Take-aways from yesterday's pitch event

Last night I went to another Entrepreneurs Night - pitch event at werk1.

Here are my takeaways:

• European investors are funding European companies which have gone to the US to find funding.
• US valuations are significantly higher than Europeans ones
• Valuations cannot but be disproved - if someone says your company is not worth €8m or whatever ask them why not, how much is it worth and why.
• Better valuations are needed because by series E funding of €50m is not really enough for a company.
• No European angel has been outstandingly successful with a European startup. On average they are losing money.

And Axel's advice:

• 8x20 on forward looking revenues (I really must get the slides for his presentation)
• get revenue as soon as you can
• ideally grow by 1% per day
• have a disruptive business model

For the pitches they were judging on:

• Team
• Idea
• Growth Strategy
• the pitch itself.

At the end he reminded us that entrepreneurs are, at most, 0.1% of society.