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Taavet Hinrikus
Plural • 28K followers
Plural is leading a $50m Series C round for Starship Technologies, the autonomous delivery company founded by two of Europe’s most iconic builders - Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis. When we first invested in Starship in 2024, the company’s delivery robots had already completed more than 6m jobs across European cities and US university campuses, driving more miles than any other sidewalk AV logistics company in the world. Today, Starship is making profits on its deliveries and targeting the huge opportunity of American cities, building on its proven success across 60+ university campuses in the US. Having now completed more than 9 million deliveries (5x more deliveries than all its US competitors combined), Starship has gathered a huge dataset that it uses to continuously improve the performance of its vehicles. This has allowed it to surpass the technical challenges that are still blocking many of its rivals, like safety validation and all-weather reliability (surviving even Finnish winters), while its experience of operating in more than 30 European cities in 6 countries demonstrates its ability to win approval from regulators. It’s already working with some of the world’s leading last-mile delivery providers in Europe including Bolt, Delivery Hero's Foodora and DoorDash's Wolt, as well as GrubHub in the US. Now, as the company prepares to scale its robot delivery fleet, it’s ready to strengthen and expand its relationship with these partners. At Plural, we love backing repeat founders with the ambition to overhaul and create massive industries, and there are very few better examples in Europe than Ahti and Janus. As Skype’s first employee, I’ve seen first-hand how they’re able to perfect complex technology while simultaneously scaling teams and their market impact. Read more about why we doubled down on Starship here: https://lnkd.in/e_ahsMAt And coverage by John Koetsier in Forbes here: https://lnkd.in/e42t96TX
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Marie-Helene Ametsreiter
Speedinvest • 3K followers
Rebuilding European VC for Global Impact The US VC model, optimized for software and scalable markets, often fails to address Europe's unique strengths: deep tech, engineering, and diverse markets. This mismatch is holding us back. Europe leads the world in sustainable materials innovation, yet these companies struggle to secure funding due to short-term investment horizons common in traditional VC. To unlock Europe's potential, we need to move beyond incremental changes. We must: Build More Pan-European VCs (to aggregate demand and provide the scale needed for global competition, turning our fragmentation into a strategic advantage). Embrace Evergreen funds & longer fund timelines (to align with the patient capital required for deep tech and hardware development, which often involves longer R&D cycles). Move from pure capital allocation to becoming knowledge-hubs (to provide startups with the knowledge and networks needed to scale sustainably in Europe and beyond). At Speedinvest, we're committed to leading this change. With five offices across Europe and one of the most comprehensive portfolio support teams on the continent, we're building a sustainable, impact-driven VC that empowers our portfolio companies at every stage. Big thanks to Johannes Lenhard from VentureESG for pushing our industry to think about systemic change! Wonderful event as always 👏 Europe’s potential is enormous. Together, we can build a stronger tomorrow that we all benefit from — let’s keep pushing!
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Tim Schumacher
World Fund • 26K followers
Today we’re announcing that with our World Fund we’re backing enerkii - the Munich-based startup bringing clean, decentralised energy to Europe’s industrial base. Industry is one of Europe’s most polluting sectors, and one of the slowest to decarbonise. Over 80% of industrial companies in Germany still lack renewable energy systems. Meanwhile, energy-related emissions hit a record high last year, totalling 37.4 billion tonnes of CO₂. These are entirely avoidable emissions, and we must tackle them with urgency. Founded by gridX (where I was a happy Angel investor with my TS Ventures) veterans David Balensiefen, Henry Thierhoff and Hendrik Abel, enerkii is already powering 87 MW of industrial capacity across Germany. Slashing energy bills by 50% on average. At the heart of enerkii’s tech is an OS that maps out the best clean energy setup in as little as 15 minutes, replacing weeks of consultancy work. We’re proud to back this exceptional team of repeat entrepreneurs, tackling a massive market, with real decarbonisation impact. Coverage in TheNextWeb, linked in comments. Read more: www.enerkii.com
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Ajay Vashee
IVP • 4K followers
Founders, you’ve had to navigate so much over the past five years. And now…tariffs. Today, IVP hosted a session for our portfolio company CEOs and CFOs about navigating tariff uncertainty and market volatility and what all of this means for the tech world. As the market bounces back and forth this month, Alex Zukin and Stephanie Roth at Wolfe Research, LLC joined me for a candid conversation. The realities pre-IPO companies are facing right now: 🔹 While the M&A market will be meaningfully constrained in the near-term, large-scale M&A could see an uptick over the course of the year 🔹 Depending on how the next few weeks play out (specifically regarding China), the IPO window could open in earnest post-Labor Day 🔹Tariffs are less likely to directly impact digital goods and services. For physical goods, we may see reshoring to North America more broadly 🔹 That being said, if meaningful tariffs are ultimately implemented, they will impact demand for software products, as well as the cost to build them. Tooling that's mission-critical or has a very clear and compelling ROI will be less impacted The advice we’re giving our portfolio companies right now: 1️⃣ Your annual budget process isn’t enough. You need to be able to generate a monthly POV given how quickly the macro environment can change. Think about whether you have the right team, software products and processes in place. 2️⃣ Build a clear and comprehensive view of your cost structure. Most companies wait too long to do this, but now is the time to understand the operational flexibility you might need if you have to extend runway or modify pricing. 3️⃣ Capitalize on uncertainty as an opportunity. The current market contraction is a unique window to invest in new products and new avenues for growth when your competition is retrenching. 4️⃣ Raise sooner vs. later if you’ve been waiting. Liquidity matters more than valuation in an uncertain environment, and holding out for an up round is not a viable strategy if you need more capital. 5️⃣ Lean on investors and advisers who’ve lived through multiple market cycles. (In our case, for the past 45 years.) Get their perspectives and support. In many ways what we’re going through right now is unprecedented—but the market volatility and macroeconomic shocks we’re seeing are not. What did we miss?
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Suranga Chandratillake
Balderton Capital • 19K followers
𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗥𝗦 𝗗𝗘𝗠𝗬𝗦𝗧𝗜𝗙𝗜𝗘𝗗 𝟱: 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗦𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗗 𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗥 𝗩𝗖 Continuing my series on routes into VC Investment Teams (see previous posts in the comments), it’s time for a final group: Second Career VCs (SCVCs). 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗩𝗖? SCVCs are people who have had a substantial career in another field before turning to Venture. This doesn't include a product manager with five years experience or even a founder of a company that made it to Series B (great backgrounds, but more relevant to my previous post on Operator VCs). Instead, SCVCs typically spent 15-20+ years in another field, even reaching retirement stage, before starting afresh in VC. I’ve seen a variety of SCVCs – some are founders (myself included), others financiers (such as my previous partners Mark Evans and Tim Bunting) and others have had careers in medicine, law or even sports (e.g. Serena Williams’ primary focus is now Serena Ventures). Historically, this was almost the *only* way into venture. Key founders of Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia, for example, were successful, effectively retired operators before they got into venture, first investing their own capital and then adding other people’s money – much like successful Angel-turned-VCs do today. 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀 & 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗦𝗖𝗩𝗖 ✅Credibility: A successful first career brings instant credibility with founders. ✅Financial: Some firms require partners to buy into the firm/funds. A previously successful career likely provides the capital to do this. ❌Starting Again: You go directly from respected expert to total noob! It’s a humbling transition. ❌Structure: Many folks in this boat could just choose to invest directly themselves. Being a VC brings more capital and support, but it also brings more structure and bureaucracy. 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗩𝗖𝘀 1️⃣ Unless their previous career was in finance, there will be gaps in a SCVC’s toolkit. SCVCs are unlikely to go back to business school so they need to find a firm where others can balance out their skills. 2️⃣ As with Operator VCs, working in an investment firm is different to most careers and a transition in mentality and work-style is required - more on this in my previous post. 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗩𝗖 𝘃𝗶𝗮 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗲 1️⃣ The world is competitive and it is rare to be sufficiently successful (in a relevant enough field) to be able to get into VC this way. 2️⃣ And, of the few who can do it, many have other attractive options in life: retirement, a portfolio career, becoming an elder statesperson in their existing career, philanthropy, etc. 3️⃣ Once upon a time, VC could be pursued as an ‘active retirement’, alongside long vacations and other pursuits. Today the market is simply too professional, competitive and demanding for this – you’re either in or not, making it a less attractive path for those with the privilege of this option.
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Nick Durham
Shadow Ventures • 4K followers
I’ve been working on the theory of why small, shippable factories are the perfect inversion to the centralized prefab factory model. It all collapsed into one line of math (credit to Gilles Retsin): Factory Efficiency = Usage × (Throughput × Product Value ) / ( CapEx + Deployment OpEx) The idea is that the closer you can drive Usage to 100 % while keeping the denominator tiny, the faster the flywheel spins. A shippable microfactory tackles this by primarily focusing on a high Usage factor. Because the microfactory can be packed up afterwards and reused, its CapEx gets amortized over multiple projects, effectively raising its overall Usage across the year. If one project alone doesn’t fully occupy the factory, it can simply roll over to another job to maintain high Usage. Its CapEx is often an order of magnitude lower than a centralized factory (< $1M vs. $10-50M min), so the breakeven throughput is more achievable on a small pipeline of work. The real breakthrough here is portability. There is near-zero stranded capital and almost no idle time. To flesh this theory out, I wrote 3000 words on the topic for Brad Hargreaves and Thesis Driven. The article breaks down: - why “fixed factories, shipped goods” is being inverted to shipped factories, fixed goods - what a sub‑$1 M robotic cell does to CapEx per home versus a £45 M off‑site plant - early production/cost data on a shippable microfactory from Mollie Claypool, Gilles Retsin, Sam Baker and the Automated Architecture (AUAR) team - the hybrid reality of robots tackling the heavy structural components and human crews assembling faster and cheaper - technical constraints to pull this model off and future considerations on the optimal business model (own vs. rent) Major shoutout to Gilles Retsin for helping me pull this together. https://lnkd.in/eRTnbZPa