Weak Signals.

In the last 2 posts, we discussed how AI is changing the game, giving rise to a new kind of “hypergrowth” companies which are eclipsing everyone else.

In last week’s post, we have established that 𝘄𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿-𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗖 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 (both demand for – and supply of capital)

The rise of hypergrowth companies

According to PitchBook, “𝘈𝘐 𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘌𝘶𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘝𝘊 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 61.3% 𝘪𝘯 𝘘1 2026”.

Paul Graham recently reignited the debate around “founder mode vs manager mode.”

Sunday (March 8) was International Women's Day 2026 as per the United Nations. This is an opportunity to reflect on our own attitudes as an industry.

The big story of the moment is the re-rating of SaaS companies and the big Wall Street sell-off as AI threatens SaaS and lives its own uncertainty.

I attended the DeepTech Alliance Explore 2025 event, hosted by Deeptech Labs.

There are lots of reasons for investors to be distracted from looking at your deal:

AI now represents nearly half of the VC market, having grown 70% last year.

Despite a 10x increase in venture capital since 2003, Europe still lags the US 1:4 in unicorn creation.

We’ve had an entertaining tit-for-tat fight between Dealroom.co and PitchBook regarding European VC fund-raising activity.

We are officially in a market bubble.

In the quiet of summer, DealRoom published a list of Top 25 European investors.

For those who are not in the know, the EIC Scaling Club is an acceleration programme sponsored by the European Commission Innovation Council Fund (Europe’s largest deeptech fund).

Some of you took exceptions to law week’s comments on the AI bubble. In short, I am a luddite, who doesn’t get it.

Looking outside in, many outsiders don’t make so much difference between PE and VC funds. Hence the table below which has both.

When talking to VCs, they will often say that founders' talents trumps the technology prowess.

A chart attracted my attention the other day, showing how much of Europe's digital infrastructure is controlled by outsiders, the US in particular.

Back from the Tech Tour Growth Deeptech 2025 in Edinburgh.

“Buy-and-build” (B&B) has been part and parcels of PE strategies for a very long time.

One of the bugbears of European technology has traditionally been the lack of ambition.

Last week, we’ve had bubble-like news of the funding for SupersafeIntelligence (SSI, Ilya Sutskever) and Thinking Machines Lab (Mira Murat), both ex OpenAI AI, both pre-revenue and both even pre-product.

Looking outside in, many outsiders don’t make so much difference between PE and VC funds.

Europe doesn’t feed its own unicorns.