Good morning Sifted reader,

It's AGM season for VCs, who are dropping more money than most sane people spend on a wedding putting on lavish parties meetings for their investors, the LPs.

Berlin-based VC Visionaries is hosting an all-star event in London tomorrow for its portfolio founders, co-investors and backers (plus a Sifted journalist or two). Creandum hosted an equally swish party a few weeks ago to celebrate its 20th birthday — with the likes of Bolt founder Markus Villig, tech expert Benedict Evans and former Depop CEO Maria Raga in attendance.

It's not all fun and games though, we're assured. These annual gatherings are an important moment to update LPs on how things are going, gently "preview potential write offs" (as one VC partner put it to me), boast about the stars in the portfolio and drop hints about when a VC might hope to raise its next fund.

And a surprising number of LPs — including the big institutional investors, the family offices, corporate investment teams and founders — do turn up. "A lot of them come," says Revent partner Lauren Lentz, who held her second AGM recently. "It's almost like a better version of a conference."

This year, she says, LPs really wanted to understand how the portfolio was faring, learn which companies might raise up — or down — rounds in the next 6-12 months and get a sense for the mood in the market.

And they're not alone. Sifted would also like to hear VCs' views on the state of the fundraising environment. If you're a European investor, please take our very quick survey.

— Amy, editor

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More than a year after the EU announced €20m in funding for Ukrainian startups affected by the Russian full-scale invasion, it's yet to pay out a cent, Sifted has learnt.

Startup organisations were invited to apply for the grant funding in June 2022 — but matters have been held up following a "complaint about the evaluation process", according to the European Commission.
All this means no startups have been awarded the grants yet — let alone received the money.
The €20m initiative aims to support 200+ Ukrainian tech startups with up to €60k each in grants, plus non-financial support.

It's not the first time EU funding has been held up.

The European Innovation Council Fund, which plans to invest €3.5bn into innovative startups, was slow to pay out to startups when it first launched.
In April, the EIC told us that backlog should be cleared by the end of this year.
As of this month, the EIC Fund has now taken 156 investment decisions and approved 145, to the tune of €928m. There are 271 proposals outstanding in its pipeline, a spokesperson told Sifted.

⌛ Revolut has missed the deadline for filing its annual reports again. The UK-based digital bank has been given three more months to file its 2022 annual accounts.

Sifted understands that the delay is due to a knock-on effect on the 2022 audit timeline after its 2021 accounts were delayed by six months.
Publishing a 'clean' set of financial reports could be central to Revolut getting its UK banking licence approved.

🪐 Former Frontline partner Finn Murphy is raising his own $20m VC fund, called Nebular, to invest in startups in Europe and the US. He's closed $15m so far, and done five deals, including the Sequoia-led $3.2m seed round for healthtech Co:Helm announced last week.

🌽 Food and agritech VC Astanor has raised a second fund of €360m. It will back startups at seed to Series B.

🥭 Berlin-based carbon accounting startup Plan A has raised a $27m Series A extension round, led by US VC firm Lightspeed. It has 1,500 customers, including KFC, BMW, Visa, N26 and Sorare, which use its platform to continuously monitor their sustainability metrics.

🛍️ Klarna threw a big party last week to celebrate its return to profitability. There was lots of pink, diamantés and even a bunch of Minions (we're not sure why either). But it's unlikely to be entirely smooth sailing from here.

Klarna pretty much invented buy now, pay later — and now plenty of other companies are muscling in, from Apple to PayPal to UK retailer John Lewis.
That means Klarna wants to develop another high margin revenue stream.
And affiliate marketing — ie. getting paid to drive leads to ecommerce businesses — could be just the ticket.

⛪ Are you a missionary, mercenary or — bet you haven't heard this one before — a HAIL founder? Here's why it matters to know.

🤕 How to manage risk in the downturn. (sponsored by Twistr)

A bar chart showing the median IRR % for VC funds depending on how many women they had in decision-making positions.

VC funds with more women in decision-making positions perform better, according to a new report from European Women in VC. It found that for every 10% increase in representation of women at a senior level, a fund's internal rate of return (IRR) improved by 1.3% points.

Despite that:

Only 16% of Europe's VC general partners (GPs) are women
One third of VC investment committees are women
Women GPs still tend to raise smaller funds: they hold 9% of the total assets under management (AUM) in European venture
Just 25% of the shareholders in VC funds are women

Have you had a term sheet pulled?

Founders, have you ever had a term sheet pulled by a VC after it was agreed? VCs, have you ever pulled a term sheet from a founder? Sifted wants to hear from you. Reach out confidentially to miriam@sifted.eu.

🔥🔥

AIRNA, a biotech startup which is working on RNA editing therapeutics for patients with rare and common diseases, has emerged from stealth with a $30m round led by ARCH Venture Partners. It has a research centre in Tübingen in Germany, but is HQd in the US.
In other biotech news, Cardiff University spinout Broken String Biosciences has closed a $15m Series A, co-led by Illumina Ventures and Mérieux Equity Partners, to build a tech platform to develop cell and gene therapies.
Payflow, the Barcelona-based fintech which helps companies provide on-demand salaries, has raised €20m from BBVA Spark, the VC arm of the Spanish bank. It says it's gearing up to enter a big new market in Latin America soon...
Kenjo, a Berlin-based HR tech startup, has closed an €8.8m Series A led by Hi Inov. It's also doubling down on LATAM.
Leeds University spinout C-Capture has raised £10m from Northern Gritstone, Kiko Ventures, Drax and BP Ventures. It's developed a patented technology which helps capture CO2 emissions.
Stoïk, a French startup which raised €11m in an Andreessen Horowitz-led Series A last year, has topped up the round to the tune of €10m. Andreessen has participated again, but Munich Re Ventures, the VC arm of the insurance giant, led the round. It plans to expand into Germany.

🔥

Brussels-based healthtech Awell, which helps automate clinical workflows, has raised a $5m seed led by Octopus Ventures.

🤝

Berlin-based language learning platform Babbel has acquired US competitor Toucan for its language learning browser extension.

If you’d like to submit a deal, get in touch.

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Twenty years ago, Skype was released into the world — and to celebrate, last weekend a few hundred early employees gathered in Tallinn to reminisce and give themselves a big old pat on the back. Some fun facts, courtesy of Sten Tamkivi:

Former Skype employees have started 910 companies across 50 countries and created 65k jobs.
15 of those startups have become unicorns.
Ex-Skypers have also set up nine VC firms, which have funded 1.8k startups.

There are plenty of ways to get your fix.

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