This month we were very happy to welcome Tempow to the Balderton portfolio. We led their Series A investment, joined by CV Ventures. Lars will be joining Tempow's board.
Paris- and San Francisco-based Tempow was founded in 2016 by a team of alumni from Ecole Polytechnique, one of Europe’s leading engineering schools, and Ecole 42, the new coding school created by the Xavier Niel in Paris.
The company creates software-only solutions that are built to enhance the four billion Bluetooth-enabled devices sold annually. Amid predictions that there will be a trillion connected devices globally by 2035, there’s a vast opportunity for Bluetooth to play a pivotal role as the glue between such devices and as the ‘armour’ to protect against security vulnerabilities.
You can read more about the announcement on Balderton's newsfeed here, in Techcrunch and in Les Echos.
Read Lars' thoughts behind the investment here on his Medium.
The bi-annual Balderton CEO Collective in France
This month we gathered our portfolio CEOs together for the Balderton CEO Collective — which this year took place over three days at a resort in the Luberon region of France. This bi-annual event offers our CEOs the chance to meet each other, spend time getting to know our entire team, and listen to mind-expanding speakers — which this time included a leading neuroscientist, a bio-hacker, an expert in cultural diversity in the workplace, a top professional poker player, and a polar explorer. The event was both rewarding and refreshing.
Catch just a few photos from the event, and hear from Suranga on Balderton's newsfeed here.
Watch a video of highlights of the event here:
Frontier Car Group raises $58M Series B for its used-car marketplace
Sujay Tyle, Founder & CEO, Frontier Car Group
Berlin-based Frontier Car Group focuses on building used-car marketplaces aimed at countries outside Western Europe and North America. This month, they announced their Series B raise of $41M from Balderton, TPG Growth, automotive funds Fraser McCombs Capital, and AutoTech Ventures. The company additionally raised $17M in debt financing from leading institutions and banks.
Frontier Car Group was launched at the end of 2016, and is expanding rapidly in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Daniel Waterhouse, who has led all Balderton's investments in Frontier Car Group, said “Balderton first invested in FCG a little under 2 years ago and it is staggering what the team have achieved in such a short time, getting to significant scale and building a platform that is capable of being leveraged in many different operating environments. We are excited to further support the company and look forward to the next chapter of this extraordinary story.”
Read more about the story on Balderton's newsfeed, in Techcrunch and in the Wall Street Journal.
Aircall secures $29M to reinvest the business phone
Bernard Liautaud and Aircall CEO Olivier Pailhes at the Balderton CEO Collective, 2018, along with the CEOs of Depop and Qubit.
Balderton portfolio company Aircall announced this month that they raised $29 million in Series B funding, led by Draper Esprit. Balderton is participating in this round, alongside NextWorld Capital, eFounders, Newfund and other existing investors, bringing total funding to $40.5 million to-date.
Aircall will use the new funds to accelerate the buildout of its cloud-based phone system, including seamless integrations into all the software tools used by modern businesses. Aircall will also dedicate portions of the funds to acquire top talent to supplement its growing teams in both the U.S. and Europe.
Bernard commented on the announcement: “since our first investment in 2015, it’s been clear that Aircall is addressing a major need for the modern business. They have the potential to be a transformative business and we can’t wait to see the next chapter in their growth.”
Read more on Balderton's newsfeed and in Les Echos.
In other portfolio news this month
The SketchFab team announced the integration of the Sketchfab API in the Facebook AR Studio. Facebook AR studio is a suit of tools to create augmented reality filters for mobile. With this integration, Facebook developers can easily search and import Sketchfab content from our library of more than 150,000 assets available for free download under Creative Commons licensing.
Labster announced their Google partnership at Google I/O to offer VR in classrooms around the world. Together, Labster and Google have partnered to unlock the physical lab requirements in biology courses. Using virtual reality, college and university students around the world will be able to participate in lab experiences on campus or remotely.
Revolut announced free coding classes for women. "I hope Revolut can really kick this kind of initiative off in the hope that other tech companies follow suit and provide more opportunities for women who are keen to learn code." Nikolay Storonsky, Revolut CEO.
Kobalt was featured in Forbes article 'Meet The Tech Company Disrupting The Music Industry (And It's Not Spotify).' and again in the article 'Why The Spotify Of Background Music Could Boost Your Sales.'
'Why are we still making rubbish mobile ads?' Ben Pavanetto of Adludio shared his thoughts in TheDrum.
London-based Depop teamed up with NYC’s best cult vintage shop, Procell, to sell coveted vintage pieces.
Balderton: in the news
Rob wrote an in-depth article in Venturebeat 'When should your startup expand into international markets.'
James shared his opinion on Google's AI Assistant with John Humphries of BBC's Radio 4 Today Programme. Listen at 1:52:43.
Bernard was on stage at Bloomberg's Sooner Than You Think event at StationF in Paris, answering questions such as the impact of Brexit on London as a tech hub, and whether, and when, we should expect to see tech companies of the size of Google, Facebook and Amazon emerge from Europe. See the video of the whole talk.
Bernard Liautaud at Macron's Tech for Good Summit
Bernard joined Emmanuel Macron along with leaders and CEOs of Google, Facebook, Uber, IBM, SAP, Intel and others at the Tech for Good Summit. Read more on our newsfeed.
Balderton: events
Here are upcoming events where you can catch the Balderton team:
May 24/26 - Bernard, Rob, Nicolas and Caye will be at Vivatech in Paris. Bernard will also be the guest of Emmanuel Macron at the Tech for Good Summit, which is gathering technology leaders to exchange views and produce recommendations on how technology and AI can be a positive and inclusive force for society.
May 24 - Rob will be a judge on the Techcrunch Startup Battlefield at Vivatech.
June 6/7 - Rob and Suranga will be at NOAH Berlin.
June 14 - Bernard, Suranga and Daniel will be at Founders Forum in London.
June 25 - the entire Partnership will be conducting their regular weekly Partner Meeting in Berlin
Jul 6 - Colin will be at TC Sessions: Blockchain 2018.
An invitation to participate: EU Startup Heatmap Research
If you're part of the European tech startup ecosystem, we invite you to take the European Startup Initiative 2018 survey — we, and they, want to hear from you! Five mins of your time, and we'll all learn a great deal. Thanks in advance. http://survey.startupheatmap.eu/
