Choco, data lakes, the history of a French entrepreneurial success story, and many more...
What's Up Tech? #126
Welcome to our 126th newsletter. It was written with 🖤 by Saish Rane, Medina Sinani and Angèle Sahraoui
In 2023, baby vc is proudly sponsored by OneRagtime which will fund enrolment fees for the 2023 VC bootcamps participants, to promote diversity and inclusivity in the VC ecosystem — giving everyone the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background.
OneRagtime is a European Seed & Series A venture capital fund with 40+ portfolio companies like Jellysmack, Homa Games and Zenly.
Follow OneRagtime on LinkedIn and check their website!
Fundraisings from last week with Choco and Qbeast
News from last week with Amadeus Capital Partners & Apex Ventures, and Spotify
Our content of the week with LVMH (yes, you read right)
Internship & Job offers of the week
Wishing you a pleasant read 🖤
🌱 Choco raised €25M with Bessemer Venture Partners (🇩🇪)
The Berlin-based startup Choco has recently raised €25M from existing investors for its messenger app for restaurateurs, including Bessemer Venture Partners, G Squared, Coatue Management, Insight Partners, and Left Lane Capital. All in all, the company has received more than €300M since its creation in 2018. 💰
Choco's mission to "reduce food waste" remains a top priority, with CEO Daniel Khachab indicating that the company’s focus is now on product development and accelerating the expansion of the app's digital offerings. Choco's app allows chefs to easily place their daily orders via the in-app messenger, streamlining the process and reducing the error rate in calculating perishable goods. 💫
Amazingly, more than 15,000 restaurateurs and 10,000 suppliers already use Choco, and the company is now active in markets including the US and Europe where it is present in Germany, the UK, France, Spain, Austria, and Belgium. ⚡️
🔍 Qbeast raised €2.5M with Elaia (🇪🇸)
In a world that is driven by data, enterprises need a lot of it to drive decisions & train predictive models. If companies do need to optimize for future applications, they need to use data lakes to create data applications & train ML models.
This is why Qbeast, pioneer in data lake management raised a €2.5M Seed round led by Elaia, with Sabadell Venture Capital, Uber founding CTO Oscar Salazar & existing investors Inveready. 👀
Barcelona-based Qbeast secures €2.5 million to simplify data lakes
🇩🇪 Amadeus & APEX join forces to invest in deep tech
Amadeus Capital Partners & Apex Ventures announced a partnership to create an €80M fund that will invest in deep tech from the DACH region and have closed €28M till date. 💰
They will be investing between Seed & Series A stages with ticket sizes varying from €1-1.5M, investing in sectors like artificial intelligence and machine learning, quantum technologies and photonics, mobility and space innovation, and autonomous systems and robotics. 🤖
Amadeus Capital Partners and APEX Ventures orchestrate deeptech support with joint €80 million fund
🎧 Spotify launches ‘DJ’ to deliver personalized music and AI-powered commentary
Surely, Spotify is not a newcomer when it comes to personalized music recommendations, especially since it launched its Discover Weekly playlist in 2015. That said, it seems the Stockholm-based company has reached a new milestone by introducing ‘DJ’, a new feature turbocharged by OpenAI that will be able to deliver a curated music selection alongside AI-powered spoken commentary. 💬
The latter will concern the tracks and artists you like, and will use what Spotify describes as a “stunningly realistic voice.” For now, ‘DJ’ is only available in beta test for premium subscribers in the U.S. or Canada. 🇺🇸/🇨🇦
Spotify launches ‘DJ,’ a new feature offering personalized music with AI-powered commentary
If you’re reading this newsletter weekly, you’re likely to have an acute interest for entrepreneurship. Hence, the piece of content we wanted to shed some light on this week is the newly released Acquired podcast episode — a podcast in which the two hosts (Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal) go behind the scenes of the biggest entrepreneurial success stories. And their last episode deep dives into one of the largest French entrepreneurial success stories: that of Bernard Arnault’s LVMH empire. 🇫🇷
Surely, LVMH goes slightly beyond our usual tech realms, but trust us: this 3h+ episode is worth a listen. Among the things we learned and that amazed us:
How Bernard Arnault is now the richest man on Earth, well before Musk, Bezos and Gates while not having built any of the companies/houses that are part of the LVMH portfolio. 👀
How all started in 1984 with a one franc, one small acquisition, that of an almost-bankrupt textile company named Boussac which owned Christian Dior.
How in a few years, Arnault turned it into a more than profitable business. 💵
How Arnault gained control of LVMH in the late 1980s using a full-blown financial coup…
The episode explores the whole history of LVMH up to today, an history that is full of drama (think Gucci), financial schemes, and other business gems. Dive into it, and thanks us later!
Acquired Season 12, Episode 2: The Complete History & Strategy of LVMH
Internships
Visiting Analyst - Cavalry Ventures (Berlin)
Visiting Analyst Fundraising - Speedinvest (Vienna)
Jobs
Investor - Oxford Capital Partner (Oxford)
👉 And if you’d like to discover more offers… you can check our job board just here!
Also, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at joinbabyvc@gmail.com. We’d be super happy to have you sharing job/internship offers, events or feedback with us! 🤝
You can also read about us on our website and follow what we do on LinkedIn.
Take care, and see you next week,
The whole baby vc crew 🖤