We welcomed Dinghy to the Balderton portfolio this month. Dinghy is a new mobile-first, on-demand insurance provider for freelance professionals with a unique pay-as-you-use model that can be adjusted to working and non-working periods.
Read Rob's Medium post "Why Balderton are backing Dinghy."
Read more about the announcement on Balderton's blog, and also see Techcrunch's take on the story.
Your invitation to participate in the 2018 Startup Genome Study
Since 2011, Startup Genome has been producing research on startups, and now advises governments and organizations to drive policies that aim to increase ecosystem resources and startup success. You can see last year's report here. Your insights are needed!
Please make your contribution to the 2018 survey here.
In other portfolio news this month
Kobalt announced the appointment of Avid Larizadeh-Duggan from GV as Exec VP and chief strategy and business officer.
The 60th Annual Grammy Awards are coming up, and Kobalt has featured all their artists nominated this year.
Depop announced they secured $20M in funding, to support US expansion. The site has become home to millions of young teenage entrepreneurs who are building their own communities, creating their own brands and generating revenue.
The team at Revolut announced geo-location-powered pay-per-day travel insurance, in partnership with Thomas Cook.
Sketchfab launched a store, with the vision of becoming the 'stock photo' site for 3D models. Read the news on Techcrunch. Also, take a look at how schools are using Sketchfab hosted 3D printed artifacts to allow students 'hold' pieces of history.
In-depth article in Forbes about how Rebtel is offering services, and a business opportunity, to 250m migrants worldwide in the article "A Swedish Upstart Takes on WhatsApp, Reaching $95M in Revenue."
TechEU took a look at the Athens tech community, including portfolio company Workable. Reporter Robin Wauters thinks 2018 will be a transformational year for the Athens tech ecosystem.
How does portfolio company Dalia Research create great company culture? By building a boat, of course! Check out how they did it, in just two months.
The AppearHere team looked at the big retail trends for 2018.
Balderton: news
In case you missed it, we learned in the New Year that Suranga was awarded an OBE for services to engineering and technology. All pretty proud of him here, actually.
James is of the opinion that 2018 will be the software industry's 'seatbelt' moment — drawing a parallel to when government required the automobile industry to introduce seatbelts. Contrary to beliefs at the time, this didn't destroy the automobile industry. James sees government-sponsored reform is coming. And he thinks that's a good thing. Read his opinion piece in VentureBeat.
Nicolas was interviewed by France 3 on the topic of bitcoin, cryptocurrency and portfolio company Luno. You can view the interview here (18th minute).
Suranga quoted Roy Amara in his piece this month in the Evening Standard: "we overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run" to remind us we often get excited about innovative ideas, and then become disillusioned when they fail to deliver immediately. With that in mind, read his take on self-driving cars, the hype cycle of crypto-currencies, the AI-powered office, and the year of reckoning ahead for us all with Brexit.
Balderton: events
Here are upcoming events where you can catch the Balderton team:
Jan 30/31 - Nicolas will be attending the APIDays Paris event.
Jan 30/31 - James will be participating as a judge at The AI Congress at the O2 in London.
Feb 2 - Suranga will be speaking at The Cambridge Start-up Billion Pound Scale-up Challenge at The Bradfield Centre in Cambridge.
Feb 6-8 - James will be attending SaaStr Annual 2018 in San Francisco.
Mar 1 - James will be hosting an event "The Future of Artificial Intelligence" with Demos think tank, Christ Church Oxford and Balderton.
Apr 13 - Lars will be keynoting the London Business School PCVC Club, which seeks to connect students and startups with the European investment community.
