One of my all-time favorite podcasts is Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy. Great interviews, about one hour each, with businesspeople and investors.
Patrick nails being a well-read, curious interviewer with covering business and investing in a nerdy way with great guests.
Some episodes to get started with:
Creandum and Dealroom has released the report the The Ascendancy of European Tech: A data-backed report on Europe’s rise to the top. Among other things, it highlights how European venture capital went from nothing after the dot.com bust (<$1 billion per year in the early 2000’s) to something between $30-100 billion per year today (depending on what the new post-covid investment level will be).
I’m a strong believer that European technology companies will do better in the next 20 years (and be better investments), but I think it will be very tough to close the gaps with the US and China with regards to building very large companies ($10+ billion market cap) led from Europe.
Issues that will continue to be challenges are that the ecosystems in Europe are geographically distributed, home markets are small and regulation likely to be tougher than in the US. So for many European technology companies getting to real scale it will still make a lot of sense to move headquarters to the US for talent, market and capital reasons. So while there will be more European decacorns ($10+ billion in market cap), my guess is that there will be more American decacorns too.
Interesting summer listening, even if found it about a year after release, when Nicolai Tangen interviews LVMH’s CFO Jean-Jacques Guiony. Discussion about what makes a luxury product, and it is not only high quality.
Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, has his own podcast In Good Company where he interviews CEOs, CFOs and the occasional board member of some of the world’s largest companies.
So far I’ve only listen to his interview with Carolina Dybeck Happe, CFO of GE, and I enjoyed the interview. Will listen to more of the interviews during the summer.
I think Charles Hudson has it right in There’s no such thing as Series A metrics (read it!). Revenue and other metrics are very important, but overall these three points are even more important:
Threads, Facebook’s Twitter competitor, reached 30 million users within 24 hours. That is amazing growth, especially as the app is not launched in the EU due to regulations (most likely the Digital Markets Act, but could also be GDPR related).
Regulations delaying the launch of a new service in the EU is disappointing, and I don’t see how that is good for EU consumers. Not even under the guise of ‘privacy’. Strong EU-based technology companies are not built by making it harder for (American) large technology companies to launch new services, but by specifically regulating anti-competitive behavior.
Despite EU regulations and fast growth, the major challenge for Threads lies ahead. It needs to activate users and keep them active. That is not an easy challenge, especially with a still bare bones and fairly immature app.
Neko Health, the health scan service founded by Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, has raised €60 million from Lakestar, Atomico and General Catalyst. This on top of some €25 million that Daniel Ek has put into the company previously.
It is one of the more interesting companies in Stockholm to follow. If Neko Health is able to develop and scale its service (scanning technology combined with a traditional health check) the company could improve primary care and make it more preventive.
As Twitter is one of my most used apps, it is with some interest that I’m following the upcoming launch of Meta’s Twitter competitor Threads.
The track record of Meta’s separate, non-integrated apps is not good. TechChruch mentions the following apps that Meta has discontinued: “anonymous teen app tbh, the Cameo-like app Super, Nextdoor clone Neighborhoods, the couples app Tuned, the student-focused social network Campus, the video dating service Sparked“.
The winning formula seems to be launch a separate app that is integrated with the main app (Facebook + Messenger), acquire an app with traction (Instagram), or launch a new format inside a popular app (Reels). (I think Nikita Bier wrote it, but cannot find where.)
It will be interesting to see how Threads work and how it is integrated with Instagram and Facebook.
Y Combinator has released a list of the YC companies with the highest revenue and shared their thinking in a blog post.
First, Y Combinator has an insane track record over almost 20 years. Many era-defining companies.
Another interesting takeaway (as the list doesn’t reveal actual revenue or ranks the companies by revenue) is the mix of sectors the companies are from:
It’s worth noting that the sectors are the same as for VC backed companies in the Nordics: B2B software, consumer, fintech and healthcare.
A good interview with Airbnb founder and CEO Brian Chesky.
One theme, of several, I fully agree with is that founders should design the organization they want to lead, especially if it doesn’t conform with the standard way to organize.
Another very good point is to not A/B test unless you have a hypothesis why the test will be an improvement and that you are proud of what you’ve built!