp Nou. The deal is expected to pay Barcelona 280 million over three years.
🍎 The Apple Car project is falling behind. According to expert Ming-Chi Kuo, the Apple company recently disbanded the Apple Car project teams after several failures, including a potential collaboration with Hyundai. However, the project has not been abandoned and production of the car could begin in 2025, 10 years after the start of the Apple Car project.
🚀 Fundraisings, acquisitions and IPOs of the week
🥇 Akaneo (Series D) raises €122M: This French startup provides Product Experience Management (PXM) solutions that help merchants and brands deliver a compelling customer experience across all sales channels.
⚙️ Channel Engine ( Series B) raises €45M: This startup from the Netherland helps brands, wholesalers, and retailers to effectively sell on marketplaces in a fully automated way.
👾 Volt Games (Seed) raises €1.3M: The Portuguese developed a Mobile Games specialized in NFT Sports Games
✨ Find all the fundraising of the week from 500k€ on this Airtable!
😍 Founder of the week: Carole Juge-Llewellyn
This week we present you Carole Juge-Llewellyn, CEO & Co-founder of JOONE.
“I come to you as one of the few entrepreneurs without a business school degree, having grown up in Auvergne (editor's note: a rural region of France), without any network, in a middle class family. And yet today, I am at the head of one of the 120 biggest French startups and I see that the number of obstacles I had to overcome to get there is greater than for many others. Indeed, we are in 2022 and the startup ecosystem is composed of a majority of people who look alike, let's look at ourselves: a majority of men, white, from privileged environments. There are a lot of initiatives to reverse this trend, my question is quite simple: if you were elected president, how could you ensure more diversity among startup founders?”
Carole Juge-Llewellyn questions Eric Zemmour, far-right candidate. It is March 9, 2022 and the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris is full to welcome the candidates for the presidency of the French Republic who have come to present their program for digital.
"We need the best people to be able to step up. If they are white and male, they will be the best. If they are female and black, they will be the best.", this is what the candidate's response was in essence.
Carole Juge-Llewellyn has indeed succeeded in entrepreneurship without being pushed by a business school or a supportive family environment. In January 2017, at 32, she launched JOONE, a subscription-based company selling 100% French-made baby diapers guaranteed to be free of harmful components.
Present in about 60 countries, JOONE has gained the trust of 80,000 families who have subscribed to their 64.90 euros monthly subscription. It is with its diapers that the startup makes 85% of its turnover, of 20 million euros in 2020.
Before starting her entrepreneurial career, Carole had several lives. She was Miss Auvergne, had a career in cinema (we even see her in a scene of Taken 3), wrote a novel, directed the English language department of the faculty of economics and management of Paris-XII...
From now on, the diaper brand is diversifying its distribution method and its range by offering a hundred or so complementary products for children, but also for moms, sold individually on their website (wipes, micellar water, dietary supplements...) but also by launching hygiene and care products for pre-teens.
JOONE has now raised over 13M€ with The Family, Alven and Vaultier 7.
Carole is an entrepreneur to follow closely, her incredible adventure seems to be just beginning.
🔎 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.
Newfund - VC Analyst Intern (Paris) 👉 Apply here
Red River West - Investment Analyst Intern (Paris) 👉 Apply here
Elaia - VC Analyst Intern (Paris) 👉 Apply here
🎁 The Gift
🎨 Tired from always using Canva for your presentations?
👉 Maybe you can use this platform instead! 😁
Thank you for reading the vc family newsletter to the end. See you next week directly in your email box!