Granite Asia’s Post

Exit pressure for various fund vintage years and increased emphasis on prudence standards regarding burn rates are greatly impacting our startup ecosystem. If you want to learn more about the current market dynamics and hear from highly experienced experts join us next week on our 8th PwC Raise Investor Summer Event! We will top it off with giving you the opportunity to listen to the investor pitches of our latest Raise startup cohort selection. 🏆 Make sure to join us and if you haven't registered yet, please comment below or dm Sherin or me. Looking forward to see you in person! 🤝

With ‘Reimagining growth’ being a key theme at this year’s World Economic Forum annual meeting, Paul Jenkins, Global Co-leader of Leap by McKinsey, delves into the power of building new ventures on the Forum Stories blog. 🌎 The research finds that companies investing 20% of growth capital into building new ventures achieve revenue growth 2% higher than those that don't. 📈 Follow the link for six steps on how to innovatively launch successful new ventures. ⬇️ #NewVentureBuilding #WEF25 #LeapbyMcKinsey #Growth

With ‘Reimagining growth’ being a key theme at this year’s World Economic Forum annual meeting, Paul Jenkins, Global Co-leader of Leap by McKinsey, delves into the power of building new ventures on the Forum Stories blog. 🌎 The research finds that companies investing 20% of growth capital into building new ventures achieve revenue growth 2% higher than those that don't. 📈 Follow the link for six steps on how to innovatively launch successful new ventures. ⬇️ #NewVentureBuilding #WEF25 #LeapbyMcKinsey #Growth

When unlocking corporate innovation, trust is the key. 🗝 This week, our very own Leo L. sat down with Talia Abramowitz and Kevin Ford to chat about all things Corporate Innovation. Some of the amazing take aways of the evening included: ➡ Know your WHY: what is it that’s driving you towards corporate innovation? Stay rooted in your goals. ➡ Canada is behind - 6% of 🇨🇦 corporates are using corporate innovation compared to the 40% in 🇺🇸 (statistic from ‘The State of Corporate Venture Capital in Canada’ report produced by Deloitte) ➡Trust makes all the difference: when it comes to making big decisions like corporate acceleration, someone you trust makes all the difference. Big thank you to everyone who joined us at he event and for all of the engaging questions from the audience - stay tuned as we share more content from this incredible panel! Learn more about L-SPARK Select, our corporate acceleration arm, here: https://lnkd.in/eRakYzT8 #corporateinnovation #growth #scale #ceo #corporateventure

🚀 Start-ups offer fresh perspectives, new technologies, and access to emerging markets. Yet, many companies stick to low-commitment strategies like networking events (82%) instead of deeper partnerships like accelerator programs (21%) or acquisitions (18%). 📊 This finding comes from the Corporate Venturing Barometer led by Professor Innovation & Entrepreneurship Robin De Cock and in collaboration with PwC Belgium, highlighting a striking 'innovation gap' in Belgium. So, how can we bridge this gap? Read this blog to discover the main insights, challenges, and strategies for successful corporate venturing: https://lnkd.in/e-ekpzAd 👉 What’s your experience with start-up collaborations? #CorporateVenturing

🌟 Takeaways from SLUSH Investor Day Roundtable: Early-Stage Investing in CEE 🌟 I had the privilege of participating in a compelling roundtable discussion hosted by Aniruddha Nazaré, General Partner at Almaz Capital, an early-stage investing firm in CEE. The session brought together an inspiring group of investors and experts to discuss the region's opportunities and challenges. Key insights from the conversation: 1️⃣ Talent Abundance, Capital Scarcity 2️⃣ Cross-Border Collaboration is Key Many of the most successful startups in the region benefited from early support by cross-border investors who believed in their global scalability. 3️⃣ Local Roots, Global Vision 4️⃣ More than Capital: Knowledge and Networks The panel included prominent voices like Jacek Pawłowski, Ioana Alexandra Frincu, Michal Csonga, Izet Zdralovic, Łukasz Skarka, Ralitsa Ivanova, and Tuba Gokcan. Each brought unique perspectives, making the discussion both insightful and actionable. Would love to hear your thoughts — what do you think is the 2025 year opportunities in CEE? #Slush2024 #VentureCapital #CEEStartups #AngelInvesting #TechInnovation

Happy New Year 2025! In a recent interview with DealStreetAsia, our founding partner, Achmad Zaky, and venture partner, Rexi Christopher, discussed the market shift and strategies for diversifying our business in 2025. "We prioritize diversifying our investments into resilient sectors and supporting businesses that focus on affordability without compromising quality. As economic conditions shift and consumer preferences evolve, adaptability becomes crucial. We advise our consumer-focused companies to prioritize research and development (R&D) to explore alternative products that can unlock new markets." "Regarding market competition, we encourage our portfolio companies to avoid competing with low-cost products that rely on frequent promotions to attract customers. Instead, we focus on investing in businesses that offer value-driven products, have strong market positioning, foster deep brand loyalty, and ensure sustainable growth and differentiation in the market." Read more: https://lnkd.in/eansmXnF

What are your thoughts on this framework? Businesses play diverse roles in innovation ecosystems, with varying levels of impact and influence. This framework categorizes their contributions from the transformative power of emerging startups to the established presence of major corporations and R&D firms. Do you think this model accurately captures the dynamics of businesses within innovation ecosystems? Are there nuances or roles missing that could better reflect reality? Share your thoughts below!

“Anybody just focusing on investing in Europe is missing out on 80%+ of the value created. VC is hard at the best of times. Ruling yourself out of a high proportion of the best companies isn't going to make it any easier.” This. 💯 🎯 Great post by David Clark, and on Christmas Eve! 🎁 Geographically limited investment theses make little sense. There’s no real logical argument to only invest in Europe if your goal is to make money. “The percentage of capital raised by European firms is significantly higher than the percent of exit value or unicorn/pentacorn/decacorn value.” Europe is very DPI light. European venture creates less exit value than it puts in as investment. Europe needs to make M&A more attractive, and create a truly unified capital market if it wants to see VC become a real asset class here, and not merely a government led economic development tool.

There has been lots of posts this year about the challenges faced by the European VC market. I thought it might be interesting to look at the relative share of exit value created by European companies over the last decade vs their US peers (2015-2024 exits based on Pitchbook data). European companies accounted for 15% of all Europe/US exit value over the last decade. However, when you start looking at material exits ($1bn+), the performance of European VC gets worse. They account for 13% of all billion-dollar exits, 11% of $5bn+ exits and just 10% of $10bn+ exits. One of the criticisms I've heard about looking at exit data is that it is a lagging indicator and that Europe has done a much better job in recent years of building large companies. So I looked at the share of unrealised unicorns ($1bn+) pentacorns ($5bn+) and decacorns ($5bn+). European companies represent 16% of unicorn value, 17% of pentacorn value and 13% of decacorn value. So while there is a slight improvement vs exits, it's nothing to get excited about. The main reason people give for the underperformance of European companies vs the US is the funding gap. They say that there is just more capital available to companies in the US and this allows them to grow faster and increases the size of outcomes. So I also looked at how much capital has been invested in European vs US VC-backed companies over the last decade. European companies raised 26% of capital and US companies 74%. So while more capital went into US companies, the percentage of capital raised by European firms is significantly higher than the percent of exit value or unicorn/pentacorn/decacorn value. We hear consistently from our VCs that there is no shortage of capital for the best companies in Europe. If anything, these managers are unable to invest as much as they would like to in these businesses. However, their complaint is that there just aren't enough world-class founders looking to build companies in Europe. So what does this mean for LPs? Anybody just focusing on investing in Europe is missing out on 80%+ of the value created. VC is hard at the best of times. Ruling yourself out of a high proportion of the best companies isn't going to make it any easier.