The Americans are coming to Europe

American venture capitalists are investing record sums in European startups, setting themselves up to repatriate returns.

By the numbers: European deal value with U.S. VC participating has hit €50.8 billion over the first three quarters of 2021, per PitchBook.

  • A record 21.2% of European deals in 2021 had at least one U.S. investor on board, up from 17% in 2020 and 15% in 2019.

The big picture: Europe’s venture market has matured, enticing Silicon Valley firms like Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners to open local offices.

  • “This is in some ways what we’ve been waiting for,” says Moonfire Ventures’ Mattias Ljungman, who co-founded famed European VC firm Atomico with Skype’s Niklas Zennstrom in 2006. “This is making the ecosystem better.”
  • European VCs I spoke with at Web Summit this week in Lisbon, Portugal, were all positive about the U.S. influx, largely because it means more follow-on capital.
  • “The strength of the U.S. is more specialized investors that can be helpful,” Northzone Ventures general partner Michiel Kotting explains.

Yes, but: The Europeans still seem to feel like they have an edge in early-stage investing.

  • When everyone was investing via Zoom, “the playing field was level,” said Kotting, but it’s shifted back to in-person investing over the last couple of months, giving VCs who are based in Europe an advantage.

Flashback: It remains to be seen if things will be different than two decades ago, when many U.S. firms landed in Europe, only to leave after realizing they couldn’t successfully compete with the locals.

The bottom line: European VCs aren’t worried about Americans taking a bigger piece of the pie, so long as the pie itself is growing.

 
– Exit boom

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European companies didn’t miss out on this year’s exit boom, notching records in dollars and counts. Over the first three quarters of 2021, they generated €115.6 billion in exit value.

  • Zooming in: Public listings, driven by a few highly valued companies like Sportradar and ON, yielded the biggest venture-backed exits.
  • By comparison, S. exits reached $582.5 billionin value in the first three quarters of the year, almost doubling 2020’s total, per PitchBook.

 
-Dispatch from Web Summit

On Thursday, I caught up with Web Summit co-founder and CEO Paddy Cosgrave:

Post-game: After Web Summit and f.ounders — the exclusive conference for entrepreneurs and investors that takes place immediately after —Cosgrove treats himself with a good week of playing tennis for three to four hours a day.

Future plans: Europe-focused Web Summit is expanding to Tokyo next year, and Cosgrove already is thinking about taking the brand to China and maybe Australia “in the coming years.” (Note: Web Summit’s parent company already runs events under other brands in other parts of the world, such as Collision in North America, and RISE in Asia.)

Money talk: Web Summit raised a $50 million fund in 2018 to invest in early-stage startups participating in its conferences, and industry sources tell Axios that it’s currently raising a sophomore fund, along with a separate one focused on Series B and later rounds. Cosgrove declined to comment on fundraising.

 
Plus

-Why VC firm Sequoia broke with tradition to put down roots in Europe’s startup scene (Forbes)

-Coatue plans Expansion into Europe with new office and partner (Bloomberg)

-European startups got a bigger share of record global VC invested in H1 2021 (Crunchbase News)

 
Πηγή: axios.com

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