Unicorns are the startups that reach a high valuation of $1 billion and above. Attaining this coveted status will position any company in a competitive business landscape. As per reports, there are over 400 unicorns in the world with most of them distributed across the United States and China. Following them, Europe has a slew of unicorns with the UK and Germany leading the race.
Potential European tech unicorns
In 2019, Europe was said to have 12% of the overall unicorns in the world and the same was 11% in the year 2018. Mostly, the unicorns are circulated across businesses such as internet software, fintech, and e-commerce. Now, CB Insights, a New York-based private market intelligence firm has listed the potential 50 unicorns in the world wherein seven new companies are fall under the soon-to-be-unicorns umbrella in Europe. Here, we at Silicon Canals showcase these potential European unicorns.
Alan (France)
Founder/s: Charles Gorintin, Jean-Charles Samuelian
Founded year: 2016
Funding: €125 million
Paris-based digital health insurance platform Alan offers hassle-free digital health insurance solutions to users with an excellent price-quality ratio health plan. It is the first new independent insurance licensed in France since 1986 by the French Prudential Supervisory Authority (ACPR). In 2018, this startup witnessed over 500% growth in its revenue and a drastic growth in its user base.
In April 2020, Alan secured €50 million Series C funding from Index Ventures and Temasek. Prior to that, in February 2019, the French digital health insurance platform raised €40 million Series B funding led by Index Ventures and partners of DST Global. In April 2018, the potential unicorn raised €23 million Series A funding. With the latest investment, Alan’s valuation stands at €125 million.
Personio (Germany)
Founder/s: Hanno Renner
Founded year: 2015
Funding: €119 million
Munich-based all-in-one HR software platform Personio works with the mission to make HR processes transparent and efficient so that HR can focus on the most valuable assets – the people in the company. Personio offers its digital solution that enables enterprises to store and manage all employee data and HR functions in single place covering attendance, leaves, approvals, payroll, employee documents, performance, reporting, and employee onboarding.
In January 2020, the German HR software platform secured nearly €67.5 million funding led by Accel and other investors to expand into additional markets across Europe. With this Series C funding, the companies valuation rose to $500 million.
Sennder (Germany)
Founder/s: David Nothacker, Julius Koehler, Nicolaus Schefenacker
Founded year: 2016
Funding: €64.6 million
Sennder is a logistics platform and marketplace that connects commercial shippers with smaller freight carriers. The digital trucking company digitalises the truck-loading-shipping ecosystem by providing mobile apps to drivers, fleet management tools to carrier managers and logistics management solutions to shippers.
In a recent move, Sennder merged with French freight tech company Everoad to build Europe’s largest digital road freight forwarding platform in an attempt to facilitate the relationship between carriers and shippers and connecting small trucking companies and enterprises. It aims to become a unicorn with a revenue of €1 billion by 2024.
Signavio (Germany)
Founder/s: Mathias Weske, Nicolas Peters, Torben Schreiter, Gero Decker, Willi Tscheschner
Founded year: 2009
Funding: €208 million
Based out of Berlin, Signavio is a leading provider of business transformation solutions. Signavio’s Business Transformation Suite enables its customers to effectively mine, model, monitor, manage and maintain their business processes. Its intelligent decision-making tools address digital transformation, operational excellence and customer-centricity, helping place process at the very heart of organizations.
Back in July last year, the SaaS startup raised $177 million Series C investment led by Apax Digital, the growth equity team of Apax Partners along with participation from DTCP. Prior to that, the company raised €15.5 million Series B investment from Summit Partners. With the latest investment, Signavio’s valuation reached $400 million.
Tessian (UK)
Founder/s: Edward Bishop, Thomas Adams, Tim Sadler
Founded year: 2013
Funding: €51.6 million
Tessian, a London-based cybersecurity company helps numerous enterprises across the world to keep security breaches at the bay. The startup uses machine learning to eradicate the security vulnerabilities surrounding enterprise emails such as misdirected emails and spear phishing. The platform analyses email data so that it can understand the context of communication.
Last year, the cybersecurity platform Tessian bagged €37 million in Series B funding in a round led by Sequoia along with Latitude and existing investors Accel and Balderton Capital. In 2018, the company secured a Series A funding of $2.7 million from Accel, LocalGlobe, Crane Venture Partners, etc. It is estimated to have a valuation of around $240 million after the Series B funding.
Thought Machine (UK)
Founder/s: Paul Taylor
Founded year: 2014
Funding: €101 million
Thought Machine, which is based out of London is a fintech company that builds cloud-native technology to revolutionise core banking. Well, its core banking solution is completely built in the cloud and is dubbed Vault. It lets established as well as challenger banks to compete in the clod-native era. The fintech operates with the mission to cure one of the primary problems faced by the banking industry, which is the reliance on dated IT infrastructure.
In March this year, Thought Machine raised $83 million (nearly €74.3 million) Series B funding in a round backed by its existing investors Lloyds Banking Group, IQ Capital, Backed and Playfair Capital along with IQ Capital. The fintech that aims to expand its presence in the global markets including Japan and Australia has a valuation of around $500 million.
Tink (Sweden)
Founder/s: Daniel Kjellén, Fredrik Hedberg
Founded year: 2012
Funding: €200 million
Swedish open banking platform Tink is a leader in its industry as it lets fintechs, banks, and startups to develop data-driven financial services. With its API, the company lets customers access aggregated financial data, enrich transactions, initiate payments, and build personal finance management tools. As it is a cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service company, it doesn’t really rely on people being present physically, thereby making it apt during the crisis of the pandemic.
Earlier this month, the Stockholm-based startup secured investment from PayPal to extend support for the latter’s payment system in Europe. Prior to this, the company secured €90 million funding led by HMI Capital, Dawn Capital, and Insight Partners along with Poste Italiane, a new investor and existing investors such as Opera Tech Ventures, ABN AMRO Ventures, and Heartcore Capital. With these investments, the valuation of Tink reaches around €415 million.
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