Sifted - What are your stock options worth?

Good morning there,

When London-based customer identity verification scaleup Onfido entered talks to be acquired earlier this year, the company’s founder told Sifted that more than a dozen of its employees would become millionaires when the sale went through; 20% of the company was owned by its staff (excluding the founders).

That said, research shows that we're still not as good at getting money out of startups and into the hands of employees here in Europe as our peers in the US. That’s led us to launch our latest reader survey today. Startup employees, we want to know: do you know what your stock options are worth? Has your company even explained how they work? And are you expecting a return? You can fill that in (anonymously) here, and we’ll publish the results soon.

Also, join us in person next week for a discussion on the impact of AI at work; how can you take advantage of the technology? And is it likely to take your job? There’ll also be networking and (free) canapés and drinks. Spaces are limited — RSVP now to secure your place.

Elsewhere today:

• Europe’s fastest growing climate tech teams.
• Ex-Monzo employee raises $3.5m to automate admin in GP practices
• How to manage comms in a crisis.

— Tom Nugent, newsletter editor

/A message from our sponsor Northern Data Group

Attention AI startups: Applications for a new accelerator are open 

Scale your product with Northern Data Group's AI Accelerator by getting access to NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, mentoring from industry leaders and partners, including HPE and Supermicro, and dedicated access to NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Institute. Applications close July 28.

Do you know what your stock options are worth?

Earlier this year I wrote in this newsletter that too few employees in Europe know how their stock options actually work. Research by VC Index Ventures also found that European employees still don’t expect stock options much of the time; they also own less of the startups they work for than their US peers.

One response to that piece from a former senior employee at a scaleup caught my eye. When they joined their company they weren’t aware stock options were a thing — so, amid pay negotiations stock options “seemed like some distant icing on the cake bonus”, they said. When the company then exited three years later and some colleagues got a far better pay out, our reader felt short changed, and wished they’d negotiated harder for a better package early on. 

Another reader in a similar position told us: “It’s such a shame; I had so much love for my company, but having seen the cap table I see I was screwed from the outset.”

They add: “It sounds so obvious, but do your research and negotiate. If you are the first person doing that job for that company and their ability to get that first raise relies on your success, then be prepared to ask for more.”

Not giving early employees a good chunk of options is a problem for several well-rehearsed reasons. 

All tech hubs benefit from money being recycled back into the ecosystem — and employees getting a big pay day from an IPO, acquisition or secondaries often leads to that; many use their new capital to launch their own companies, others become angel investors. 

But it’s more personal than that, too. Founders, would you want to leave some of the people who’ve worked the hardest to make your company a success — and played a big role in making it so — feeling like they could, and probably should, have had more?

As the acquisition market heats up — June was the most active M&A month in Europe since September 2023, with 93 acquisitions, according to Sifted data — and 2025 looks set to see the return of the IPO, closing the equity education gap, and ‘reupping’ those employees who’ve built value into your business, should be a priority for founders.

Sifted wants to know whether things have changed so far this year, and how bad (or good?) things actually are. To do that we’ve decided to poll employees on the state of employee equity in Europe. You can fill out our (anonymous) survey here. It should only take a few minutes, and we’ll publish the results soon.

— Tom Nugent, newsletter editor

🏥 An ex-Monzo employee has raised $3.5m to automate admin in GP practices in a round led by Moonfire, with participation from Y Combinator. Healthtech-1’s first product, which automates new patient registrations, is currently deployed in 10% of GP practices in England, says cofounder Raj Kohli, who launched the company in 2021 with ex-Monzo engineer Peter Huang. 

• The startup will use the funding to scale, as it looks to deploy its patient registration tool in 90% of the country’s GP practices by the end of 2025. 
• It estimates that it can save practices around 15 minutes of receptionists’ time per registration. 
• That works out at a cost of £3.75 per registration if a receptionist is paid £15 an hour, Kohli says. Healthtech-1 charges £2 per registration, and Kohli tells Sifted the startup has automated more than 500k patient registrations.

👂 From LLM to ALM: Kyutai, the €300m AI research lab launched last year by billionaire trio Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel and Rodolphe Saadé in Paris, has unveiled its first experiment — an open source conversational AI tool dubbed Moshi.

• Moshi can engage in voice conversations that feature uncanny human-like characteristics — including a range of different emotions, humour and even frequently interrupting the user. 
• Its creators say that the technology “thinks as it speaks” thanks to the ‘audio language model’ they built — a similar tool to the large-language models that power assistants like ChatGPT, except for voice conversations.

💨 Europe’s fastest growing climate tech teams.

😅 How to manage comms in a crisis.

💳 Ready for unbundling? The next evolution in payments. (Sponsored by Primer)

What’s new in Greek tech?

Our report brings insider intel from founders, investors and senior executives about the fast-growing Greek startup hubs and the trends taking shape, to find out how the Greek tech ecosystem is really doing in 2024. 

Copenhagen-based Kvantify, a quantum computing company, raised €10m in seed funding. Dreamcraft, Lundbeckfonden BioCapital and 2degrees led the round and were joined by investors including Redstone VC, 2xN and EIFO.

Cambridge, UK-based Zedify, a last mile delivery startup using electric cargo bikes, raised £4m in funding from investors including Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital, Mercia Ventures and Green Angel Syndicate.

Stockholm-based Steep, a data analytics platform for businesses, raised €4m in seed funding. Connect Ventures and Inventure led the round and were joined by investors including Alliance VC, Antler and Greens Ventures.

Paris-based altrove, which uses AI to design and build alternative materials, raised €3.7m in pre-seed funding. Contrarian Ventures and Emblem led the round. 

Cambridge, UK-based Cambridge Electric Cement, a spinout from the University of Cambridge working on sustainable, recycled cement, raised £2.25m in seed funding. Zero Carbon Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Legal & General, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, Parkwalk Advisors, Delph25 and Almanac Ventures.

Oslo-based Sensorita, a startup focused on software to improve the waste management process, raised $3.25m in seed funding. Brick & Mortar Ventures led the round and was joined by Telenor.

Utrecht, Netherlands-based Aurea Imaging, which provides agronomic intelligence tools for orchard management, raised €2.8m in Series A extension funding from investors including Pymwymic, ROM Utrecht Region, Knop Ventures, Goeie Grutten Impact Fonds and BarUni Family Fund.

Graz, Austria-based Trever, which provides banks and financial institutions with software to trade, manage, transfer and offer digital assets, raised €2.4m in seed funding. TX Ventures and Market One Capital led the round and were joined by investors including Blockchain Founders Capital.

Trondheim, Norway-based Versiro, a decision support platform for electrical power producers, raised €2.3m in funding. Alliance VC led the round and was joined by investors including Sondo Capital.

London-based Gendo, a GenAI platform for architecture & design, raised €1m in pre-seed funding. Concept Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Ascension Ventures and Baobab Ventures.

Oslo-based Bsure, a tech stack spend management platform, raised $1m in pre-seed funding from investors including Pirate Entrepreneurship Fund, Gratus Capital and East Carolina Angels. 

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

For more deals, analysis and M&A insight, become a Pro subscriber to receive our weekly Deals newsletter.

• Sign up to our specialist newsletters if you want more on fintech, climate tech, startup life and VC.
• Tune in to Sifted’s podcast, Startup Europe.
• Join the Sifted team along with 3,000+ startups, founders and investors at Sifted Summit this October. Get your ticket now!
• Join Sifted’s journalists for live Sifted Talks with industry experts, diving into the biggest questions facing startup Europe.
• Access investment-grade research on the hottest sectors, rising stars and success stories from across European tech by subscribing to Sifted Pro.
• Follow us on LinkedIn and X.