🤔 Revaia-lations
One year in VC, Re-Visited
Welcome to Startup ROI, where I, Kyle O'Brien, share European Tech insights from my perch in Paris, France. You can expect to find articles covering startups & ecosystem trends, interviews with founders and investors, as well as updates on in-person events for community thought leaders.
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By now, everyone here is probably thinking: when the hell is he going to get back to writing “hard-hitting” stories on the European tech ecosystem? You have a point. Perhaps it's the holidays or just the fact that I'm transitioning roles but I've become so terribly introspective and wistful about the previous year and a half.
We'll get back to my original programming soon enough. But today, I want to share some editorial work that largely went unannounced on this side of my internet world. In fact, if you are craving more content from me, this backlog ought to tide you over through New Years!
It was thanks to this very newsletter that I stumbled into a VC consulting role in the first place. Today, I pay homage to a great group of investors and colleagues that I had the honor to collaborate with for the past year — Revaia. I'll share the story of how I ended up joining in the first place and some of my favorite pieces to emerge!
Let's have a look, shall we?
Love at First LinkedIn
Don't sleep on cold outreach — calls, emails, texts, smoke signals. I'm actually going to write a whole piece on this soon. My whole career has been one auspicious cold call to the next. In this case, someone reached out to me. That someone was Stanislas Lot, a VC at Daphni. I looked at the archive and this message arrived shortly after I published Waiting for Haussman — a piece on the French Prop-Tech scene.
Frankly, I was incredibly flattered. I knew of Daphni but had virtually no connection to the VC ecosystem. I had coffee at their funky and impressive office in Sentier and we exchanged some ideas. A couple weeks later, the Daphni team shared an upcoming article — Veni, Vidi, VINCI, re: the construction industry — in their newsletter and I felt like an absolute rockstar. Stan also took the liberty to introduce me to another VC insider: Willy Braun.
Willy was a founding team member at Daphni who recently launched Galion.exe — a startup community and venture fund. But in between, he was an operating partner at — where else but — Revaia. We had a lovely catch-up and he encouraged me to take a call with the Alice and Elina, a dynamic partner duo who were seeking someone to help on content strategy for their growth equity fund. Long story short, I joined Revaia as an operating partner leading content and community efforts. Needless to say, it's been quite the ride!
Bottomless Content, Boundless Potential
Among my various contributions to the team, my top priority was the weekly newsletter. In fact, my final contribution, Revaia edito #141, comes out this Friday. This was (and is) a top priority and coming up with original, topical and well-written articles on a weekly basis is no small feat. In the past year, we've created a veritable buffet of top-notch (if I do say so myself) venture capital writing.
You can find all of the previous posts here on the Revaia Voice Medium. Feel free to follow me there too! In total, I will have published 40 articles! Some of my favorites (not completely biased because I took readership stats into account!):
Beyond the newsletter, we:
Hosted a “Portfolio Day” offsite in Chamonix with LPs, Founders and tons of great programming
Attended meetings and tech events in NYC, London and Munich (and Paris, duh…)
And perhaps most importantly, put together a forthcoming industry report and podcast
Inflection Point: Path to IPO
You know by now that podcasting has a special place in my heart. Which is why when we ventured to generate an industry-defining, data-driven report on crossover investing, I proposed we turn my qualitative research into an audio spectacle (aka podcast). To my delight, the team was open to it and trusted me to pull it all together!
I had the pleasure of interviewing some incredibly impressive and thoughtful people who gave us their insights into the world of IPOs. If this interests you at all, I recommend you listen wherever you get your podcasts (or click here).
The first 6 episodes are 1:1 interviews with founders from Aircall, Grover, PlanRadar, Remote, Malt, and Coralogix.
The Bonus Episode stitches together clips from top-tier investors and bankers at firms like Sycamore Asset Management, BPI France, Euronext, Verlinvest & Natixis.
I'm super proud of the work we've put out as a team. The written report will bring together even more research and I highly recommend you follow along to download it when it's publicly available!
Adieu but not Goodbye
It's been a privilege to work with such a great group. I got my first taste of life inside a VC and met some incredible people along the way. But if there's one thing I've definitely taken away: the ecosystem is smaller than you think. So while this may be a goodbye for now, it's also a see you later (literally, at almost any event in Europe!). Thanks to Alice, Elina & Morgan for your confidence in me, to Sandra, my communications partner in crime, to Hadrien, JD & Salomé, Anaïs, Bettina and all those who have joined since I arrived (+the interns, never forget the interns!).
