Tag: Belgium

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Omar Mohout states that the Belgian venture capital is doing well

Omar Mohout gave us an excellent summary of the capital investments in start-ups and scale-ups during the first quarter of 2016. He concludes that Belgium started the year pretty well. Good news, in times of a shrinking venture capital market in the US.

A few highlights:

  • Belgium is ranked fifth in Europe as far as the number of deals are concerned.
  • Belgium is ranked ninth in Europe for raised capital.
  • Belgium has the highest number of B2B companies in Europe (75%). The countries where B2B is more dominant than B2C are: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France and UK. In the Netherlands this is 38%. Ireland and Italy are the most B2C oriented with 29%.
  • The top 5 sectors of Europe are a replica of the Belgian startup ecosystem with one exception: manufacturing is ranked in the Belgian top 5 (in the European ranking this is security)
  • The average year of foundation for Belgian technology companies that raise at least $1M is 2011, the same as France, UK, Switzerland and Sweden.
  • Belgium is ranked 15th in Europe with an average amount raised of €3.2M. Sweden takes the first place, then Ireland and then Switzerland. The European average is €10M.

Some interesting European trends:

  • Some countries that did well last year appear to stagnate. Spain for example (€ 500M raised in 2015) has € 27M for Q1 (Source: Novobrief.com).
  • Europe performs better in Q1 2016 than in Q1 2015 (Source: tech.eu).
  • Sweden takes the first place in raised capital thanks to a single company: Spotify. This company raised money 2 x this quarter: $ 500M in January and $ 1B in March.
  • The UK leaving France and Germany far behind in raised capital. France is doing better. Germany is lagging behind in a number of deals.
  • Northern Europe is doing very well. All Scandinavian countries, except for Norway, are ranked in the top 10 of both deals as raised amounts.

Mohout also focuses on Belgium:

  • The total of the capital raised in Q1 is € 55M (of which € 51M consists of deals above $ 1M). 47% of the capital is for Flanders.
  • The € 1M club consists of 15 members: Unified Post, Real Impact Analytics, Rombit, Epigan, Smappee, Icometrix, EMASphere, Molecubes, MyMicroInvest, PieSync, Approplan, Pronoia, Twikey, Intix & Social Karma. Nine of these are from Flanders.
  • LRM, Internet Attitude and Pamica (Michel Akkermans) were the most active investors. With regard to crowdfunding, MyMicroInvest was the most active. They had, among others, a very successful campaign. In half of the deals business angels where involved.
  • Walloon Brabant is on the 1st place for raising capital, with Brussels and Antwerp respectively on place 2 and 3. Together, these 3 provinces account for 71% of all venture capital in Belgium.
  • For cities, the first place goes to Brussels, then Antwerp and La Hulpe. Ghent and Hasselt follow on 4 and 5. Together, these 5 cities accounted for 76% of all venture capital.