Techstars Paris in the house
Hey everyone,
This week’s newsletter features the most recent cohort of startups from the Techstars Paris Accelerator. Paris seems to be making strides as a tech ecosystem; the city attracts nearly one quarter of all European seed investment, according to the accelerator. TechCrunch reported earlier this week that France is overhauling its visa program, making it easier for start-ups that have raised capital and for tech talent to relocate. Check out the range of Techstars Paris startups below, most of which are raising a round of capital or will be in the near future.
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- Chris
Other things
Facebook announced a focus on private communication moving forward. Facebook is one of the most important growth channels for many early-stage startups; a switch to private communication could impact how quickly early-stage startups are able to scale-up.
This blog post by Elizabeth Yin (Hustle Fund) goes over the impact of sales cycles and margins on the effectiveness of ad spend. The takeaway here is that direct-to-consumer companies can scale-up very quickly via paid channels with minimal ad spend if they’re able reduce sales cycles and/or increase margins.
This Shoelace podcast with Reza Khadjavi, Connor MacDonald, and David Herrmann. One of the key things that struck me here was the idea that the easy days of being able to rapidly scale-up sales via Facebook may be coming to end.
Future Funding Rounds 🔮
AZMed (Julien Vidal, Co-founder and CEO)
What’s been the total amount raised to date? $120K raised with Techstars.
How likely are you to raise additional capital within the next 6-12 months? We’ll raise in the next 2 months.
How much capital would you like to raise? €750k. €220k committed.
Do you anticipate that existing investors will participate? No.
Are there comparable companies that raised a similar round that you’ll look to cite in conversation with investors? Gleamer, €1.5M.
Groover (Romain Palmieri, Co-founder)
What is Groover?
Groover is a web platform that allows musicians to submit their music to relevant media, labels and influencers for coverage and get feedback guaranteed. Since our public launch in October, 17k sendings of songs and 160 active influencers (Tsugi, Delicieuse Musique, Electro Pose, Bendo Music). Nearly 30k euros generated.
What’s been the total amount raised to date? €130k, pre-seed. Currently raising €600k.
Inyo (Yannick Mathey, Founder and CEO)
What is Inyo?
On average, freelancers spend 30% of their time on tasks that are not considered billable: collecting content, planning meetings, and other unproductive tasks. Inyo is a Smart Assistant that automates some low-value and time-consuming tasks to save freelancers a lot of time.
What’s been the total amount raised to date? $500k in equity.
How likely are you to raise additional capital within the next 6-12 months? Seed round at the end of 2019
How much capital would you like to raise? TBD.
Do you anticipate that existing investors will participate? Not sure, since we pivoted.
Are there comparable companies that raised a similar round that you’ll look to cite in conversation with investors? Cushion, Bonsai, ClickUp.
Tarot Analytics (Simon Webb, Co-founder)
What is Tarot Analytics?
Tarot Analytics' provides enterprise optimisation SaaS tools to businesses. Our platform, Tarot Routing, helps companies with fleets of vehicles performing multiple deliveries every day, to plan faster and drive less kilometres.
With our solutions customers plan 10X-50X faster, drive 30% fewer KMs and satisfy their clients with accurate ETAs.
We offer a per vehicle subscription starting from 39 € per vehicle per month for our base platform.
What’s been the total amount raised to date? $120k USD (Techstars).
How likely are you to raise additional capital within the next 6-12 months? Quite likely. We are looking to raise in the second half of 2019. We are currently running pilots with several companies and aim to convert these to commercial agreements and raise on the back of it.
How much capital would you like to raise? $500k - $1.5m we will settle on an exact amount as we get closer to raising
Are there comparable companies that raised a similar round that you’ll look to cite in conversation with investors? Routific, a competitor a bit more advanced than us based in Canada, raised $1.2M in their seed round.
Stockly (Eliott Jabès, CEO)
What is Stockly?
On e-commerce websites, up to 30% of visitors leave without buying because the product was out-of-stock.
Stockly allows e-commerce websites to keep selling when out-of-stock, and the product is shipped by another merchant of Stockly's network, who still has it in stock.
What’s been the total amount raised to date? €660k.
How likely are you to raise additional capital within the next 6-12 months? Series A in a year.
Do you anticipate that existing investors will participate? Probably.
CloudGuide (Olga Plets, Co-founder and CEO)
What is CloudGuide:
CloudGuide is a global app to guide and engage the visitors at tourist attractions uniting all sites in a single app with official content and multimedia guides, creating a long-lasting customer experience for the visitor and boosting engagement with the site. Already collaborating with over 700 sites around the world.
What’s been the total amount raised to date? €1M.
How likely are you to raise additional capital within the next 6-12 months? Highly likely.
How much capital would you like to raise? €1.5M
Do you anticipate that existing investors will participate? Yes.
Albert Health (Serdar Gemici, Co-founder and CEO)
What is Albert Health:
Created by 3 former Siemens employees, Albert is a voice-based health assistant that helps patients to take the right dose at the right time and make life easier for caregivers. Elderly patients don’t have to text anymore. Albert is accessible through mobile app, Amazon Alexa and Google assistant. They just need to talk with Albert to manage their medications in an easy and effortless way. Patients can easily track health measurements, keep medical diary and set pill reminder by voice command. Furthermore, “Caregiver Mode” allows family members to manage and monitor their relatives’ treatment remotely.
How likely are you to raise additional capital within the next 6-12 months? We will raise funds in 2019.
How much capital would you like to raise? €400k.
Are there comparable companies that raised a similar round that you’ll look to cite in conversation with investors? Drugstars, 3.5M DKK (~ 470k €)
Louis (Thomas Devineaux, CEO)
What is Louis?
Thanks to his parametric designs technology Louis offers fully customizable and branded office furniture deliverable within only 2 weeks!
When buying furniture, a company faces many challenges: either your space will be tasteless with IKEA desks or customised but it will be very expensive and it will take at least 3 months to receive. Louis’ secret sauce is to rely on parametric designs to offer fully customizable and branded furniture deliverable within only 2 weeks! Our goal is to improve the daily lives of employees at work and we believe that our custom furniture transforms the work environment and improves teamwork. Our vision is to become the leader for office furniture for startups and SMEs.
How likely are you to raise additional capital within the next 6-12 months? Very likely, we are raising a seed round.
How much capital would you like to raise? €800k.
Do you anticipate that existing investors will participate? No existing investors, except Techstars.
RampUp (Arnaud Weiss, Co-founder and CEO)
What is RampUp?
Bad management is the number one reason why people underperform at work and quit. This is why we created Axel, an AI-powered virtual assistant, to help managers be great team leaders.
What’s been the total amount raised to date? $120k.
How likely are you to raise additional capital within the next 6-12 months? Very likely.
How much capital would you like to raise? €800k.
Do you anticipate that existing investors will participate? We don't know yet.
Are there comparable companies that raised a similar round that you’ll look to cite in conversation with investors? Plato $3M raised, Butterfly.ai $3M as well.
Kea Medicals (Dr. Vena Arielle Ahouansou, Founder)
What’s been the total amount raised to date? €400k.
How likely are you to raise additional capital within the next 6-12 months? Raising at the end of the 2019.
How much capital would you like to raise? €2M.
Do you anticipate that existing investors will participate? Yes.
Are there comparable companies that raised a similar round that you’ll look to cite in conversation with investors? Yes, there are some health companies but not providing the same solution and product, such as Lifen and Sopris.
Recent Startup Funding Announcements 💰
JuneShine, a San Diego-based alcoholic kombucha company, took 3 months to raise its recent seed round (undisclosed amount). The company spoke with over 100 prospective investors. JuneShine did not have a traditional lead investor, but rather a handful of strategic investors who wrote healthy check sizes.
Tank Utility, a Boston-based tank monitoring and logistics optimization company, took approximately 3 to 4 months to raise its recent $6M round. The company was able to raise the round relatively quickly due to “solid fundamental business metrics” and having spent time gathering feedback from people they knew wouldn’t withhold criticism. Tank Utility spoke with multiple tens of investment firms and fielded multiple offers.
Goods Unite Us, a Madison, Wisconsin-based company that runs political background checks on brands to empower consumer awareness, took 6 months to raise its $500k seed round, in addition to 3 to 4 months polishing its deck and pitch. The company spoke with approximately 100 potential investors and all submitted term sheets ended up coming to fruition. Goods Unite Us previously raised a $50k friends and family round.
PreOmics, a Martinsried, Germany-based company that develops and produces innovative technologies for the pre-analytics of samples for mass spectrometry, spent 4 months raising its recently announced €3.3m Series A round. PreOmics knew the lead investor, Think.Health Ventures, for 5 months prior. To date, the company has raised more than €4m in funding.
Coindirect, a Douglas, Isle of Man-based global cryptocurrency platform, took 10 months to raise its recent €1m seed round.
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