Month: August 2024

S3 has made an 18 minute long episode about 1X and its humanoid robots Eve and Neo, talks with the company’s founder and other team members and visits 1X’s offices in Silicon Valley and Moss, Norway.

More information about Neo at 1X.tech.

Nvidia’s 122 % year-over-year revenue growth from $13.5 billion to $30 billion is insane (especially when net income grew from $6.1 billion to $16.6 billion, or 168 % y-o-y, for the same period).

As a company gets bigger, the revenue growth rate normally (a.k.a. almost always) declines. To grow more than a hundred percent when the quarterly revenue starts at $13 billion is exceptional and unheard of.

Klarna has released financial results for H1’24 and CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski has indicated that the company is likely to pursue an IPO in H1’25. Revenue grew 27 % y-o-y in H1, with the US growing 38 %. Combined with cost cuts and layoffs, the revenue per employee has increased with 75 % to 7 million SEK in one year.

In H1 Klarna was growing a bit faster than Spotify (and yes, there’s really no reason to compare them except they’re both Swedish and successful) and are seeing similar improvements to profits from cost control.

Going public with 25%+ growth and significant margin improvements sounds like it could be a success.

I’m looking forward to going to Copenhagen in two weeks time for the conference TechBBQ. If you’re going and want to meet, please reach out! Alliance VC is actively investing across the Nordics in technology startups, from idea to Series A.

Just a few minutes into the interview, but good discussions about IPOs and I’m looking forward to the rest on M&A, private/public markets, Snap and more.

One of the most interesting startup books this fall, in my opinion, is Pattern Breakers: The Secrets Behind the World’s Most Successful Start-Ups by Mike Maples Jr (of Floodgate) and Peter Ziebelman. I have just received my copy of the book so no review today, but it is possible to get an idea of the book by viewing the interview with Mike Maples Jr on The Logan Bartlett Show.

Economist: Mark Zuckerberg and Daniel Ek on why Europe should embrace open-source AI. (also Spotify, no registration).

“The stark reality is that laws designed to increase European sovereignty and competitiveness are achieving the opposite. This isn’t limited to our industry: many European chief executives, across a range of industries, cite a complex and incoherent regulatory environment as one reason for the continent’s lack of competitiveness.

[…]

In short, Europe needs a new approach with clearer policies and more consistent enforcement. With the right regulatory environment, combined with the right ambition and some of the world’s top ai talent, the eu would have a real chance of leading the next generation of tech innovation.

Bad regulations create different problems than no regulation. Sometimes the new problems are so large that even no regulation is preferable. Even if the best thing would be lawmakers and regulators creating appropriate, specific and clear laws and regulations. And not laws that lead to expensive, charade-like implementations.

I enjoyed, finally, reading Sebastian Mallaby’s The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption this summer. One things that stuck in my mind was Perkins’ Law (named after Kleiner Perkins founder Tom Perkins): “market risk is inversely proportional to technical risk”.

I think that makes a lot of sense. I.e. if the company can build the technically advanced product (and it is likely not be clear that they can), it should be obvious that there is strong customer demand. Otherwise one is probably investing in a technology looking for a problem to solve.

PitchBook has released the European VC Valuations Report that has lot of good information. Especially on the question if it is a good time to raise for seed companies?

The answer seems to be a clear yes, it is as good as or better than 2021 and 2022. Valuations are higher (especially for the top decile) and more money is invested across the board in rounds, which indicate slightly higher ownership for investors (but still reasonable).

Is it as good for pre-seed deals? It is actually even better, with all-time high valuations and money invested.

All in all, it is a good time to raise for young startups. But in addition to great execution, founders partly need to bet on the later stage market to improve as valuations there are still down compared to 2021.