A $100 Billion Year For Europe's Startups & VCs | The Best-Funded Cybersecurity Company

Plus: The World's Most Powerful Women 2021

When I first started reporting on European startups for the Forbes Under 30 Europe list in 2016, I was surprised by a distinct cultural difference in the way various countries viewed startups. Unlike my home state of California that has long heralded entrepreneurship, I noticed a lot of disdain and proverbial handwringing about the impact of startup culture on the continent's youth.

But a lot of things have changed in the past five years. European startups are expected to more than double the amount raised from investors this year, to a new record of $100 billion. VC firm Atomico’s annual State of European Tech Report charts how an explosion in mega-deals worth more than $100 million has helped smash last year’s record $41 billion invested in the continent’s startups. 

This has been a big year for European VCs. Yesterday Senior Editor Alex Konrad launched the Midas List Europe 2021. "We've come a long way in the past ten years, from a tiny community to a mature group of founders who can support and learn from each other," said Sequoia partner Luciana Lixandru, who snagged the #2 spot on this year's list. "Founders don't need to look to Silicon Valley—we have enough home-grown success."

This Week's Money Moves

It’s been another great year for billionaires. After a stellar 2020, when the super-rich added some $1.9 trillion to their collective wealth, the party continued in 2021: the 2,600-plus billionaires around the globe have gotten $1.6 trillion richer this year, according to Forbes’ estimates.

As the Omicron variant throws another proverbial wrench into the travel industry, Outdoorsy, a global peer-to-peer RV rental platform based in Austin, Texas, continues to flourish. The longterm trend continues: this year 85% of its RV renters are first-timers.

Founded by Israelis, headquartered in New York, and with a focus on protecting industrial systems from disastrous “cyber-physical” attacks, cybersecurity startup Claroty has announced a huge $400 million funding round that Forbes has learned values the company close to $2 billion.

The Inside Scoop: Exclusive Under 30 News

Arturo Elizondo always thought he would go into government. But after working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and majoring in government and comparative politics at Harvard, he realized that he would be better able to change the food industry as a founder. He cofounded the EVERY Company (then called Clara Foods), which uses fermentation to produce vegan protein it says is nearly identical to the animal version. After six years of research and development, EVERY says it has over 200 proteins in its pipeline. 

This week, San Francisco-based EVERY announced that it raised $175 million to power its synthetic biology and deliver animal-free protein to the masses, bringing the company’s total funding to $233 million. Investors in the round include McWin, Temasek and Prosus Ventures. 

That’s no small amount of money, and there’s no small amount of vegan protein on the market. So how has EVERY managed to stand out? Rather than fight for space on the increasingly crowded vegan protein shelves in grocery stores, the EVERY Company employs a B2B strategy, hoping to inject its ingredients into major food chains around the country. Earlier this month, EVERY launched its first major collaboration—an egg-free egg white protein smoothie with Pressed Juicery. 

“We remain the leader in this category because we have the technology and partnerships to scale production,” says Elizondo, who was the face of the 2020 Forbes Under 30 Science list. “As other companies focus on niches, we have a solution that can really tackle the masses.”

Elizondo sees EVERY as protein for everybody, rather than those who frequently buy $12 smoothies. He plans to get EVERY protein to millions of consumers through the company’s partnership with beverage distribution giant AB InBev. “We are finding ways to scale and transform our food system as quickly as possible,” he says. “I believe the way to do this is to work with the world’s largest food companies to help them transition to an animal-free future.”

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