Landing the Plane: 5 Tips for Founders Navigating M&A
Here we are at the end of a decade of low interest rates, in a much tougher fundraising environment than the heady highs of 2020-21, and a disjointed and uncertain economy. VC-backed CEOs like you are now coming to an inevitable realisation: if you don’t hit revenue growth targets, you’re unlikely to attract new investors. […]
Conquering the US: 6 lessons for healthtechs
Ambitious European founders continue to look to the US to scale their enterprises, conquer new frontiers and cater to a broader customer base. The US digital health market is valued at $88B in 2023 — the largest and most lucrative in the world — and is entirely privately funded. For founders, the US offers access to more […]
The New (Synthetic) Data Moat
“Data is the new oil,” they said…in like 2015. But what about 2023? According to an analysis by the European Commission, the value of the data economy is predicted to exceed €1 trillion by 2025 for Europe alone. The demand for data, especially good data, is poised to grow: the number of companies using generative AI products has increased by […]
Expanding to Europe: Why U.S. Startups Shouldn’t Wait
In the three years since we published our inaugural European Expansion Report, we’ve experienced a devastating global pandemic and substantial economic volatility. Many venture-backed startups have shied away from – or abandoned outright – the ‘growth at all costs’ mentality, instead favoring extreme focus on efficient growth and controlling costs. For U.S. software startups with international […]
What Founders Want: A survey of pre-seed and seed founders
4 years ago, a team of VCs from Creandum (Carl Fritjofsson), University of Chicago (Owen Reynolds) and Newfund (Henri Deshays) measured the disparity between how founders and VCs view their relationship with each other, and asked if self-proclaimed “value-add” VCs really could stake claim to that label. That research has been incredibly valuable for us here […]
Developers, développeurs, desarrolladors!
A brief rant into some of the trends sweeping the software world and highlighting some of the coolest European companies making the most of those trends. Developers are the most important decision-makers in the software ecosystem, and, as software eats the world, the most important decision-makers in business. That sentence would have been controversial 10 […]
How this VC thinks about pre-seed investments
When we say we invest early, we mean it. At Frontline, 70% of our investments have been pre-revenue and 60% pre-product. At Pre-Seed and Seed, there is little to be learned from intensive quantitative analysis pre-investment (woo). That said, over the past year and a half at Frontline, I’ve built a qualitative framework, designed around four key questions, […]
Maternity Leave 101: What we’ve Learned
Ten tiny fingers, and ten tiny toes *Hold up* before you decide to hop off this page because “yet another piece on the benefits of offering generous family leave policies, I’ve read them all” let me just say that yes, I have spent a lot of time researching and advocating for maternity leave as a way to attract and […]
10 reasons startups struggle when raising VC funding
A version of this article was originally published here. There’s nothing easy about raising venture finance for your startup. The odds are massively stacked against you as a founder. Statistically, roughly 1 in 100 startups that pitch to a particular venture fund are successful. That’s better odds than the Lotto, but tough odds without doubt. […]
Rejection followed by Failure: a career in venture capital
I often get approached by folks looking to start a career in venture capital. They’ve read all the investor blogs, can quote the latest high-profile fundraisings and acquisitions, and have concluded that venture is a game of playing Midas. Early on in these conversations, I try to set the picture straight by telling them this: […]
