Ben’s List 74
From the key success factors of EU startup studios to female founders fighting for funding & the decline of disruptive science, this week’s list aims to both inform & entertain.
BCAlso see more startups coverage: /category/startups/
Entrepreneurship
The Key Success Factors of European Startup Studios
“Successful European studios create a strong cultural infrastructure, which is then declined within each portfolio startup. The way to do this is to build a galaxy of enthusiasts: business angels clubs, advisors, events.”
Guide to Growth Metrics
“The traditional investor view of this metric is, as Lawrence A. Cunningham puts it, that ‘gross profit margin demonstrates competitive advantage’ because ‘it is the purest expression of customer valuation.’ But as we see it, gross margins alone don’t make for a competitive advantage. For instance, having high gross margins—typically above 70% for software companies—demonstrates that your company might have a competitive advantage now, but without a moat, you can’t guarantee that those margins will persist.”
Venture Capital
From Singapore to Silicon Valley, female founders fight for funds
“Women in Singapore, the VC hub of Southeast Asia, are 38% less likely than men to have a strong network, according to LinkedIn. The corresponding numbers are 14% in India and 28% in the United States.”
- asia.nikkei.com :: Sayan Chakraborty, et al.
All the VC fund of funds you need to know in Europe
“The European Commission — when it announced its €2.1bn fund of funds strategy several years ago — argued that a lack of VC funding is holding European tech back.”
Community
How The Futur Built A $1M+ Community
“When I asked Ben what lies ahead for The Futur in 2023, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised with the answer.
‘We’re looking to grow our community membership as much as possible in 2023,’ he said. ‘Because doing so will allow us to invest that much more in creating our free YouTube content.’”
DeepTech
Spinout Playbook
” A licensing deal with a particularly low royalty rate might have an above-average equity allocation, or vice versa.”
‘Disruptive’ science has declined – and no one knows why.
“Disruptiveness is not inherently good, and incremental science is not necessarily bad, says Wang. The first direct observation of gravitational waves, for example, was both revolutionary and the product of incremental science, he says.”
Policy
Fighting Tech-Enabled Abuse: 2022 in Review
“Apple has had a very mixed year, taking important steps to secure devices for high-risk users, including survivors of tech-enabled abuse, while also facing the fallout from the disastrous launch of their physical tracker, the Air Tag, whose mitigations against use as a stalking device began as woefully inadequate and have progressed to merely bad.”
