VNX Weekend Read: Feb 18-22 Issue

We hope you are having a great weekend! This Weekend Read is heavy on venture capital investment and European tech news.

Popularity of VC investing has spread across the pond from the US and reached a scale that is hard to ignore. At VNX Exchange we strive to make this type of investment available and accessible to all.

This week we bring you enough information to satisfy even the most voracious VC investor.

We even have a bonus for your tired ears this time (so make sure to read to the end of the digest).

Top of Mind

Market intelligence firm Dealroom has released its annual European venture capital report for 2018 and things aren’t looking too shabby in this part of the world. 2018 was a record year for European venture capital. 28 billion euros were invested in European and Israeli startups (21 billion euros excluding Israel and biotech industry) according to this report. Fintech saw 5.4 billion euros in investments in 2018 and 711 rounds, second only to health tech in the dollars invested and enterprise software in the number of rounds. You can read the full report here. 

Venture capital is a thriving industry. While getting access to it is not always easy, tokenizing VC portfolios gives you a perfect way in.

Read more about 5 Top Things You Need to Know About Tokenization here. 

What’s Hot

This week is going to be heavy on fascinating reports. Another Dealroom report talks about early-stage funding in Europe. Once again, the picture is a lot brighter than one would expect. If you love getting into the nitty-gritty of how startups go from raising pre-seed financing to a Series A, you will enjoy this report. 

“Meet the minotaurs!” Axios has coined a new term “for the companies that would be worth more than $1 billion even if the only thing they did was to take the cash that they have raised and put it in a checking account.” Axios has counted 55 minotaurs as of early 2019. Let’s see if the terms sticks! Raising big wads of cash can become a double-edged sword when you approach investors, argues Felix Salmon: you either get the money and thrive or you miss the opportunity and get crushed by a competitor with a better pitch deck. Read more on minotaurs here. 

CB Insights has released a report on corporate VC activity. In 2018 corporate VCs invested a record high $52.95 billion across 2,740 deals. They are definitely worth keeping an eye on!

Newsworthy

Case in point, Allianz X, the venture capital arm of the German insurance behemoth Allianz, has increased the size of its fund to 1 billion euros from 430 million euros previously, TechCrunch has reported. 

Ant Financial, the fintech company affiliated with Alibaba, is making headways in Europe with its acquisition of the London-based payments company WorldFirst, TechCrunch reports. The deal is reportedly valued at around $700 million.

The German government is now openly consulting companies and blockchain groups on how to put in place a proper blockchain deployment process. Berlin has often been on the forefront of blockchain technology and German experience in regulating blockchain could serve as an example for the neighboring governments.

Weekend Read

Podcasts are hip again, so this week we wanted to bring you some tech “easy listening.” So kick back and enjoy Jo Hannaford of Goldman Sachs’ Technology Division talk about the latest technology trends in Europe. Jo talks about how in the post-Brexit era people will continue to talk to each other and use collaboration tools that transcend geographies. London will remain the region’s tech capital. But continental Europe will thrive because of its long history of technical and STEM education that will continue to birth talent. Here’s the latest Goldman Sachs podcast on European tech and innovation amidst constraints. 

VNX Weekend Read has been curated by the VNX Exchange Head of Content Olga Razumovskaya.

Disclaimer: This news digest does not represent the position of the VNX Exchange management and is not meant to serve as a forecast.