Good morning! The startup scene in The Netherlands last week was vibrant as ever. Here’s what you need to know:
News & Updates
Data visualisation startup Silk was acquired by Palantir for an undisclosed amount. The Amsterdam-based company announced the team will be joining the Silicon Valley unicorn.
According to excellent research done by business newspaper FD, investors pay too much for Dutch startups in the early stage (link’s in Dutch).
Plugify, the platforms for music gigs, started its long-awaited crowdfunding campaign. The startup needs 650.000 euro, after a week it’s already at more than 50 percent.
Dutch bank ING selected four new startups for its fintech class of 2016: Surance, Startup Insight, Gekko and Axyon.
Seven early stage startups just came out of the summer edition of Launchlab, YES!Delft’s three month-pressure cooker program. Winner according to the public and jury: Gyre – an alternative to a plastic bag, with the size of a credit card.
Otly got the attention from Uber’s Travis Kalanick. The startup teaches children about the value of money and saving with the help of a digital wallet / piggy bank. Of course this isn’t ‘funding’, the deal is more about support and pocket change than a real investment.
So you’ve got the funds necessary to hire talent? Here’s how to do it, with the 5 P’s of startup recruitment: People, Process, Payment, Perks and Product.
Funding
Dutch marketing software startup Bynder announced a whopping $22M (€19,7M) Series A funding round led by New York-based Insight Venture Partners.
Monday morning read
Curation was key to help reach Blendle’s 1 million users, writes CEO Alexander Klöpping. (Medium)
This always bothered me in pitches: startups existing for the sole purpose of an exit. Pascal Finette quickly explains why this is such a bad idea. (The Heretic)
Marissa Mayer brought much more to Yahoo than you could think of. (HackerNoon)
Image: Pixabay
Lorenz,
can you elaborate a bit on ‘excellent research’ done by FD? Judging on the article I’m really puzzled.
1. 11% seems nothing considering that we are talking about startups, ventures that are inherent extremely uncertain. To be able to predict a value is hard enough but if that value is only 11% off for investment that last anywhere up till 10 years seems nothing and impossible to calculate by so much accuracy.
2. Economically speaking there is not such thing as paying too much. You either agree on a price in which case there is no difference or you don’t agree and there is no deal. Only in hind side perhaps one can say they overpaid but really 11% for something so uncertain? I have paid 2,50 for a beer where I thought it was worth 2,20. What is the big deal?
3. What is that group of 340 companies? Companies in their dbase? If so, which companies make it in the dbase and how much do they represent to total population?
4. They used 5 most used valuation methods. If there is one thing that is known about valuation methods is that none come up with a correct value. Why does averaging 5 non correct valuations method come up with a correct value?
5. If there would have been one Google, Uber or Facebook in this group the conclusion would have been that investors underpaid by 90% ?
6. There is an anecdote of a company raising 600k in year 1 and 3M in year 2. What does that say except that things change and/or that people ask crazy things?
Perhaps all these concerns have been thought of but I can’t see that from the article.
Regards,
Rutger