OnlyFans 2021 financial metrics are just wild:
- GMV: $4,800m
- Revenue: $932m
- Pre-tax profit: $433m
Founder cashed out nearly $500m over the last 2 years. 💸💸💸
It’s actually crazy how small the VC / startup world is.
Good deeds are rewarded in ways you could never have predicted while bad ones come back to bite you.
Always be nice and play the non-zero game. You never know when / how it will come back. ;)
1/ I am super excited to share that I have recently joined the growth stage investment team at
@atomico
, a multi-stage European VC fund.
I look forward to backing exceptional founders at Series B and beyond in Europe as well as the US.
Tiger Global's investment pace is well documented by
@TurnerNovak
memes and
@packyM
newsletter.
I built a simple website to track Tiger Global's private and public investments so that lazy VC twitter has a single source of truth for the ultimate🐯index.
Which large tech companies were effectively incubated by VC funds? Some examples:
- Sutter Hill -> Snowflake ($50bn market cap)
- Rocket Internet -> Zalando ($10bn market cap)
It is incredible how many US investors are coming to London at the moment.
There seems to be strong momentum with a lot of US investors using London as point of entry to the European tech ecosystem.
If you are coming to London, hit me up. Always keen to meet! 🙌
Interesting framework by
@GoldmanSachs
for investing in software across stages.
There are 8 key factors and the framework is applicable for companies across stages.
Would love to hear some thoughts on what else is important and what may be missing from the framework!
Truecaller - pretty impressive swing to profitability.
PS: Quite interesting to find a Stockholm-listed tech company that effectively provides exposure to the advertising market in India (~70% of revenues).
OnlyFans 2021 financial metrics are just wild:
- GMV: $4,800m
- Revenue: $932m
- Pre-tax profit: $433m
Founder cashed out nearly $500m over the last 2 years. 💸💸💸
@Beth_Kindig
Very insightful and timely post. I recently developed a framework to assess the impact of a COVID/ economic downturn on SaaS companies. Would love to know your thoughts!
Have always been very interested in semiconductors but found it to be a bit too "technical". Did a deep-dive this weekend and have collated some resources for beginners:
1. The global Semiconductor Value Chain:
Organising / attending so many events at the moment. 😅
I started my VC career during the pandemic and built relationships over Zoom. It is so awesome to finally meet everyone in person. 🚀 🚀
Every challenge is an opportunity.
@plaffont
and
@GavinSBaker
playing offense while everyone else is trying to figure out how to survive.
Great
@FT
read on the state of late-stage / crossover investing:
I am a huge fan of
@patrick_oshag
and
@InvestLikeBest
@joincolossus
podcast series.
Given the high quality of businesses discussed on the podcasts, I was curious how the publicly listed companies performed after appearing on the podcast. The short answer is PRETTY WELL! ;)
Adjacent but interesting fact in light of Adobe's acquisition of Figma.
Back in 2016, $CRM considered buying $ADBE as per a leaked board deck. $ADBE was trading at $50bn market cap. Now it is at $144bn...
On a long enough time scale, every target becomes an acquirer. 🙃
Launching a new newsletter that provides a summary of Series A+ financing rounds in Europe on a weekly basis.
If you want to stay up-to-date with new deals, please subscribe to the newsletter.
Also grateful for feedback on format/content!
This is an insane read on
@bedrock
's journey with
@Rippling
. cc:
@GeoffLewisOrg
Outbid at Series A --> uncapped note --> got close to lead the Series B but never issued a TS due to Mar-20 crash --> finally co-led $250m Series D at $11bn in May-22...
Good overview of key metrics to assess consumer subscription businesses.
50%+ renewal rate (Y1) and 40% (Y2) are considered exceptional + <3 month CAC period (2021 data)
Must be a lot lower now due to
@Apple
new rules around app renewals...
Source:
I started European Tech Weekly just 2 months ago and it is so awesome to see it slowly scale! I am planning to also interview founders in the future.
But the most important question - CAN WE GET TO 1,000 subscribers asap??? 😅
Sign up here:
Love revisiting the leaked M&A target review deck (2016) from $CRM. Valuation now and back then:
- HUBSPOT: $25bn vs. $2bn in 2016
- VEEVA: $40bn vs. $4bn in 2016
- ADOBE: $250bn vs. $50bn in 2016
Venture-like returns in public markets...
@buccocapital
I actually did some analysis on the target operating model for SaaS companies (as per company disclosure). Never finished it but wanted to share the data. :))
1/ I am planning to write a deep dive on the notion of geo arbitrage (US -> Europe), particularly in fintech and consumer.
De-risked models continue to attract a hell lot of capital in Europe. Some recent examples:
- Gopuff / Faire / Thrasio / Square / Coinbase but FOR EUROPE
One of the benefits of rising rates is incremental float revenue. In the case of $BILL, every 100bps increase in federal funds equates to $30–35m im additional revenue…
Taking inspiration from the excellent
@atomico
‘State of European tech’report, I think there is potential to create a ‘State of LISTED European Tech’ report. 👀
1/ Awesome report on European unicorns by
@dealroomco
and
@Affinity
. Some fascinating (but maybe not surprising) observations.
Five countries (UK, Germany, France, Sweden and Netherlands) accounted for 75% of the most valuable unicorns in 2021
I just published my first
@SubstackInc
post!🥳In this post, I look at large-cap
#European
#tech
(>€1bn market cap) in public markets.
Subscribe here: .
- A short thread with the data:
(1)
Fascinating fireside chat with
@EMostaque
and
@eladgil
.
Must-watch if you want to better understand the future of Gen AI. Touches on many topics, including its market potential, open-source vs closed-source models, AI safety and moats in AI stack.
Very excited to publish my latest company deep dive on
@Wise
that is planning to direct list in the UK tomorrow.
There is just so much to like about its mission, business model, founding team (
@kaarmann
,
@taavet
) and financial metrics.
@shak
Know of instances in which SF VCs do the first call and take the next flight to meet the founders in Europe. That's the pace we need in European VC.
Recently came across an interesting way to frame VC investing:
There are only 10-15 companies in Europe that drive vintage returns irrespective of macro / other factors. The way to generate outsized returns is to (a) see, (b) access and (c) build conviction on those deals.
Great career advice for junior VCs from
@AlokVasudev
.
Gotta ask yourself - how will you be better at sourcing, accessing and converting deals? Easier to find blue ocean but can also find an edge in red ocean.
One of my mid term goals is to create a tight community of fellow investors across the major economies to
(a) identify new trends / investment theses faster and take a global view while investing local
(b) identify localised versions of a model that works in a different geo
Just published the latest edition of European Tech Weekly. 29+ selected seed+ deals were announced with $370m of capital being deployed in European Tech last week.
Series A+ funding announcement have considerably slowed down over the last few weeks...
Not a surprise but most crossover funds/FOs I recently spoke to are spending time on their public book while reducing / halting private investments activity.
Public tech selectively cheaper than the average Series C-F round (at least for now)
Asset class arbitrage is fun.
Always find reference calls fascinating. My takeaway is that exceptional founders AND investors are often seen as terrible employees, particularly at large organisations.
Suspect it has sth. to do with an urge to mov fast and break things as well as not caring about hierarchy.
I expect Defense Tech to be a huge market in the next 5 years. The question is who will invest and make some serious $$$. Most funds can't / don't want to touch this area.
Taking a week off work to dig deeper into several investment themes in public and private markets. Expect a lot more activity from me on Twitter as I use it as a learning diary / think out loud here. :)
I feel that the ecosystem NEEDS a Fintech Funding Napkin. Help establish a framework to understand what it takes to raise capital in fintech - particularly this year.
@PointNineCap
's SaaS and B2B marketplace funding napkins have shown the way.
@chrija
- Let's do this?
1) Unpopular opinion but only a very few tech investors are truly research-focused and come up with original investment theses. Everyone else is following and just digging into areas that are perceived as "hot".
Which fund is the
@a16z
of Europe in regards to media activity / content production? Feels like there is an opportunity for localised content.
It is not a vanilla project as people underestimate the work that goes into the consistency + quality of a16z content.
SaaS as a business model was arguably misunderstood / underestimated by institutional investors even 5 years ago.
What are some other business models that are deeply misunderstood / underestimated today?
cc:
@patrick_oshag
,
@DennisHong17
,
@_ram_
Warburg Pincus, a large-cap PE fund, led the Series A round in $CRWD.
They likely made $4bn+ on this investment when they sold post IPO. Their stake would be worth $16bn+ today. For comparison, Warburg's AuM is $82bn...
Who are the top network effects / marketplace investors / founders in Europe?
On the investor side - am aware of the rockstars -
@NFX
,
@FjLabs
,
@speedinvest
and
@sameer_singh17
. :))
I think I found a real-time sentiment check for European fundraising environment: Outbound emails sent by European VC funds via
@Affinity
.
"From Q4-21 to Q2-22, there was a 78%
decrease in email activity. And there was a 35% drop in total email volume during the same period."
Interviewing
@HenryLSchuck
(CEO of $ZI) later tonight. We will be talking about Zoominfo's history, the importance of M&A in building Zoominfo, and life as the CEO of a publicly listed business.
Any other topics we should touch on? Twitter, work your magic!