Open Scout - 12

Hey everyone 👋! This is the . Every week, we bring you the latest updates on the startup scene, including 2 cherry picked early-stage startups, and valuable insights and lessons from experienced founders and investors.

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Startups this week:

Startup name: Dropdeck

Geography: UK

Description: Dropdeck makes it easy for non-designers to quickly create beautiful presentations and visual content. Instead of presenting you with an empty slide, a blank canvas, and a wide range of tools to add text, bullets, and images, you can simply start typing. Dropdeck will automatically design your slides, suggest content, and enable you to concentrate on creating your message without worrying about its appearance.

Founder(s) background: VP of Engineering, Chief Product Officer @ Lucidworks

Backed by (public source): NA

Startup name: Popsink

Geography: France

Description: Popsink makes it easy for any data user to build real-time data services using only SQL, enabling organizations to create production-grade data products in minutes. With Popsink, you can turn any ETL or ELT process into a data service, including real-time and user-facing analytics to customer activation, and hyper-automation of operations.

• The data analytics market is growing at a compound annual rate of nearly 30%.A quote from Gartner, Inc:By 2026, 65% of B2B sales organizations will transition from intuition-based to data-driven decision making, using technology that unites workflow, data, and analytics.

Founder(s) background: Transformation Manager @ Amazon, Senior Engineering Manager (Data & Analytics) @ SIXT, Founder @ Polhy

Backed by (public source): Raised €880k pre-seed—Seedcamp, XAngelsjhy, Kima Ventures

Gigs: BDR, AE, SDR, CSM, DevSecOps

Weekly round-up:

1. Tech Nation, the UK startup organisation that has helped bring thousands of tech workers to the UK, has announced that it will cease operations in March 2023 after the UK government withdrew key funding.Since 2011, Tech Nation has worked with nearly a third of the country's 122 unicorns and ran the UK's global tech talent visa. Over 95% of startups on Tech Nation's accelerator programs have gone on to scale, collectively raising over £28bn in venture capital and capital markets.Notable alumni include Monzo, Revolut, Depop, Bloom & Wild, Zilch, Just Eat, Darktrace, Marshmallow, Ocado, Skyscanner, Peak AI and Deliveroo, to name a few.

2. Everyone from big tech companies to VC to casual investors want to get in on the ChatGPT hype. Anthropic, a San Francisco-based AI startup and rival to ChatGPT, is close to raising approximately $300mn in new funding. This puts the company's valuation at approximately $5bn. Character AI, on the other hand, is seeking $250mn in fresh funding.

3. Stripe considers going public—Stripe has set a 12-month timeline for itself to go public, either through a direct listing or by pursuing a transaction on the private market. Additionally, Stripe has approached investors about raising more capital—at least $2bn—at a valuation of $55bn to $60bn (Thrive Capital has committed $1bn). The company's last funding round was in March 2021, when it raised $600mn at a $95bn valuation.In 2022, according to The Information, Stripe’s gross revenues totaled $14.2bn.

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Until next time,Kenneth