Venture capitalists list the European startups that are set to boom
Inside her portfolio:
Name: Healios
Relationship: Investor
Total funding raised: $15.3 million
What it does: Provides family-centric virtual care for kids suffering from poor mental health
Why it will do well: One in six children suffers from poor mental health, yet due to high costs, capacity constraints, and health-system inertia, most never get help.
Fortunately, virtual care has become more culturally acceptable, accelerated by COVID-19, putting Healios on a path to addressing the problem.
Healios already serves 65% of the UK's NHS trusts and, following its recent Series A, will be scaling internationally while continuing to invest in the artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science that's core to the technology platform.
The opportunity for Healios is not only huge but also life changing.
Outside her portfolio:
Name: Tines
Relationship: None, VC just thinks it's cool.
Total funding raised: $41 million
What it does: Automates manual workloads for security teams
Why it will do well: For most enterprise customers, the potential security vulnerabilities of the next 12 months are mostly understood by only their technical-leadership teams.
But it's resource constraints, not lack of awareness, that's driving the reasons for not addressing such issues.
With unemployment in the sector very low, technology solutions creating more alerts are unnecessary. The talent shortage will continue until the sector starts streamlining workloads.
Inside his portfolio:
Name: Infarm
Relationship: Investor
Total funding raised: $335 million
What it does: Vertical farming
Why it will do well: Infarm is a global leaders in vertical farming — providing its innovative technology in 400 farms across the world.
Infarm's farming units create the exact environment the plants need to flourish, delivering fresh, high-quality, GMO-free and lower-carbon produce year-round.
Infarm's model drastically reduces food miles, eliminating waste and emissions from transportation and packaging.
With partnerships with high-end chefs and large-scale retailers across Europe, Asia, and North America, Infarm is helping to democratize access to high-quality foods in cities.
Outside his portfolio:
Name: Simple Feast
Relationship: None
Total funding raised: $65.38 million
What it does: Plant-based meal delivery
Why it will do well: The Danish startup provides an organic, locally sourced, plant-based meals-delivery service to people's homes in sustainable packaging without plastics or Styrofoam.
The company is a certified-B corporation and uses its voice to champion organic and regenerative farming, minimizing food waste, and contributing to a more sustainable food ecosystem.
Simple Feast is growing rapidly. It recently entered the US market and is responding to growing consumer demand for easy, nourishing and plant-based meal options.
Inside his portfolio:
Name: Contentsquare
Relationship: Investor
Total funding raised: $809.47 million
What it does: A digital-analytics platform that aims to empowers brands to build better digital experiences
Why it will do well: Contentsquare's strategy of constant innovation — to solve the digital transformation challenges that brands face as the global shift toward digital grows — has been rewarded with the recent announcement of a $500 million Series E and a valuation of $2.8 billion.
Brands recognize that the digital experience they deliver to customers must be best in class, and Contentsquare's advanced, AI-powered technology enables marketers to tackle the many evolving challenges of integrated digital marketing.
Outside his portfolio:
Name: Collibra
Relationship: None
Total funding raised: $390.03 million
What it does: Solves the complex problem of managing data governance and data lineage for enterprises
Why it will do well: Data-privacy regulation is increasing globally, creating a huge market for companies to automate their compliance processes.
Beyond this, Collibra offers a data-intelligence cloud as well as data-governance, data-quality and deep data lineage functionality.
By creating the most comprehensive set of tools on the market, Collibra allows companies to understand how data privacy affects their business and customers.
Inside his portfolio:
Name: Libeo
Relationship: Investor
Total funding raised: $30.81 million
What it does: Accounts payable software that simplifies invoice management and payments for small and medium businesses
Why it will do well: For too long, small and medium-sized businesses have had to deal with paper invoices, and manual payment processes which are prone to errors, slow, and difficult to track and collaboratively process.
Libeo is building a payments network for SMBs — a central financial hub for businesses that integrates with existing accountancy packages and banks. It's seeing major growth across France.
Outside his portfolio:
Name: Infogrid
Relationship: None
Total funding raised: $18.59 million
What it does: Product and platform that make buildings "smart"
Why it will do well: There are massive tailwinds to reduce energy usage and improve air quality and cleanliness of offices.
Using cheap modern hardware and sophisticated data science, Infogrid can make buildings smart with limited setup cost and a clear return on investment.
Inside her portfolio:
Name: Vatic
Relationship: Investor
Total funding raised: Undisclosed, according to Pitchbook
What it does: Working to solve critical healthcare problems by making tools accessible to everyone, everywhere
Why it will do well: The team at Vatic has incredible combined technology and science expertise.
Vatic is committed to identifying and solving some of the world's most critical healthcare problems in a simple, cost-effective way that can be scaled globally and which will radically change people's access to healthcare.
The on-the-spot saliva-infectiousness test that Vatic launched in early 2021 is an indication of how quickly the startup is able to deliver solutions.
Outside her portfolio:
Name: Zoe
Relationship: None
Total funding raised: $52.7 million
What it does: Zoe is a nutritional-science startup that provides at-home test kits to analyze gut, blood fat, and blood-sugar responses, enabling users to better understand how their body responds to food.
Zoe also provides personalized food recommendations so users can manage their health and weight. (The product isn't a regulated medical device, and the platform doesn't offer medical diagnosis or treatment for specific conditions.)
Why it will do well: The world is facing an epidemic of health issues, such as diabetes, heart disease and chronic health problems, many of which are caused by poor diet and lifestyle.
Zoe recognises that many health systems are under huge pressure and don't have the budgets or resources to tackle the issues.
Current medical approaches mostly address these conditions — viewing weight gain as the problem rather than as a symptom of poor metabolic health, for example — and therefore won't be effective.
Zoe recognizes that our bodies are all different, and the tools that Zoe has developed enable patients to identify, respond, and treat those differences accordingly.
By encouraging people to understand how their bodies work on a daily basis by improving gut health and diet, Zoe's program can help unlock energy, manage hunger and weight gain, and enable people to enjoy the benefits of good health.
Inside his portfolio:
Name: HelloSelf
Relationship: Investor
Total funding raised: $11.3 million
What it does: Online therapy and psychological-coaching platform
Why it will do well: The last year has seen the world wake up to the importance of good mental health, but there's a shortage of clinical psychologists to serve everyone's needs.
HelloSelf is rapidly becoming the European leader in providing access to the best clinical psychologists, combined with regular digital engagement to help people make more progress to their best selves.
Outside his portfolio:
Name: Corti.ai
Relationship: None
Total funding raised: $3.45 million
What it does: Voice-based platform for health sector
Why it will do well: As an AI speech platform in the health sector, Corti monitors calls with patients and helps providers make better decisions and improve overall quality.
With more and more practitioner-patient interactions happening virtually, Corti has the potential to become the intelligence layer that brings everyone up to the highest standards of care.
Inside her portfolio:
Name: Beauty Pie
Relationship: Investor
Total funding raised: $61.88 million
What it does: Luxury beauty without luxury prices
Why it will do well: Founder Marcia Kilgore has started five companies over two decades. Her products have sold in more than 60 countries.
She was inspired by an opportunity to entirely reinvent the way the beauty industry works, and she couldn't rest until she took a run at it. The result is Beauty Pie, which she says is her best idea yet.
Outside her portfolio:
Name: YuLife
Relationship: None
Total funding raised: $16.8 million
What it does: Group life insurance
Why it will do well: YuLife is a life-insurance company focused on deploying technology as a force for good to help people live their best lives.
This is the kind of mission-driven company that is absolutely what today's and tomorrow's consumers are demanding.
Inside her portfolio:
Name: Ocon Healthcare
Relationship: Investor
Total funding raised: $20 million
What it does: Innovates, develops, manufactures, and commercializes cutting-edge women's health products based on its intrauterine ball, or IUB, proprietary platform
Why it will do well: Ocon has a stellar team, led by CEO Keren Leshem, with a phenomenal board behind them, led by Chair Anula Jayasuriya.
Ocon recently announced it had completed enrollment of its phase 2a clinical study in March.
Outside her portfolio:
Name: Oceanium
Relationship: None
Total funding raised: $4.81 million
What it does: Develops innovative, all-natural products from sustainably-sourced seaweed
Why it will do well: It's just closed its round, which included the World Wildlife Fund as an incoming investor. It's poised to develop its range of nutritional-food products and sustainable-packaging materials.
It has important innovation to bring to market in light of the climate crisis.
Inside his portfolio:
Name: Copper
Relationship: One of MMC's portfolio companies. MMC co-led its latest funding round with Target Global.
Total funding raised: $59.15 million
What it does: Provides the technology infrastructure to enable institutional investors to acquire, store, and trade digital assets
Why it will do well: Interest among institutional investors in digital assets is growing and looks to increase, evidenced by recent moves from the likes of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs increasing their exposure to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
But investment remains hampered by the lack of adequate infrastructure that can satisfy global investors and regulatory standards.
Copper provides infrastructure that enables real-world asset managers, hedge funds, and pension funds to access digital assets, including cryptocurrencies. It is both highly secure and efficient.
Outside his portfolio:
Name: Weavr
Relationship: None. Just a distant admirer!
Total funding raised: $8.82 million
What it does: Allows companies to embed banking and payments into their mobile app or software-as-a-service platform
Why it will do well: This technology enables non-financial-services companies to do pretty clever things with payments and banking.
In essence, it enables any business to become a fintech. With more sales transactions processed digitally than ever before, more companies are looking to deliver financial products such as cash back and credit alongside their core offering.
That's where Weavr comes in.
Inside his portfolio:
Name: Oxbotica
Relationship: Investor
Total funding raised: $60.8 million
What it does: Universal autonomy
Why it will do well: As we know, autonomous cars are still some way away.
Since 2014, Oxbotica has grown from a UK robotics startup to an autonomous-vehicle software company at the center of the global autonomy ecosystem.
Oxbotica is using its tech in industrial, mining, and fulfilment, which could be automated much sooner than automotives. Its strategic partnerships with world-leading manufacturers will make 2021 a transformational year for Oxbotica autonomy.
Outside his portfolio:
Name: Plandek
Relationship: None, VC just thinks it's cool.
Total funding raised: $5.71 million
What it does: Software delivery metrics and analytics
Why it will do well: Value stream management is a huge growth area, and Plandek is recognized by Gartner as a leader in the field, offering an analytics platform to help software-delivery teams offer quality software faster and more predictably.
I just really like the team and the tech they've developed.
Inside his portfolio:
Name: Circulor
Relationship: Seed investor
Total funding raised: $18.4 million, according to the VC – total undisclosed, according to Pitchbook
What it does: Supply-chain tracing of raw materials from the point of extraction to the finished product. Circulor creates transparency on how materials have been sourced and processed.
It ensures compliance with existing regulations (EU regulations for batteries and conflict materials, for example) and sustainable business practices. Customers include Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo, BHP, and Total.
Why it will do well: Manufacturers push hard for more transparency across their supply chain to eliminate unethical sourcing and business practices, to prevent conflict materials and counterfeit components from entering the supply chain.
They want to comply with increasingly stringent regulations and create an auditable track record of their sustainability performance.
Outside his portfolio:
Name: EV.Energy
Relationship: We met their founder and CEO, Nick Woolley back in 2018 when they were just starting out. Have since followed their progress closely as they've built a great customer-value proposition.
Total funding raised: $1.31 million
What it does: EV.Energy is a smart-charging app for owners of electric vehicles to automatically manage the charging of their vehicle to save money and reduce their carbon impact.
EV.Energy works directly with energy providers to offer the best service to their EV customers while also managing the demands of the grid and ensuring the power is drawn when they can best provide it — especially with regard to linking into renewable-energy sources
Why it will do well: There will be more than a million fully electric vehicles sold in Western Europe this year.
At the same time, renewable energy is becoming a major part of the energy mix (more than 30% across Europe in 2020), and EV.Energy gives energy companies the power to control electricity demand to best make use of the growing renewable supply.
Across the pond, the EV market is booming under President Joe Biden, and EV.Energy already has some great partnerships in place to serve that huge market.
Inside his portfolio:
Name: BMLL
Relationship: Investor
Total funding raised: $20.57 million
What it does: BMLL is an award-winning data and analytics company operating at the cutting edge of capital markets. Its mission is to unlock the predictive power of pricing data and offer clients the insight they need to understand how markets behave and make more informed decisions.
Why it will do well: BMLL is leading the revolution in data for capital markets, using cutting-edge modeling and the extraordinary capacity of cloud computing.
It has been able to make available for the first time a single view of what drives share prices across global stock markets.
With both significant consolidation and exceptional innovation driving greater transparency and accessibility in stock markets, BMLL's advanced analytics places it at the forefront of a $100 trillion market for quoted-equity trading.
Outside his portfolio:
Name: Bought By Many
Relationship: None
Total funding raised: $480.35 million
What it does: Pet insurance provider that is disrupting insurance distribution
Why it will do well: An innovative company providing comprehensive pet insurance, Bought By Many has more than 170,000 clients in the UK with sales of £17.2 million in 2020.
The company is continuing its successful expansion overseas, is led by a phenomenal team, and was ranked one of the fastest-growing privately owned companies by The Sunday Times' Tech Track 100.