lord: worst graph ever part 2

Why is nobody disrupting VC?

Hi there,

We just released our second French Tech Trends report in partnership with La French Tech. The analysis provides a data-driven look at emerging trends, investments, and active investors in France through the last quarter of 2016.

Check out some highlights scattered below.

Worst graph ever: Part deux

We previously highlighted what we thought was the worst graph ever by Thomas Friedman.

But there’s competition. See below.

Femtech market map

Today, we see an increasing number of startups offering fertility tracking apps, as well as startups focused on egg freezing and fertility treatments, women-only clinical care, and even subscription tampons. We put together a market map to visualize the startups in the femtech space, which together have raised over $1.1B in funding.

The 250 best fintech companies in the world

After the success and media coverage of the AI 100, we’re going to be expanding the private company focus at The Future of Fintech Conference.

And so I’m excited to announce that we’ll be unveiling The Fintech 250 at the event.

The Fintech250 will recognize the 250 most promising, private fintech companies from around the world. If you are part of, or know of, a fintech company that fits this description, apply here by Feb 5th.

Also, early bird rates for the conference end in 5 days. Get $1000 off with the code NLFintech17.

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Founder survey — skip the VC

We previously shared revenue, growth, and VC funding stats of 3 anonymous companies and polled you to see which one you’d like to be the founder of.

As you can see, Company 2 won in a landslide followed by Company 3. The companies were real and the data was from CB Insights.

The 3 companies in question were competitors in the online mattress space:

• Company 1 – Casper (10.9%)
• Company 2 – Tuft & Needle (63.8%)
• Company 3 – Saatva (25.3%)

With the data we shared, I have no idea why anyone would pick company 1 TBH.  I guess as Eric Paley of Founder Collective said, VC is a heck of a drug. (See The Blurb for his great article on the topic.)

Some people have bought into the trope that in order to build a big company, you need VC.

More on that below.

Xenophobe in da house

Yesterday, we talked about the AppDynamics acquisition, and I mentioned that the founder was an Indian immigrant and that we need to stop immigrants like this from getting into the USA.

99.9% of you understood this was sarcasm, but a few of you emailed to say we were being xenophobic, racist, and/or classless. Some said those things in nicer ways than others.

First, I want to thank you for your outrage.
Second, to be clear, it was sarcasm.
Third, we have now established a corporate policy that bans sarcasm.

Oh you Francey, huh?

2016 was a record year for deals and dollars to French tech. Funding increased 62% over 2015 totals to over $2B, while deal volume increased by 116%.

Going big and VC

A common theme in VC land is that if you’re going big, you take VC. If not, you build what are pejoratively called “lifestyle” businesses. Some VCs to their credit dislike the lifestyle moniker but the theme is the same. Ambitious, going big? Raise VC.

It’s definitely a good narrative for VCs. You need us to go big.

But it is not always true. Just this past week, Outfit7, a revenue-funded mobile app developer, was acquired for $1B. On revenue funding, the founder said, “We raise a round of money from our users every month.”

There are of course other big companies that are/were revenue-funded. These were companies not building a small biz but which have taken another path. Think Mailchimp, Mojang, Storm8, and Atlassian.

I remain perplexed that the financing model for tech companies has not evolved and as a result, the go big with VC narrative also persists. Bryce Roberts is trying interesting things with Indie.vc and there are some revenue-based financing options which are cropping up but nobody has gone big here (yet).

We can also testify to the fact that it’s perceived as super boring to be revenue-funded and run a real company. When we were 65 people doing millions in revenue and bootstrapped, nobody cared. When we “sold out” and raised $10M of growth equity, folks fell over themselves to congratulate us and tell us we were the isht.

Yeah. Weird. Oddly, when American Express increased our credit limit and we pitched that to journalists as a funding story, nobody cared.

BTW, we haven’t touched any of the money we raised. We love the Outfit7 founder’s perspective that the company raises a round of financing every month. Here is our revenue translated to funding rounds since that is much cooler than just making money.

Mobile mania

We’ve identified 5 startups taking mobility and transportation to the next level through ideas like electric planes (featured below) and hyper-fast rail, as seen in our Game Changers Report. The top 5 mobility game changers are Zee.Aero, Hyperloop One (H1), Nauto, Dispatch, and Nexar.

Euro-payin’ investors

Bpifrance was the most active investor in France tech in 2016. Kima Ventures took the second spot for most deals completed in 2016.

The Industry Standard

CB Insights data is the most trusted by those in the industry and the media. A few recent hits.

Betakit. Jessica Galang (@jessicagalangg) writes about Canadian VC activity and references the CB Insights and PwC Canada MoneyTree report.

Nasdaq. Diana Ngo (@dhqngo) quotes PayCommerce founder Abdul Naushad on the need for blockchain to effectively enter the market and cites CB Insights funding data.

Financial Post. Sean Craig (@sdbcraig) reports on Canadian venture capital funding and refers to the CB Insights and PwC Canada MoneyTree report.

I love you.

Anand
@asanwal

P.S. Next Tuesday, we’ll be looking at M&A and IPO trends in our Global Tech Exits briefing. Sign up here.