Earlybird’s Year in Review 2021
A Record Year
2021 was a BIG year for European VC and even surpassed what we experienced in 2020. According to the most recent Atomico Report, European startups raised $120bn in funding this year — which is almost 3x as much as last year.
In keeping with our family of funds structure, we are sharing highlights from across the Earlybird platform. Below, each team at Earlybird brings you key takeaways underlining our collective mission: supporting portfolio companies to the fullest extent and guiding them in bringing forth meaningful innovation. Although we can’t cover all the activity here, follow our social channels at the end to receive more insights and portfolio updates.
This Fall, we were honored to win the Real Deals Private Equity Awards 2021 in the category of European Venture Capital House of the Year. (Read more about that here.) We appreciate this acknowledgement; we also know there is continually more work to do in support of startup founders.
See this year’s activity across the Earlybird platform: Earlybird Digital East, Earlybird Digital West, Earlybird Health and Earlybird UNI-X.
Earlybird Digital East
A powerhouse itself, Earlybird Digital East continues to champion winners out of Central and Eastern Europe. To see what the Digital East Fund has been up to in 2021 and discover their perspective on some of the more recent investments, have a look at a series of blog posts where they do a deep dive on their focus markets and investment theses: Payhawk, Vue Storefront, Orgnostic, Trickest, Anari and Binalyze
2021 marked significant milestones for the Digital East Fund. Back in April, UiPath listed its shares on the NYSE to become the largest Europe-born technology company to IPO. Observing first-hand the transformations a Romanian company had to go through pre- and post-IPO, plus Daniel and team’s evolution from such humble beginnings, was a unique experience for us as investors. To get an insider’s view, catch Cem’s fairytale of a long-awaited IPO.
While some companies mature into public markets for their next phase of growth, others step up their game with ever-larger venture rounds and higher growth momentum. It’s this continuity that cements the progress of emerging tech hubs like CEE. After raising the second-largest Series B round by a B2B company in the region (second-only to UiPath’s round in 2018), we believe Payhawk is following in the footsteps of its fellow global software category winners from CEE.
2021 has been an active year, when it comes to new investments from our new fund and exits from our first fund. We have been lucky to back seven new companies in a wide range of verticals, such as AI/ML, cybersecurity, DevOps, enterprise software, HRtech, and fintech. And earlier this year, FITE was acquired by Triller, marking the fifth successful exit in our first fund.
Earlybird Digital West
Investing across an array of high tech areas, Earlybird Digital West made headway in Robotics, Fintech, Logistics, SpaceTech, Social Impact and more. Catch up on perspectives from Christian Nagel, Paul Klemm, and Andre Retterath. Read more from Nina Rinke on Fintech Infrastructure (including FQX), Paulina Lutz on D2C brandshifts (including Hive) or Foodtech/Agtech, and meet our new VP People.
As noted in our sister fund recap above, 2021 has been busy and successful. This holds true for Digital West as well. We’ve witnessed tremendous growth in the portfolio. N26 raised a $900m+ round and became Germany’s second most valuable bank. Today, the bank has more than seven millions customers (October 2021) and will continue its mission in making retail banking mobile and easy. To underline N26’s commitment to continued growth, the company welcomed Jan Kemper (formerly CFO & SVP Finance at Zalando) as N26 Group CFO.
Looking to the Nordics, Aiven became Finland’s 8th unicorn and Europe’s 51st. The Helsinki-based startup that makes developers’ life easier by managing their data infrastructure, grew to over 300 people. We led the company’s Series A round back in April 2019 when the team totaled only 27 people. In October of this year, Aiven closed its $60m Series C extension, valuing the company at $2bn. Another sky-rocketing startup with a Nordic footprint, Isar Aerospace whose launch pad is based in Norway, became Europe’s most well funded launcher company in the startup segment. Porsche extended the company’s Series B, bringing the total amount of the B round over $165m. Isar also welcomed Stella Guillen as Chief Commercial Officer, leveraging her high tech sales experience as well as a practical and creative approach to operations.
👉🏽 A 2021 Takeaway: Intertwine Talent with Customer Focus
We noticed significant time spent during board meetings in 2021 focused on the topic of attracting and developing talent. While compensation in a fast-developing market environment certainly plays a major role in winning and keeping talent, our portfolio companies realized two key things: 1) the importance of forming and communicating their purpose and 2) creating a sense of belonging behind each job role.
This dedication to mission and team can be hugely helpful to growing startups. How so? Throughout a company’s journey, teams evolve but the unity they demonstrate is ideally steady. In providing guidance to our portfolio companies, we stress the importance of building a well-rounded people department as early as possible–one that can grow as your company does. Our own investment team members advise founders on communicating their vision, mission and values — both inside and out. Many portfolio companies have adopted this approach brilliantly when communicating to their customers.
In an ever changing market environment, there’s an ongoing need for talent in serving your customer. How you do so becomes part of your USP. In the war for talent, it’s also critical to check in with the values of your co-workers or employees. This helps you ensure that how you are building aligns with what you are building. The harmony between tending to the talent AND the customer can be the sweet spot for successful startups.
Earlybird Health
The pandemic accelerated innovation in healthcare, evidenced by Earlybird health portfolio company wins and pivots in support of patient outcomes. See what Chris Massner and Rabab Nasrallah predicted on future healthtech investment trends or hear an overview from Thom Rasche in a MedTech podcast. We saw new paradigm shifts described by Rainer Christine on diagnostics and Lionel Carnot on eye health.
While 2021 continued 2020’s fundraising trends across the biotech sector, we see a contrast with recent performance of biotech stocks in the US & Europe — declining since prices peaked in February 2021. Despite this volatility limiting options for exits, 2022 is expected to be another record year for capital raised and number of company exits. The pandemic accelerated digitization in the global healthcare industry. As digital adoption becomes more critical, it raises demand for physician and payor involvement. We saw an increase in both startups and capital deployed for remote care access solutions, data driven analytics, and personalized medicine.
In 2021, we supported our portfolio companies in navigating digital transformation and maintaining growth during the pandemic. We’ve seen impressive developments this year: Oviva (highlighted below) closed a strongly oversubscribed USD 80m series C financing round, co-led by top-tier investors. Polares demonstrated technological feasibility through long-term clinical data from patients. Ahead of plan, Arga MedTech completed initial preclinical studies. Atlantic Therapeutics saw significant increase in revenues in Q3 2021. Alesi closed a Series C financing round led by Norgine Ventures. wellabe is progressing in their collaboration with Sana Kliniken, the second largest hospital chain in Germany. The MINIject 1.3 device from iStar Medical received CE mark approval.
In collaboration with leading health insurers in Germany, including BARMER, TK, AOK Rheinland-Hamburg, and three leading German intensive care medical societies, Noscendo initiated a clinical trial to achieve full reimbursement for its platform in Germany. Oculis progressed on two clinical trials for its two lead indications. Sense Biodetection welcomed a new CEO, Timothy Still. Perfuze received CE Mark for the Millipede 088 device and concluded its first clinical trial with excellent results. PrioThera’s product Mocrovimod received Orphan Drug designation in both Europe and the USA.
🔦 Spotlight: Digital health with Oviva
In September, Oviva raised an $80 million Series C, one of Europe’s largest financing rounds in 2021. Named among CB insights 2021 top 150 digital health start-ups globally, Oviva’s impressive Series C syndicate was co-led by Sofina and Temasek, with participation from existing investors AlbionVC, Earlybird, and other angel investors.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Altendorf, Switzerland, Oviva is a digital health company offering personalized, evidence-based diabetes care and prevention programs. It develops behavioral change programs combining a smartphone app and learning portal to support dietitian-led behavioral change. Oviva’s approach allows patients to achieve a better health outcome without attending medical appointments.
Earlybird UNI-X
To cross the chasm between ideas out of universities and VC funding, or commercialization of those promising innovations in Europe, this year we launched a new team in Earlybird UNI-X.
UNI-X is the abbreviation for University Network Invest Technology Fund. We invest at a very early stage and focus on DeepTech topics. Aiming for a target fund size of €75 million Euros, we went live in October, with a first closing of almost €30 million Euros.
In preparation for the Earlybird UNI-X initiative, we dedicated significant time and effort to building up a network of technology experts within Europe’s leading universities and research institutes for long term collaboration and to enable a unique deal flow, supporting university tech spin-offs.
Our team is supported and guided by Earlybird Founding Partners, Hendrik Brandis and Christian Nagel, as well as our academic Venture Partner Prof. Achim Kampker from the Technical University of Aachen.
Since our first closing in October, we’ve been pursuing our plan and building a portfolio of fascinating founder teams and potential unicorns. Koppla aims to become a global category leader in the field of lean construction. Ducktrain revolutionizes urban logistics, especially last mile delivery. The other two of our first four investments are still under the radar… stay tuned!
A big THANK-YOU to the people and organizations who have made the launch of our UNI-X Fund possible. We thank our first investors, our Earlybird colleagues, the technology experts we are delighted to work with, the university representatives, lawyers, and last but not least: the fascinating founder teams whom we have met so far.
We encourage entrepreneurial scientists in our ecosystem to stay true to their mission. We hope we can be a part of your future success stories.
An Earlybird Initiative in Germany: Vision Lab
To directly support founders in Germany of migrant backgrounds, we launched Earlybird’s Vision Lab. In 2021, we welcomed a first cohort of 8 startups from 11 different nationalities. Read the backstory on our learnings and what potential diversity can bring to the German economy.
The first cohort ran from January to June 2021. With support from our partners Bain & Co., Handelsblatt, Google for Startups, Orbit (formerly Poellath) and others, founders within the Vision Lab program were introduced to, and mentored in, key areas for startup development from product-market fit to leadership, scaling, fundraising and legal basics. In addition, all the teams received an investment of 25,000 Euros as a convertible loan. Vision Lab participants cover a range of solutions: for example, Dataleyk is developing a data mining software for SMEs; Wonderpath offers a peer-to-peer professional feedback solution; and Airbox Energy aims to boost the efficiency of wind turbine energy generation.
Following the program, Mainteny (active on LinkedIn) secured a pre-seed investment of more than 400,000 Euros, and others are in advanced talks with investors. We’re excited to continue this success story for migrant entrepreneurs in the coming year with our Program Manager, Ben Wilkening.
Wrapping Up
With an expanding group across Earlybird, we are excited to back new startup journeys and continue supporting our existing #EBVCgang of portfolio companies, guiding them through growth stages — from earliest ideas to IPO.
We appreciate your being part of our community. From all of us at Earlybird, we wish you a healthy and successful new year. Expect more excitement starting in Q1 of 2022: a new office location, a podcast, team members joining and more. Merci!
👋🏽 Ways to Keep in Touch
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If you have a promising idea or pitch for us to evaluate, reach out here.
If you are looking for a meaningful career in our fast-growing high tech startups, check out the many roles on our jobs page.
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