Sifted - The big founder CEO reshuffle

Good morning there,

How many startup support organisations is too many? The amount Europe has right now, some might say. Mimi Billing gets into that in today's Sifted Daily.

Meanwhile elsewhere: 

• Will Europe's regulators stop Sam Altman's Worldcoin?
• 8 founder CEOs who have stepped down in the past year
• Klarna continues profitable start to 2024 as it mulls US IPO

Ps. Please take our latest reader survey — on your experience of good (and bad) managers at startups. It's entirely anonymous, and we'll be sharing our findings on the Sifted site soon. 

— Amy Lewin, editor

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🇸🇪 Klarna made a €57.2m adjusted operating profit in the first half of the year, it reported yesterday. It also reported a 27% year-on-year revenue increase, reaching €1.13bn. 

• CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski also trumpeted the buy now, pay later giant’s performance in the US, saying revenues grew by 38% compared to H1 last year. The Stockholm-based fintech is reportedly close to picking Goldman Sachs to lead its initial public offering, which is expected to take place in New York next year.

🇨🇭 Swiss early-stage VC Redalpine has closed its seventh fund of $200m — its biggest yet. The N26-backer will write cheques of €1-6m into 15-20 startups and save 50% of the fund for follow-ons.

• The firm is also setting up a new office in London where it has been ramping up its investments — especially in techbio, life sciences and AI — in the last two to three years. Redalpine already has 10 UK-based companies in its portfolio, including cultivated meat startup Uncommon and Hypervision Surgical, which offers computer-assisted tissue analysis for improved surgical precision. 

How many startup organisations does Europe need?

A while ago I ran into a LinkedIn post that said there were 497 startup organisations in Denmark. That sounded like a lot; the country only has a population of 6m and hasn’t delivered that many big startup successes of late.

Whether or not that number is accurate (having spoken to a few people in the know, it seems to be a little exaggerated), it raises a good question: how many startup organisations does any country really need? And why are there so many?

I spoke to the founder of one of those startup organisations in Denmark, who thinks it’s due to three things: access to public funding; a mandate from the public sector to support entrepreneurship (every country wants to be a startup nation – not only France); and the way that “the creation of an organisation that supports startups becomes a purpose in itself — a success in itself.”

But does it help the ecosystem to throw money at startup organisations? Who knows.

Most startup organisations have KPIs — but they tend to track things like the number of startups they have been in contact with or the number of attendees at events they hold, rather than a net promoter score, according to the founder I spoke to. “I believe it is better to have no KPIs than to have those we have right now,” he says. 

It is unclear exactly how much public money goes to startup organisations due to the spread of regional and state-owned agencies where these organisations can apply for funding. In the Nordics, in addition to public sector funding, there are also a range of private foundations that fund startup organisations, which is probably one reason why there are so many startup organisations in the region.

Talking to one founder of a bootstrapped startup in Denmark, he says he hasn’t made any use of the wide range of startup organisations available. Instead, he thinks coworking spaces are a key part of the ecosystem — and mentions how they’ve helped him grow his network, which in turn has been instrumental to his company’s growth.

So, what do you think? Are startup organisations key to a successful ecosystem? Should the public sector fund them? And how should their success be measured? Let me know. 

— Mimi Billing, Europe editor

👋 Are we at the start of a big startup CEO reshuffle? The past few years' push to profitability has been tough on startups — and their founder CEOs. Now, we're starting to see some founders call it a day, and some investors call time on CEOs — and we wouldn't be surprised if we see more of this over the coming months. Here are eight founder CEOs who've already chosen to (or been forced to) step down. 

👁️ Worldcoin, a crypto biometrics project cofounded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, is at loggerheads with European data protection regulators — and might soon find itself banned in the EU.

• Bavaria’s data protection authority (BayLDA) is entering the final weeks of a two-year long audit. The sticking point: how its iris-photographing devices comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 
• The project photographs people’s eyeballs and faces with shiny chrome sphere devices known as 'Orbs'. In exchange, they get a 'World ID'; a certificate verifying an individual as a unique human being. Users also have the option of claiming a number of WLD tokens, the project's cryptocurrency.
• Its lofty ambitions have caught the attention of investors — it’s raised more than $250m from VCs including a16z and Tiger Global — but it might soon be wishing it received a little less attention from regulators.  

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London-based Sunswap, which builds zero emission transport refrigeration units, raised a €20m funding round led by BGF. Shell Ventures, Move Energy, Barclays and Clean Growth Fund also participated.

Warsaw-based MMI, a manufacturer of net-zero electric buses, raised €7.7m in a funding round led by French transport and construction company Vinci.

Helsinki-based Jobilla, a matchmaking platform between companies and workers, raised €6m in funding from Juuri Partners, Trind VC and Business Finland.

Athens-based Moveo.AI, a conversational AI platform, raised €2.3m in seed funding. Eleven Ventures led the round, with participation from Uni.Fund and Charge.vc.

Oslo-based Cardboard, a software subscription management platform, raised €1.9m in funding from Skyfall Ventures.

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