Yacine Ghalim

So happy to be back from summer holidays and already meeting many startups this week through Office Hours and intros, some common advice kept coming up — so here’s my five friendly tips for early-stage founders pitching VCs: ✅ Be obsessed. Not just interested — obsessed. Know more about your problem space than anyone else in the room. Surprise me with your insights, your homework, your edge. I want to feel like you are the person who has cracked this. ✅ Show me the breakthrough. What you’re building should be meaningfully better — not incrementally. Explain why your solution is 10x better, not 10% improvement. What’s the bold technical, product or business model innovation? ✅ Tell the vision story. This is your billion-dollar moment. Don’t just explain what you do — paint the picture of what happens if you win. What shifts in the market? What becomes possible? What huge value is unlocked? ✅ Sell the team. At the earliest stage, you are the investment. What makes you exceptional? What edge do you have that others don’t? Show me how you’ve built a team that’s not just smart — but complementary, diverse, and uniquely positioned to win. ✅ How you say things are often more important than what. Make sure you lean in with presence, curiosity and passion. Balancing strong confidence with humility. I know this might sound like a lot but I also think startups at this stage don’t need perfect answers to everything — but they do need to make me believe. #startups #venturecapital #founders #earlystage

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𝐏𝐄 𝐯𝐬. 𝐕𝐂 𝐢𝐧 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞: 𝐀 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐬 Our latest data at Gain.pro highlights how PE and VC firms invest across Europe: ▪ PE-backed businesses are widely spread across the continent ▪ VC-owned assets are clustered in cities 📊 Sector focus drives this: – VC assets = 47% TMT (vs. 17% for PE) → drawn to innovation hubs – PE = 24% Services + 22% Industrials (vs. 13% & 7% for VC) → broader geographic reach beyond capitals 🌍 Top destinations: – Both: London & Paris lead – VC: 25% of assets in 11 cities (Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam next) – PE: 25% spread across 22 cities (Stockholm, Milan, Madrid stand out) ➡️ Same continent. Very different maps.

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Flagship Pioneering founded Lila Sciences in 2023 to remake one of the most important human inventions in history: the scientific method. How? By building fully autonomous science labs that enable AI to perform the scientific method itself – from hypothesis to experiment to analysis to iteration.  This idea grew out of the internal combination of FL96 and FL97, two earlier Flagship prototyping projects. With FL96 we asked, “What if machines could autonomously reimagine and reconstruct the physical (materials) world?” FL97 wondered, “What if machines could autonomously make life science advances?” Now, Lila is answering those questions.  Lila’s AI models don’t just regurgitate existing knowledge when tasked with a research question. They create new knowledge by connecting dots across incumbent scientific literature and traditionally siloed disciplines; generating novel hypotheses; and then designing and conducting experiments to test those hypotheses in our autonomous labs.  When this process repeats itself thousands or eventually millions of times in parallel, we believe it will lead to what we call scientific superintelligence — enabling new discoveries on a scale and at a pace that has never been achievable until now. Already, Lila’s team has made early molecular breakthroughs in therapeutics, energy, and carbon capture.  At a time when the challenges humanity faces seem to be accelerating, we must also accelerate our ability to find solutions. I believe Lila’s technology has the potential to do that, and to launch a new golden age of science in the process. Today, I’m proud to welcome a ​new group of investors who have joined Lila’s Series A fundraising round, adding another $235M to the $200M we’ve already raised and bringing the total to $435M. This is an important foundation for Lila’s next phase of discovery and growth. Our work is just beginning. https://lnkd.in/eHGVYaaJ 

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The VC secondary market is on fire. But many LPs are rushing in without fully appreciating the risks. VenCap International plc has been active in VC secondaries (LP positions only) since 1987 — and this is one of the hottest markets we’ve seen. In the first half of 2025 we reviewed $6.5bn of secondary VC deals — a 41% jump from the $4.6bn we saw in the same period last year. This includes both GP-led and LP-led deals. Here are 4 lessons we've learned from nearly 40 years of buying secondaries: 1️⃣ Power law still rules – a few companies will drive most returns. 2️⃣ Quality over discount – our best deal was bought at a premium to NAV. 3️⃣ Know the valuation policy – different VCs can value the same company very differently. 4️⃣ Factor in manager behavior – holding winners vs. selling early can make or break returns. VC secondaries ≠ PE secondaries. The risks are different — but for LPs who can access the right deal, at the right price, the rewards can be exceptional.

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If you’re actively fundraising, these VC firms with new funds could be the perfect fit. 🔴 El Cairo, Egypt-based F6 Ventures launched a new fund managing over $90M in assets, with plans to expand AUMs to $200M, to focus on seed and early-stage investments across the Middle East and Africa. 🔴 Des Moines, Iowa-based Curql closed a $360M fund to back fintech startups, particularly those enabling credit unions in AI lending, engagement, and cybersecurity. 🔴 Bangalore, India-based WYSER - Pioneering Agentic AI Venture fund launched a $25M maiden fund to back pre-seed to seed-stage startups developing Agentic AI solutions for the enterprise/B2B sector. 🔴 Milan-based Italian Founders Fund secured €90M to back seed stage digital startups across Italy. 🔴 New York-based Prelude Growth Partners closed a $600M fund to back high-growth, mission-driven consumer brands. 🔴 Bengaluru-based Northpoint Capital Management, LLP closed its first $150M fund  to back early-stage AI startups across sectors such as financial services, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, and consumer goods. 🔴 Chicago-based Expanse Venture Partners announced its inaugural $18M fund to invest in companies focused on GenAI and machine learning within the Fintech, Healthtech, and Insurtech sectors. 🔴 Beverly Hills-based Butterfly Equity closed a $527m continuation fund to focus on food and beverage investments. 🔴 Bangalore based Yali Capital closed a $104M inaugural fund focused on deeptech. 🔴 British Virgin Islands-based Victus Global launched a $10M fund to back cryptocurrency projects. 🔴 Melbourne-based Boman Group launched a $1B fund to back growth-stage companies in hardware and healthcare technology. 🔴 Sydney based Airtree Ventures closed two funds totalling AUS$650M to back Australia and New Zealand-based founders building technology companies.

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