New Wave 🌊 One Year In 🎂 Hiring 🔥

We’ve recently sent our 2021 Annual reporting to our investors, just after one year of operation. A number of things happened:

• 10 Investments;

• 22M€ Deployed;

• 6 Rounds announced (Sweep, Sunday, Blobr, Airbank, BeReal, Yavin); 4 in stealth…

• 5 Experienced repeat founders;

• 265M€ Raised in follow-on rounds by 5 companies; Led by A16Z, Coatue, DST, Accel, Balderton, Red Point…

It doesn’t count after just one year, but it brings our IRR at 500% and TVPI at 3x 😂

On top of highly capable founders, timing is everything, it’s actually the ultimate risk to take in order to back ambitious transforming opportunities before they become mainstream and super competitive. We’re really excited about the diligent bets we’ve taken! But we’ve also missed a couple of potentially obvious ones (and not only afterwards…) by being slightly too cautious sometimes.

Here are a couple of things we’ve realised :

• Every single venture firm is now doing seed deals. Very few have a clear view about it, they are more like oil companies testing grounds, and it will backfire for some of them. We’re very intentional about the fact that we only do seed and that it allows us to focus on a limited number of companies on the critical path between Seed and Series A, and help them write the best possible equity story. Ask our founders.

• A lot of former operators are raising large rounds, and a lot of hype is being formed around them, but unlike repeat entrepreneurs, they still have a lot to prove, so we’re very diligent about this growing trend and try not to take shortcuts too fast.

• We had to increase our average ticket size in order to cope with ownership goals that would allow our high performers to return a significant amount of money.

We also got one team member marked up, aka joining a later stage firm ;-) Our loss is Your opportunity. We’re hiring. If you want to learn more about New Wave and our genesis, it’s right here.

We’re looking for people with three sets of attributes:

The ability to search, filter, run through a pretty high volume of data/information and see quickly and clearly through them to spot the best teams and companies; analytical mind with an ability to cut through the noise and synthesise.

The ability to form opinions, express and defend them with awareness, not stubbornness; To follow the signals but equally to remain immune to them.

The ability to create and maintain strong relationships with people. How do we spot you among ten other people? What makes people want to work with you?

We could list dozens of additional attributes… You’re curious, you’re a hard worker, you’re hungry, you play to win, you’re honest, you think long term, you’re humble…

Get in touch with us, join @ newwave.vc

What we’ve set for 2022:

• As always, support our entrepreneurs as they are reaching important milestones in terms of product maturity and sales acceleration.

• Double down on backing experienced founders or impressive fast learners with long term ambition and resilience.

• Draw the lines of a second fund as we will reach two years of investment. Our check size will probably increase a bit but we want to keep it small.

Cheers :)