🎆 Welcoming 2024: Upcoming events and Launches
A quick new year update from the Silicon Roundabout Ventures Team
Happy new year! We usually send these at month end, but wanted to get a quick note out with a couple of time sensitive events and launches!
Launches
VC Platform on Substack
We're thrilled to launch our VC Platform, available on Substack for subscribed LPs.
This platform will offer exclusive access for our LPs to:
Data Insights: Access to private, LP only articles.
Top Dealflow: Monthly updates on top deals, provided within articles or as separate pieces, including SPVs
LP invite only events
With that in mind, let’s talk about closing:
Onboarding for Second Closing
We're excited to announce that we're onboarding LPs for our second, and possibly final, closing. Interested LPs can schedule a chat with us through our Calendly link to explore this opportunity. Let's connect and discuss the potential of deeptech together! 🤝📈🔗
Upcoming Events
📅 Upcoming Event - Navigating the Future: Tech in Venture Capital
We still have a small amount of capacity for this event, down to the last few places! ~450 people have already registered!
Date & Time: 18th January, 16:00 GMT.
Focus: Exploring product and data-driven VC, and how technology is reshaping the venture capital landscape.
Panelists: Industry experts including Philipp Omenitsch (Sequel), Stephane Nasser (OpenVC), Francesco Corea (Greycroft), Danish Abdullah (hive.one), Dr. Andre Retterath (Earlybird + Data Driven VC), Ralph King (Silicon Roundabout Ventures), and Mike Arpaia (Moonfire).
Moderator: Francesco Perticarari, GP at Silicon Roundabout Ventures.
Discussion Points: Evolving strategies in data-driven decision-making, cultivating ecosystems and networks, overcoming tech challenges, and forecasting future VC sector trends.
📅 Upcoming Event: Deeptech Fireside Chat with Graphcore's CEO
Want to learn from & meet: 1 exited founder, 1 Unicorn CEO + 1 superstar Founder in one go?
🦄 🍷 Come have a drink at our next event in London!
Join us on January 31st for a special fireside chat featuring Nigel Toon ─ CEO at Graphcore, building the next generation of 3D Wafer-on-Wafer Bow IPU systems are helping AI innovators worldwide to build better, more innovative AI solutions.
For more details and to register for the event, visit the event page.
Introducing 'Joi' - Our AI Assistant in Venture Capital
We're excited to announce the launch of 'Joi', our AI bot (with the name definitely not stolen from "Blade Runner 2049"). Joi is designed to revolutionise how we handle tasks at Silicon Roundabout Ventures, enabling us team to focus more time on the crucial human elements of venture capital.
🤖 AI-Powered Efficiency: Joi takes on routine tasks*, streamlining our operations.
👥 Human Focus: Frees our team to concentrate on relationship-building and strategic decision-making.
🚀 Innovative Approach: Embracing cutting-edge AI to enhance our VC practices.
🌐 Tech Integration: Joi represents our commitment to integrating advanced technologies in our workflow.
🌟 Future Possibilities: Exploring new frontiers in AI application within the venture capital sector.
*Joi has penned the majority of this newsletter, and has access to most of the internal documentation at SRV, including a bunch of Francesco’s previous blogs to help with voice. Here’s a screenshot from our very beta internal platform, where we store interesting reads over the month and get them summarised.
Francesco’s Reads
Two Companies to Reignite US Moon Landings After Five Decades
Fifty years since the Apollo missions ceased, the American lunar landscape is set to witness a landmark resurgence, thanks to the intrepid efforts of two private companies. This leap towards revitalizing moon landings unfolds in NASA's broader vision to reestablish lunar presence.
🚀 Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines are the pioneers on this front. Astrobotic is prepped for an imminent launch, while Intuitive Machines follows closely with a mid-February scheduled liftoff. They're locked in a close race for a monumental first—a soft landing on the moon by a private entity.
🛰️ Success in this domain is not just a matter of national pride, but it signals the intensification of a new space race, where commercial achievements go hand in hand with geopolitical prowess.
🔍 For full details on this impending celestial feat and the science behind the lunar sojourns of these two companies, dive into the article.
Read more here
Deeptech and Persistence: Navigating the High-Stakes Venture Landscape
The venture capital scene is witnessing a seismic shift, especially in the hyper-competitive sectors like deeptech and national security technologies. A recent closure of a nano fund in the US has highlighted these challenges. However, for us at Silicon Roundabout Ventures, this news is not a deterrent but a motivation to double down on our mission.
Our approach is centered around discovering pre-seed and early seed founders within Europe, nurturing them to blossom into titans who can later penetrate the US market at late seed or series A stages. It's in these nascent and ambitious entities that we foresee the greatest potential for groundbreaking success.
🛡️ The rheumatic environment of the deeptech venture space was underlined by the shutdown of Countdown Capital. Their struggle against the colossal tides of multistage funds competing for early-stage deals stands as a testament to the harsh reality small funds face in the current ecosystem.
📊 With greater entities like Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund pushing valuations upward and claiming major stakes in budding industries, the hunt for startups capable of colossal exits at modest entry valuations is proving to be a formidable challenge.
🎯 Small funds, aiming for a distinct sector focus, are finding it increasingly difficult to compete on terms such as speed or expertise, mainly due to the financial muscle and comprehensive support structure larger firms bring to the table.
Despite these headwinds, we at Silicon Roundabout Ventures remain undeterred, keen on targeting European deep-tech frontrunners with the vision to grow into pivotal players for the West, including scaling into the US market.
Read more here.
Thanks for reading!
Francesco & The Silicon Roundabout Ventures Team