🗞 Venture Chronicles - January 2022
Overlooked #101
Hi, it’s Alexandre from Eurazeo (ex. Idinvest). I’m investing in seed & series A consumer and consumer enablers startups all over Europe. Overlooked is a weekly newsletter about venture capital and underrated consumer trends. Today, I’m sharing the most insightful tech news of January.
For 2022, I want to pick one piece of news per day and write a short comment about it. I want to talk about something that strikes me. Something that happened in the tech ecosystem. Here is the issue for January!
Please note that the date picked for each event is not always the exact event date but the one at which I decided to write about the event.
Saturday, Jan. 1st: I listened to a Colossus' podcast episode with Orlando Bravo who is the founder and managing partner at Thoma Bravo - a buyout private equity firm specialised in software businesses. - Colossus
Growth equity funds invest their funds in 9-12 months while buyout funds invest theirs in 12-24 months instead of 4-5 years.
Thoma Bravo acquires majority stakes in companies. It buys companies without changing the management team. It pushes them hard to improve both their growth and profitability by being heavily involved operationally.
"Every month we have an ops review at each of our company for four hours, at least, with a CEO and all of her or his direct reports. We are there looking to solve operating problems by being creative and inspiring existing management to think differently about operations. [...] We review the P&L of every functional area of that business. [...] We do that with all of the direct reports of the CEO together in the room, because they have to collaborate through this. Everybody owns their area, but it's tied to everything else. We're constantly looking at best-in-class metrics for each of these functional business units or geographical areas. We're also able to engage in a creative dialogue with the leader of those areas in terms of how improve it, so that then we can take more of those profits and reinvest them in growth."
It invest in businesses that are both EBIT positive and investing in growth. It's not incompatible. "When you're highly profitable and you're growing very fast, it means that management is making the right investment decisions in growth."
Thoma Bravo is not afraid to sell. "There is nothing wrong with putting up a good return, leaving the company in great hands, whether it's private equity or strategic, and having them make a lot of money out of it." You can even create a community of strategic buyers and private equity funds who will be extremely happy to buy several of your assets if you made them successful investors/buyers in the past.
Sunday, Jan. 2nd: Doctolib held a press conference to make an update on its business and to share its plans for the coming years. - Techcrunch
Doctolib has 300k medical workers as customers in France, Germany and Italy. 60m people have used Doctolib. In 2022, Doctolib plans to add 100k more medical workers to its customer base and to grow its team from 2.3k people to 3k.
Product-wise, Doctolib is building a suite of products for healthcare professionals leveraging its booking management SaaS. It launched a telemedicine platform, a back office tool to manage admin tasks (called Doctolib Médecin) used by 2k doctors and an instant messaging product (called Doctolib Team) to chat with healthcare specialists.
Monday, Jan. 3rd: Valentin Decker wrote a paper on Harvard's media business. - Valentin Decker (in 🇫🇷)
In 2020, Harvard generated $262m in sales from its publishing business which represents 28% of its total sales.
Harvard Business Review was launched in 1922. The idea is to create a business magazine to democratize the access to Harvard's education. The publication started to take off after WW2. HBR had 14k subscribers in 1945, 83k in 1965 and 250k in 1985.
In 2010, HBR decided to launch an online version of its magazine - something that it refused to do before. Today, HBR records 11m visits per month and has 350k subscribers worldwide.
HBR has also a strong presence on social media with 30m followers on social media platforms and 400k subscribers on Youtube.
Harvard is strong at building once and distributing via multiple formats ("make once, sell infinitely"). It leverages the content produced by its teachers to redistribute them via multiple formats (magazines, articles, books, videos, etc.).
Tuesday, Jan. 4th: I read Hayden Capital's Q4-18 quarterly letter to its shareholders on Carvana. - Hayden
"This is a company that intends to disrupt the $764B used car industry by using an e-commerce model. The used car industry is highly fragmented and its biggest player, CarMax, has only a market share of ~1.9%. Over 90% of the used car dealerships are still small mom & pop businesses. We think Carvana is well-positioned to consolidate this industry."
"With Carvana’s e-commerce model, there is now no need for each market to be served only by its local inventory (what the dealership can buy and display). When coupled with a nationwide logistics network, Carvana is able to deliver the nation’s inventory to any individual market."
"Carvana is able to keep all its 15,000+ inventory of cars in just four locations, versus CarMax which has ~350 cars per location. A pooled national inventory improves inventory turns as supply and demand can be more accurately matched nationwide."
"Everyone dislikes the current car buying process of haggling, visiting dealer after dealer, and wondering just how the salesperson is going to take advantage of you when your guard is down. Carvana’s vertically integrated e-commerce model offers a much better alternative, where you can shop from home and fill up paperwork any time of the day."
"Carvana is very conscious of every touch point with the customer, starting from viewing cars on their site where they have a unique 360-degree car viewing technology for both the exterior and interior of the car. They quote you a trade-in price within seconds for your current car. Financing and conditional approvals are all done online. The whole process takes 10 minutes. Delivery is done on one of their Carvana branded trailers, your traded-in car is picked up, and you even receive a goody bag of Carvana swag. You have 7 days to test drive the car and return it if you choose to (yes, Carvana will even come pick it up again). Painless and easy."
"Current Gross Profit per unit (GPU) is around $2,200, with half coming from financing and other fees. A typical brick and mortar retailer has a GPU of $3,000. But due to the cost advantages of an online model, we think Carvana is able to hit a GPU of $3,600 at scale. The increase in GPU will come from a combination of sourcing directly from consumers instead of through car auctions, improving time taken to turnaround inventory as scale is achieved, and increasing fees from financing and extended warranties, which have been under-monetized (low cross-selling rates)."
Wednesday, Jan. 5th: I read Avolta’s report on VC and M&A tech trends in France in 2021. - Avolta
In France, we had c.350 exits in 2021 for a total value of €10.2bn (+112% growth vs. 2020). The 5 largest exits were: OVH (€3.5bn IPO), Believe (€1.9bn IPO), Exclusive Networks (€1.8bn IPO), Colis Privé (€566m IPO) and TalentSoft (€450m acquisition from Cegid).
Thursday, Jan. 6th: Payfit raised a €254m series E led by General Atlantic at a €1.82bn valuation with the participation of existing investors Eurazeo, BPI and Accel. Payfit is an automated payroll and HR management software. It has 6k customers in France, UK, Spain and Germany. It will use its funding to recruit 400 talents, pursue European geographical expansion and continue to develop its product. - Payfit
Friday, Jan. 7th: Ankorstore raised a €250m series C led by Bond and Tiger Global at a €1.75bn valuation. New investors Eurazeo and Coatue as well as existing investors Index, Bain, GFC, Alven and Aglae also invested in the round. It's a B2B wholesale marketplace between independent brands and independent shops. It's active in 23 countries with 200k retailers and 15k brands brands in sectors such as homeware, beauty, fashion or products for kids. It has also 400 employees and offices in Paris, London, Berlin Amsterdam and Stockholm. In 2021, Ankorstore increased its sales by 950%. - Tech.eu, Techcrunch, Sifted
Saturday, Jan. 8th: Not Boring Capital raised a second fund at $30m. Packy McCormick has a newsletter called Not Boring about tech companies and trends with 90k subscribers. He leveraged it to launch a solo-GP fund called Not Boring Capital with a first $9.9m fund raised in Apr. 21 and deployed in 6 months in 79 companies. I find his investment strategy compelling: write about the space you want to invest into, don't care about ownership and be super collaborative, invest as follower anywhere from pre-seed to growth rounds, write about your portfolio companies to help them recruit & find employees. - Memo Fund II
Sunday, Jan. 9th: Brex raised a $300m funding round at a $12.3bn valuation (vs. $7.4bn nine months ago) led by Greenoaks and TCV. Brex started in 2017 as a spend management app with corporate cards for employees and is progressively becoming a financial operating system (bill pay, business cash management, instant payments, venture debt). The company is also moving upmarket with 60% of its revenues coming from mid-market companies. - Protocol
Monday, Jan. 10th: YC will now invest up to $500k into its startups. It will invest $125k for 7% of the company and add on top $375k on an uncapped convertible note that will be indexed on the terms of the round raised by the company post-YC. It’s a way to give founders more upfront cash to execute without having the pressure to raise capital too soon at unfavourable terms. - Protocol, Techcrunch, YC
Tuesday, Jan. 11th: French B2B neobank Qonto raised a €486m series D round led by Tiger and TCV at a €4.4bn valuation with the participation of new investors like KKR, Insight and Eurazeo as well as existing investors like Alven, DST, Valar or Tencent. Qonto has 220k customers in 4 European countries (France, Spain, Italy and Germany) and doubled its revenues in 2021 (which is super impressive at this scale). It will use the funding to double down on geographical expansion with the ambition to reach 1m customers in Europe by 2025. Qonto started with a 3P banking partner called Treezor but now has a banking licence and has moved all its customers on its core banking system. Beyond banking, Qonto has also products related to accounting and to spend management. It also partners with third parties like October for lending or Cashbee for savings. - Sifted, Techcrunch, Tech.eu
Wednesday, Jan. 12th: Backmarket raised a $510m series E at a $5.7bn valuation led by Sprints Capital with the participation of existing investors Eurazeo, Aglaé, General Atlantic and General Investment Management. It’s a marketplace for refurbished electronics. Backmarket has 6m customers and is present in 16 countries. It will use the funding to double the team and pursue its geographical expansion especially in the US. - Techcrunch
Thursday, Jan. 13th: Arive raised a $20m series A led by Balderton with the participation of Burda, GFC, La Famiglia and 468 Capital. It's a quick commerce player not focused on grocery but focused on premium goods (e.g. products from Apple, Lululemon, Van Moof, etc.). Arive is active in 4 German cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt), has AOV between €50 and €100, has 1k SKUs and has 1-4 items per order. - Techcrunch, Arive's Deck, Sifted
Friday, Jan. 14th: Flipdish raised a $100m series C led by Tencent and Tiger at a $1.25bn valuation. - Tech.eu, Flipdish
It builds solutions for the hospitality industry to manage marketing services and digital ordering with an anti-food delivery platform positioning.
It has features like: "online ordering for collection and delivery, self-service kiosks, customer loyalty programs, solutions for dark kitchens and digital marketing".
Flipship was started in 2015 in Ireland by two brothers and is now operating in 25 countries (inc. the US, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the UK).
Saturday, Jan. 15th: Vox wrote a paper on "the empty promise of instant delivery." - Vox
Customers are expecting all local shops to provide them with an Amazon-grade convenience and customer service. "We call it the Amazonification of business. Everyone is compared to Amazon in terms of waiting in line, the kinds of customer interactions and knowledge base. This perception is equalizing all kinds of businesses.”
"The implicit message of all this, for ordinary customers, is that we should have stayed home and ordered online. These spaces aren’t for us. We’re effectively trespassing in the company’s warehouse.”
Starbucks has permanently closed 44 of its 235 locations in Manhattan since the early 2020.
Retailers are transforming their shops to dedicate up to 1/3 of the space to fulfilling online orders.
Sunday, Jan. 16th: Josh Wolfe who is investor at Lux Capital did a great interview with the Institutional Investor. - Institutional Investor
Lux invests in "deep science" / "matter that matters" companies on topics like nuclear waste removal, space manufacturing, personalised medicine etc.
“You can see how almost every one of our companies has its basis in science fiction." - Josh Wolfe
"We always felt the need to be more tenacious, to have greater grit, to feel like we needed to outwork people, be more creative and more clever.” - Peter Hebert (also GP at Lux)
"I thought the next wave was going to be the physical, material sciences, breakthroughs in chemistry and physics and materials science that were coming out of universities that were not MIT and the venture cluster there in Cambridge, or Silicon Valley and Stanford." - Josh Wolfe
“He is very, very smart and very broad in his intelligence, which is a very powerful thing, because if you think about the Renaissance and then what a Renaissance man or woman used to stand for, it was people who could cross a lot of disciplines. And I think it makes him probably a better investor to be able to actually understand a broader part of the world, rather than a narrow little niche of mRNA vaccines.” - Bill Conway (Carlyle's cofounder and one of the first Lux's LP)
Lux invested into Kurion which played a massive role to clean the nuclear disaster in Fukushima in 2011 and which was acquired by Veolia in 2016 for $350m. " It happened to be financially rewarding to our investors, but this was an idea that we conceived here, started the company, recruited the people, took the risk. As we like to say, we believed before others understood. That is something that my kids are and will be proud of. Dad helped create a company that removed nuclear waste from a disaster.” - Josh Wolfe
Lux also contributed to kickstart Variant Bio which mission is "to develop lifesaving therapies by studying the genetics of diverse populations that are outliers for health-related traits". It recruited the core team, invested $1m in 2018, $5 in 2020 and in Nov. 21, the company raised a massive $105m series B from Softbank.
"I have a whole list of those kinds of things, and we go and talk to people and we throw it out there, and then somebody’s like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to go talk to this scientist, they have a breakthrough.’ And one day, some woman or man is going to be like, ‘This is what we’ve invented,’ and I hope that we’re their first check to back them." - Josh Wolfe
“I think we have confounded people in that we have actually delivered excellent investment returns in areas that are extraordinarily hard and generally not the most popular of the moment. It’s not social media. It’s not traditional enterprise, SaaS, and software, and yet we’ve been able to find and deliver multibillion-dollar outcomes in things that people would say are really hard, complex, and generally not easy — and so they’ve avoided it." - Peter Hebert (also GP at Lux)
"They [scientists that Josh admires and funds] don’t care what the ten-year rate is; they don’t even know who the head of the Fed is. I mean, they couldn’t tell you what the S&P level is, they couldn’t tell you the price of gold. They’re focused on their own chip on their shoulder and their ambition to go produce some matter that matters." - Josh Wolfe
Monday, Jan. 17th: Freshippo is rumoured to be in talks to raise funding at a valuation that could reach $10bn. Freshippo is Alibaba's grocery arm that has been an independent business since the end of 2021. Alibaba will remain the majority shareholder of the business but it wants to open Freshippo's shareholding to third parties. - Pandadaily
Tuesday, Jan. 18th: I watched a video from The Economist on the true costs of ageing. - The Economist
In 1950, 1/12 people in high income countries were over 65 years old. In 2050, it will be 1/4.
The cost to provide pensions to old people will soon be unsustainable. The three-step life model in which you educate, you work and then you retire is fundamentally broken. We need a bigger rethink to solve the ageing problem than just delaying the retirement age or increasing the public budget dedicated to elderly care.
When most people retire, they still have one or two decades of healthy lives. It's key to make the most of these decades to let them bring value to the society and to have a more flexible model (vs. black and white model in which either you work or you are retired).
In the Netherlands, Buurtzorg has an innovative model to manage care for the elderly. Nurses are working in small pods, are given a strong autonomy and help older people to age at home. This model provides 30% cost and 50% time savings compared to traditional Dutch methods. Buurtzorg employs 10k nurses and has a presence in 30 countries.
Wednesday, Jan. 19th: I read a blogpost from Johan Brenner (GP at Creandum) on the key common personality traits of unicorn founders. He highlights 5 key traits: (i) a real passion for what they’re building, (ii) great people skills, (iii) great at fundraising, (iv) helicopter ability (think big but also able to tackle small details) and (v) clairvoyance on the things they don’t know. - Creandum
Thursday, Jan. 20th: Berlin-based Cherry raised a €300m pan-European seed fund. Cherry has funded 9 unicorns including Flink, SellerX, Infarm, Forto, Auto1, Flaschenpost, Cazoo and Xometry. It invests in pre-seed and seed with tickets between €1m and €3m. It has a generalist focus and can invest in themes like spacetech, climatetech, agritech, fintech, e-commerce, software and crypto. Cherry is led by partners who were former operators at both Zalando and Spotify. - Sifted, Tech.eu
Friday, Jan. 21st: French insuretech specialised in home insurance Luko acquired Coya in an all-shares deal. For Luko, it's a great way to expand into Germany, to become a licensed insurer and to expand in other product lines as Coya was also selling bike and health insurance for pets. Coya was founded in 2016 in Berlin, has 80k customers in Germany and grew by 300% in 2021. In 2022, I believe that we will see many European startups acquire smaller peers to fuel their growth. - Tech.eu
Saturday, Jan. 22nd: I listened to an Invest Like the Best's podcast episode with Alex Rampell who is general partner at a16z. - Invest Like the Best
To make money as an investor, on the public market, you need to not follow the consensus and you need to be right. In venture, you need to be with the consensus and right. In venture, you need to either have consensus when you invest or 12-18 months after your investment to be able to attract the investors who will lead the successive rounds into the company.
Moreover, in the public market, there is no concept of winning a deal compared to venture capital in which you have to be top of mind to be in a funding process (included in the 5 top funds the company will talk to) and to be even more compelling to win it.
Searching for operating system as companies.
Retention rate is 100%. You login onto the tool every day.
It's the system of truth (it keeps tracking everything at the company and even consumer) and it's has very high usage rate (looking at DAUs and WAUs). It runs the business, it's the system of truth.
It's valuable because you can add many things on top of it: it's easy and you've free distribution.
Toast is an operating system for restaurants. They don't do only payment processing but other things: payroll, tablets in kitchen, etc. It's a custom made SaaS that helps you run the business.
These OS retain customers very well and they can easily add additional products.
If you're well placed, you control distribution and which has outstanding value.
You want to be the pipe that controls the back end and front end of the business.
OS vertical focused on an industry (restaurants) vs. OS horizontal focused on a function (payments).
An operating system is system of records recording all customers' interactions and is a product used daily.
What is the sequencing to go to market to become as an operating system? You need some macro tailwinds to make your operating system appealing (e.g. shift from on-premise to cloud or shift from web to mobile). You start with a differentiated feature and you leverage market tailwinds. At some point, to avoid becoming a commodity, you need to quickly add additional features to become the all-in-one SaaS. You start with a Trojan horse / a wedge and you expand quickly from there with additional features to lock customers over the long run.
Sunday, Jan. 23rd: I read's the 10th Man's investment thesis on Carvana. - The 10th Man
Carvana is the 2nd largest used-vehicle retailer with an e-commerce only model in which vehicles are delivered directly to end consumers with a 7-day money back guarantee and a 100-day warranty. This model removes many friction points associated with traditional used car purchase: (i) the trip to the car dealership and (ii) the pricing negotiation.
Carvana counter positions incumbents' operating model. "By starting from scratch, CVNA has counter-positioned incumbents by building a hub-and-spoke distribution model. Most competitors are handcuffed by existing retail infrastructure and have to take a more costly point-to-point approach to e-commerce distribution. Their unique model, which requires scale, reduces the cost associated with purchasing, reconditioning, selling, and distributing used-vehicles. CVNA splits those cost savings with consumers, which should lead to both better prices for customers and ultimately better margins than traditional retailers."
Carvana has 3 revenue segments: retail (selling vehicles to retail customers), wholesale (selling vehicles to wholesale auctions) and other (ancillary products such as financing, service contracts, guaranteed asset protection coverage). Other contributes to 50% of Carvana's gross profits.
Before Carvana, 100% of used car sales were done in person and there was huge skepticism about consumers' willingness to purchase cars completely online. Carvana removed this friction via 5 key actions: (i) improved online inventory presentation with 360 degree interactive view of the vehicle (inside/outside), (ii) high quality control (harsh selection on the vehicles that can be listed on the platform, 150-point inspection, $1-1.5k in labour & part reconditioning, 100-day warranty), (iii) 7-day return policy to let buyers test the vehicle, (iv) 2 minutes to get a quote on the price of a vehicle on Carvana, (v) no salesperson & negotiation.
Ecommerce penetration for used vehicle is at 1-2% in 2020 compared to 20% on total retail and 50% on certain categories like books, apparels and electronics.
Monday, Jan. 24th: Mayd raised a €30m series A led by Insight to apply the quick commerce logistics model to products sold in pharmacies. Existing investors Target, 468 Capital and Earlybird are also participating. Mayd delivers 2k prescription-free medicines and other pharmacy products in 30 minutes from 8am to midnight. It's present in 6 German cities (Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne and Dusseldorf). It has 100 employees and 350 riders. Next month, Germany will adopt a new e-prescription system that will enable Mayd to also deliver prescription drugs. Mayd will use the funding to open new cities in Germany and to expand into new geographies. - Techcrunch
Tuesday, Jan. 25th: Resilience raised a €40m series A led by Cathay. Existing investor Singular is participating. New investors like Picus, Seaya, MACSF, Vivalto Ventures and Fondation Santé Service are also participating. Resilience's mission is to improve the treatment journey for patients who are diagnosed with cancer with products for both patients and the healthcare system. For patients, it's a companion app to measure and follow your cancer's treatment. For hospitals, it's a SaaS for practicians to personalise their treatments. In 2021, Resilience also acquired Betterise which is a digital therapeutics solution to collect and analyse data for patients in oncology and cardiology. - Techcrunch
Wednesday, Jan. 26th: I listened to a Colossus' podcast episode on Peloton. - Colossus I, Colossus II
It combines 5 complementary activities: (i) a retail network to sell Peloton's smart bikes (inc. fitness studios), (ii) a hardware manufacturer to manufacture smart bikes and treadmills, (iii) a content subscription business, (iv) a media business (managing instructors, music licensing, etc.) and (v) a fashion brand.
Peloton is a $4bn business (3/4 hardware, 1/4 subscription). It has 2.5m subscriptions and 6m members. It has only 51 instructors.
Its retail network is composed of 100 stores in the US to let people try the product before buying it. Initially, these stores were even fitness studios organising fitness classes.
Peloton sells bikes at $1.5k and makes a 40% gross margin ($600). Pre-pandemic, it cost them $600-700 to acquire a customers (vs. $200-300 during the pandemic) meaning that they piloted the business to payback the customer at its first purchase. On top of hardware sales, you've a $500 annual subscription with a 70% gross margin) and a 90% annual retention. If you take a more conservative assumption on the retention and you consider that customers will use your service for 5y, it means that you have an instant payback period on your acquisition costs and a 4-5x LTV to CAC ratio - which is extremely healthy for a consumer business.
Facing an increase pressure on its supply chain, Peloton decided to acquirer a hardware manufacturer for $400m. It decreased its gross margin on hardware to 20%. At the same time, competition in the smart bike market has grown meaningfully putting pressure on CAC which are now above $1k. As a result, unit economics have become way more tricky - requiring 2 years to payback acquisition costs.
Thursday, Jan. 27th: Modern e-bikes manufacturer Cowboy raised a $80m series C with Exor, HCVC and Siam Capital. Cowboy is on track to have 100k riders by 2023. Its bikes cost around €2.5k and have a companion mobile app. The funding will be used to (i) iterate on its bikes to lower their prices and increase their technology, (ii) to add more services and features in its app (e.g. insurance, care offering to repair your bike, etc.) and (iii) to expand the team (esp. in the US in which the company has expanded in 2021). - Techcrunch, The Verge
Friday, Jan. 28th: Playfair wrote a post about its $3.4m seed investment in Sep. 2021 into Material Evolution which is a sustainable cement manufacturer (85% less C02 emissions but also stronger and more durable). - Playfair
In 2026, the cement industry will be worth $463bn and cement is one of the most common material in construction. 4bn tonnes are produced annually and cement accounts for 8% of global C02 emissions.
"Material Evolution creates sustainable alternatives to Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), using geopolymer technology. It has developed a product that is made from 95% industrial waste which is stronger, more durable, cheaper and reduces the carbon consumption of concrete by 85%, when compared to equivalent OPC products."
Saturday, Jan. 29th: Brighteye published its annual funding report on the education sector. - Brighteye
In 2021, edtech startups raised $20.1bn from 972 transactions (vs. $15bn from 1,177 transactions in 2020).
23 new edtech unicorns were minted in 2023 (vs. 64 edtech unicorns in total) in subsectors like corporate learning (BetterUp/Go1), tutoring (GoStudent/Vedantu) and upskilling (Masterclass/Degreed). Duolingo and Udemy both went public in 2021.
Europe accounted for 31% of the amount raised by global edtech startups (vs. 21% in 2019). The average deal size in Europe has also increased from $2.9m in 2020 to $8.4m in 2021.
Brighteye has also made 5 predictions for 2022: (i) rise of membership organisation for professionals roles and/or industries, (ii) new early stage talent marketplaces, (iii) applications of voice technology in the education sector, (iv) increasing adoption of robotics, (v) leveraging web3 to make education more accessible and engaging.
Sunday, Jan. 30th: Travel Tech Essentialist wrote a great post on the trends to follow in 2022 in the travel tech sector. - Travel Tech Essentialist
"Travel and Fintech are gradually blurring the lines. Expect travel retailers to keep leveraging contextual shopping data to build financial products embedded into the consumer journey. Fintech Unicorns meanwhile will be busy partnering with travel players to increase their customer base stickiness and tap into new audiences with high purchasing power."
"The trend towards Super Apps among travel brands will remain mainly the playground for Asian companies. However, expect Google to keep enriching Google Map features and add payment options for other mobility services, paving the way to become the ultimate Super App in the West."
"Expect some other travel retailers to dip their toes into Subscription waters this year, but the jury is still out if subscriptions can become a significant revenue driver in the travel industry, considering the infrequent nature of the product."
Monday, Jan. 31st: I read Alan's 2021 letter to shareholders in which we learn that the company reached €161m in ARR, 255k members (85% growth) and an annual churn below 6%. - Alan
Alan is trying to aggregate demand (members & employers) starting with a mandatory health insurance to build trust in the brand and expanding into an healthcare one-stop-shop to add or upsell other products/services (e.g. mental health). In short, Alan is building an health and well-being superapp for Europe.
Alan is making progress in its international expansion. It has 10k members in Belgium and 2k members in Spain.
Alan leveraged Jour's acquisition to launch Alan Mind which is a B2C and B2B mental health offering which has already attracted 5k members in France. Alan has also launched other satellite apps such as Alan Baby (for parents), Alan Clinic (virtual clinic's offer) and Alan Clear (to be launch, eye care offering).
Thanks to Julia for the feedback! 🦒 Thanks for reading! See you next week for another issue! 👋