This month we welcomed Healx to the Balderton portfolio, having led their $10M Series A investment round. Existing investors Jonathan Milner and Amadeus Capital participated in the round.

Healx is developing breakthrough treatments for rare diseases. Worldwide, there are 350 million sufferers of rare illnesses, and about 7,000 known rare diseases. 95 percent of those people are underserved by the traditional drug development model.

The Healx platform uses artificial intelligence, deep pharmacology expertise, and one of the largest collection of insights from rare disease patient groups to find new approaches to treating rare diseases. It also mines both patient group insights and medical and scientific papers via natural language processing techniques and other proprietary methods.

Healx arose as a shared vision between the founder of the Cambridge Rare Disease Network, Tim Guilliams, and the co-inventor of Viagra, David Brown.

Suranga, the lead Partner of this investment, describes the company's potential: “Healx's technology will be foundational to a new way of matching treatments to patients and opening new markets for the medical industry. They have already proved their approach works, and as the platform grows it could massively improve the lives of millions people currently suffering from rare diseases.”

Read the news in the Telegraph and Forbes, and Suranga's thinking behind the investment and the story of how he met the Healx team.

LevelUp is acquired by Grubhub

This month saw the exciting news that LevelUp, a portfolio company of Balderton, has been acquired by Grubhub. We had the privilege of investing in the indefatigable Seth (LevelUp's 'Chief Ninja') and his team in 2010, and again in 2012 and 2013. LevelUp (and before it SCVNGR) were key innovators in social gaming, bringing an augmented digital/real-world experience many years before the likes of Pokémon Go.

You can read more about the news on Techcrunch, on LevelUp's own site and read the press release issued by Grubhub here.

Build with Balderton launches

Building companies is hard. As founders and entrepreneurs ourselves, we understand this. At Balderton, we are committed to putting our expertise, support, and our network to work for our founders and their teams as they journey from idea to the large, global, impactful business they aim to build.

As part of that commitment, we have launched Build with Balderton. Responding to the common questions we see many of our European founding teams asking, we will be sharing what we hope will be thoughtful, actionable content to answer those questions, and also highlight the experiences of our portfolio companies.

We welcome feedback, and invite you to read (and share!) the following articles:

The Balderton Essential Guide to Employee Equity: Data, insights, key learnings and worksheets on the topic of equity in European-founded startups.
On Board with Balderton: A guide for best practices in board meetings.
The European Talent Landscape report: research into where people working in European tech come from, what experience they have, and what they expect in their roles.
The Balderton Playbook for Internationalisation, Part 1: When should your European startup expand into International markets?
The Balderton Playbook for Internationalisation, Part 2: Where should your company expand internationally?
Five reasons why selling is the key skill founders need to learn.
The typical stages startups go through when raising venture funding — useful for anyone contemplating their first, or next, fundraise.
Seven benefits your VC should provide — important to consider when choosing between VC firms for your next fundraise.
What job titles mean in venture capital, and how to use this information to your advantage
Five steps to consider when firing someone — it's inevitable you have to do this at some point on a startup journey, so here are pointers to help you if it's your first time.
Why an aversion to the topic of "HR" (Human Resources) is costing startups great talent, and what to do about it — the first in a future series of Talent support content.

Portfolio: in the news

Revolut moved into new offices in London

Revolut made a round up of all their new products and services released in Q2, and moved into shiny new offices in London. Revolut's VP Ops Alan Chang blogged about the 'never settle' future founders they're looking for as they continue their global expansion.

Citymapper — with a nod to Delacroix — added dockless cycles and scooters across London and other cities to its marvellously popular app, in a move to update the daily commute with what they call 'floating transport.' Read their thoughts on The Age of Floating Transport.

We were all excited to see the team at Virtuo drive into their first country after France — the UK — with premium cars available in five locations across London (London Victoria, London Waterloo, King’s Cross St Pancras, Marble Arch and Kensington). As a Balderton newsletter subscriber, use WELCOMELONDON and this link: http://bit.ly/2A5gwdh for a 20% discount!

Developers love Kotlin, especially the team at portfolio company Pusher, who surveyed hundreds of developers to ask them what makes Kotlin so special. They shared results in The State of Kotlin 2018.

Good to see two portfolio companies working together — Vestiaire Collective deploys Qubit to curate more personalised experiences online.

Finally, the Sunday Times Lorraine Candy looked at what selling items on Depop can teach teens about personal finance.

Balderton: in the news

On the heels of our Balderton in Berlin event last month, Colin shared his thoughts in Venturebeat about the growth of tech in Berlin, and how German policymakers need to address VSOPs if they are to attract and retain the best global talent.

See photos from the Berlin event here.

"Online is the high street's savior, not its executioner," said James in The Telegraph this month. "The high street isn't doomed. The old business model favoured by landlords and developers, however, is."

Will bike sharing schemes wobble off course? The economic case is far from proven; one firm probably needs to 'win' each city, then they can charge prices that lead to profitability. That may take some time. Suranga shared his thoughts with The London Evening Standard this month.

"To cross the chasm, the first step is for founders and investors alike to acknowledge the vital importance of the People function." Kiana shared her views on embracing the People function this month.

Balderton: events

Finally, here's where you can catch members of the Balderton team in the next month or two:

Sep 18th - Bernard will be speaking at a private event hosted by the Institut Montaigne on two topics: The Tech Race: How can Europe catch up with the US and China; and How can we create a $100BN company out of Europe

Sep 24th - the Partnership will be at TechBBQ in Copenhagen, on stage with an "Ask Us Anything," followed by a private, invite-only event

Sept 25th - Caye will be at France Digitale in Paris

Oct 3rd - Lars will be giving the Keynote at Business Link, Greater Copenhagen, organised by Vaeksthus Copenhagen.

Oct 3rd-5th - Caye will be at South Summit in Madrid

Oct 10th - Rob will be at the Startups Awards Judging Day

Oct 10th-11th - Colin will be at the Innovator's Summit in Berlin

Oct 12th - Suranga will be attending the Cambridge Scale-Up Billion Pound Challenge

Oct 18th - Rob will be co-hosting an Open Banking Debate with GoCardless at BaldertonHQ. Let us know if you'd like to attend.

Nov 5th-8th - Caye will be at Web Summit in Lisbon

Summer is upon us!

As if we could miss that — it's hot all over Europe right now! The Balderton newsletter is on holiday for August, but we'll be back in September. We wish you all a wonderful summer break.

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