Health-tech pioneer myBioma has raised a six-figure follow-up investment from renowned investors, which is to be doubled by the COVID-19 relief fund of the AWS. The next step is for the founders to draw international attention to themselves.
Venionaire Capital enters new strategic partnership with startup300 AG in the new Dealmatrix, offering startup valuation calculator after a pivot. Beta users will foreseeably be able to use the new service from August onwards.
Venionaire Capital founder and managing partner Berthold Baurek-Karlic and co-autor Florian Kandler, announced a new book project “100 Startups – Made in Austria” today in Austria’s leading startup portal derbrutkasten. Future hidden champions, from deep-tech to digital competitors, will be featured through interviews. The book itself will be promoted globally, sent to selected VCs all over Europe and available in stores internationally. The startup community itself will choose from a list of around 200 start-ups which 100 Startups will be invited to appear in the book.
The idea for “100 Startups – Made in Austria”, was developed together with the publishing house Home Town Media – Metropole. It is, to a certain extent, an English language continuation of Bertholds earlier book project “Erfolgsgründer – Made in Austria“. The structure of the book will be different and should become even more interesting for the reader. The aim is to generate more international attention to the rising startup ecosystem in Austria. “Our new book is based on the approximately 6-year-old book project “Erfolgsgründer – Made in Austria” (Fabian Greiler, Helmut Pöllinger and Berthold Baurek-Karlic). However, it will be an evolution. This time the community itself will decide who will be invited for an interview in the book. Together with Florian Kandler, we have developed a few so-called growth hacks, which should give the start-ups a lot of reach and media attention in addition to the book itself,” explains Berthold Baurek-Karlic, co-author and initiator of the book.
Austrias start-up ecosystem has developed strongly in the last years. Despite difficult conditions, more and more innovative entrepreneurs and investors have found each other who wanted to change something. First international successes were important as confirmation of this path. In the meantime, we regularly read about international stars who invest in domestic start-ups. The Austrian Startup Monitor 2019 provided figures on how large the economic factor of start-ups has become. Since 2008, 2,200 start-ups have been founded, of which 9 out of 10 employees have grown and have continuously created new jobs. In total, around 17,500 people work in Austrian start-ups. Start-ups were financed to 52% with growth capital. It is remarkable that 90% of the start-ups had already generated revenues abroad by the end of 2019 and thus carry the DNA of possible future hidden champions.
On the book’s landing page you can vote for your favourite startups as of today. Voting is possible once a day. The founders will also receive a few e-mails from the authors, where they can get more information about the further course of the project.
Serial entrepreneur, Florian Kandler is co-author of the book. His statement “Successful companies often do not even know how much their history has an indirect influence on our economy. Every time they share their knowledge and story with young entrepreneurs and the community, something happens in the minds of the audience. It is stories that bring people to entrepreneurship and knowledge that helps the next generation of entrepreneurs on their entrepreneurial path” underlines the importance of this project to him. While living in Silicon Valley in 2011, Florian learned how valuable it is when experienced entrepreneurs share knowledge with another. Since then, he has been promoting the #PayItForward mindset and is setting a good example himself, ever since. His podcast “Gründer und Zünder”, the Austrian Startup Monitor, and his book “Business Angels vs. Business Devils” made him famous across the country.
Margaret Childs, has been very active in the startup scene for years. She was the perfect publisher for this book. As founder of the magazine and the associated online platform “Metropole”, she looks behind the scenes of Austrias capital city including the startup ecosystem as a member of the board of the think tank Austrian Startups. Her readers include an international community, expats. Corporate publishing has become an essential part of her business alongside the magazine, which is why she initiated the book project by Florian Kandler and Berthold Baurek-Karlic.
There are various ways to value a startup depending on their stages of development. We prepared an overview to help you distinguish between different valuation models so that you can choose the method that best fits your company or investment case.
‘The Startup Rating model by Venionaire Capital’ is a proprietary model for investors, which may be applied across different stages, without limitations of pure qualitative or financial models. The model adjusts the average valuation you have calculated or observed from the market and makes it transparent how much you should over- or underpay compared to an average valuation in order to make a fair deal.
Entrepreneurs need to be prepared to pitch their company, anytime, anywhere. An elevator pitch should be short and crisp – you only have a few minutes (2 – 5 min.) to explain your vision and trigger a spark of interest from your audience / investor. Pitching a startup is really difficult and we have a lot of respect for that. Founders need to master this skill set, as there are many talents out there, setting the bars higher every day.
Following the first introduction to the pre-revenue startup valuation, in this article we review the other well-known model for pre-revenue startups: the ‘Berkus Method’, named after its inventor, Dave Berkus, a well-known Californian angel investor.
Startup founders and business angels often see external advisors as an unnecessary cost they are not willing to bear. In only very few cases we have seen business angels having a strong enough network, willingness to invest time and resources and skills to support all their startups in multiple rounds. Sometimes this means that they had to raise for five companies at the same time and provide one bridge round after the other themselves. Is that efficient?
Pre-Seed companies sometimes do not even have a minimal viable product yet, their business case is an idea and likely to be changed quite frequently during the first 18 to 24 months until a first product market fit is tested. Numbers and financial plans are worth nothing at this stage. Yet, there are valuation models Business Angels use to evaluate such early-stage startups. The most prominent method one is the “Scorecard” method. Developed by Bill Payne, this top-down approach compares a startup to other typical startups at the same stage (investors benchmark the “standard” value of a pre-seed or early seed company in this case), within a geographic region and startup-sector (regtech, digital health, fintech, SaaS, etc.).
Company valuations – especially startup valuations – remain an art based on experience. We expect to see cuts of over 50% and tougher terms. Higher liquidation-preferences (multiples 2 to 3x) will be the new normal. The numbers about in this article reflect the current market view, based on feedback our valuation and transaction specialists gathered through interviews last week.
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