Raising capi­tal in the US vs EU: a biased compa­ra­tive study

Si vous enten­dez de gros chiffres à propos de star­tup, sauf événe­ment excep­tion­nel, ça se passe ailleurs qu’en France, voire qu’en Europe.

US funds invest in case your company succeeds, whereas in Europe, they invest because your company succee­ded.

Another way to phrase this? The biggest fear for a US inves­tor is to miss out on a big hit. When Peter Thiel was asked what his worst invest­ment was, he replied “not (doing) the Series B round of Face­book”. See the diffe­rence? Instead of going over the many invest­ments he made that turned out to be failures, he’s blaming himself for a risk not taken.

Et ça cadre très bien avec ce que j’ai pu voir. Ici on inves­tit à minima, pour alimen­ter un busi­ness qui a déjà prouvé son fonc­tion­ne­ment, ou pas loin, avec des busi­ness plan à 3 ans. Là bas ils analysent plutôt la capa­cité de l’équipe à créer quelque chose, et la soli­dité du projet.

At the seed stage, US inves­tors know that spen­ding weeks analy­zing the ‘total addres­sable market’ (or TAM) is a waste of time. The most inter­es­ting compa­nies are those that expand their TAM as they go. For example, before Google came along, the market for PPC SERP ads was non-existent; today it’s a multi-billion dollar market with a clear leader.

But that doesn’t deter Euro­pean inves­tors from reques­ting a full deck, inclu­ding a three-year busi­ness plan as a prerequi­site to any form of conver­sa­tion. If your path to profi­ta­bi­lity is not already proven, you will have a hard time getting as much as a phone call.

Diffé­rence de culture, mais pas que. Le reste du billet vaut aussi la lecture.

Photo d’en­tête sous licence CC BY-NC-SA à partir d’un travail de Marc Thur­man