Insights from the Top 100
An overview of the key findings.
As expected, there’s a significant concentration of companies within Europe’s Top 3 startup regions: UK, Germany and France are collectively responsible for 73% of European dealflow.
The average amount of capital raised by the Cloud Challengers ahead of the Series A is $4.1m while the median is $3.4m. This capital is usually raised across 2 separate rounds.
Out of the 3 leading geographies, UK-based founders tend to raise the most; followed by those in Germany, who tends to raise 20% less ahead of the Series A; and then France, which 30% lower than UK. Less active geographies therefore do not have enough data to draw meaningful conclusions.
Y Combinator, Speedinvest and EF are the top 3 backers of the Cloud Challengers. This is shortly followed by Seedcamp, LocalGlobe, and Index. Y Combinator is significantly ahead of all other backers, with 19 companies - nearly 20% of the total ‘Cloud Challengers’ list - in the their portfolio.
Companies building products in the finance, compliance, DevOps and productivity categories represent over 50% of the total list.
