Hi there!
Welcome to the Inovo newsletter, aggregating some of the most exciting news from the world of startups and Venture Capital!
There is more and more foreign capital flowing to Poland. International funds participated in almost half of the transactions (measured by value) in 2020. It’s slightly surprising, but this is becoming a new normal in many markets - e.g. France.
The great news for founders is that we see growing interest in our region from the US/UK/EU based VCs, even at the Seed stage!
I think that there are two reasons behind this change:
1) COVID makes everything remote - when the communication seems borderless, many more great founders can be heard.
2) The Polish ecosystem is maturing - our founders are getting better and better, the infrastructure is being built, and we are training great hires - product managers, founder associates, and growth marketing specialists.
What can we expect in the future?
My answer is: it’s only a matter of time until we see the first investments of Tier 1 US investors in Poland - ones like Sequoia, Bessemer, or Insight Partners.
Inovo Portfolio news
In April, we announced the final closing of Inovo II. The fund has €54M to invest in the Rising Tech Stars from Poland and the region. At the moment of writing this, we have 13 portfolio companies in Fund II (including 2 unannounced investments from 2021), and we expect to invest in 4-5 more this year. By the end of 2022, we should have a portfolio of top 20-25 companies from the CEE.
Let’s start with talking about the undisclosed round from the previous newsletter.
In December, Spacelift raised $6M Series A led by Blossom Capital, a London-based VC fund with such investments as Checkout.com (a company with a $15B valuation).
EdTech fund Owl Ventures led a $35M Series B of Preply last month. The Company has more than 40,000 tutors across 190 countries and more than 10 million lessons booked to date!
Booksy is doing such a great job in the US that it was mentioned among the Top 100 marketplaces in 2021 by Andreessen Horowitz. The Company took place #62 this year - it moved 10 places up the ladder vs the previous year!
Our Partner, Michał Rokosz, shared 6 lessons from building Booksy. After more than 5 years together (mostly as an investor, but also 2 years serving as COO), there’s quite a lot to talk about.
We also have some super exciting news to disclose later on. In 2021 we invested in 2 new portfolio companies, one in Poland and the other one in Romania. Two of our existing portfolio companies are raising significant follow-on rounds. Stay tuned!
Inovo readings & listenings
Stas Matviyenko, the founder of Allset, explained why is it worth having Inovo in your captable even when you already have a16z onboard. You can listen to this in our new series Founders on Inovo.
In an interview with Michał Rokosz, Partner at Inovo, Stas talks about starting a business in the US. You can watch the full podcast on YT, listen on Spotify or read a transcript on our Medium.
Maciej Małysz, Partner at Inovo, talked to Marcin Wyszynski, CEO of Spacelift. The discussion was about creating a product that customers will crave, building remote teams, and about Marcin’s path from Big Tech companies to the startup world. Click to listen on YT or Spotify - the episode is in Polish. English transcription is available on our Medium.
This week we will also publish a podcast with Marcin Żukowski, Co-Founder of Snowflake. I had the pleasure to talk to Marcin about his experience in joining Snowflake as a Co-Founder, how it all happened, and how the team managed to create a new product category that led to the largest software IPO in history. Follow us on YouTube, Spotify and Medium, so you don’t miss this talk.
We have started our own Club conversations about startups and VCs on Clubhouse [click to join]. We go live every week and talk about the best startups in Poland (Booksy, Docplanner), technology (GPT-3) and secrets of VCs in our region.
Krzysiek, our Associate, created a hiring shortlist for B2E SaaS Startups.
In the article you will find:
☛ Suggestions for positions that you should consider first
☛ How to build a sales team and what are the sales pods
☛ When do you actually need a recruiter or an office manager
Finally, there is an English version of the Report on the VC market in Poland in 2020 that we have prepared together with PFR Ventures. There is also an update for Q1’2021.
Recommended readings & listenings
Tiger Global disrupts the VC ecosystem by doing deals at an extra pace, with minimum due diligence and no value-added after the investment. Is it the right approach?
Patreon just raised $155M in the Series F funding. Listen to the CEO talking about the creative economy - this is what we call passion!
Last but not least, I recommend the Pricing Masterclass from NFX. They share the frameworks, tactics, and hidden truths founders need to know about the topic. Did you know that pricing has a 72% correlation to startup failure?
Thank you for reading till the end of this newsletter! It’s a cyclical initiative, and you can expect the next edition towards the end of July.
Best regards,
Tomek
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