European venture capital firm Backed VC has successfully closed its third fund, Backed 3, reaching the $100 million cap. Concurrently, the firm celebrated its 100th investment milestone. Backed VC focuses on partnering with exceptional founders who are building transformational, generational businesses in frontier markets.
Finnish venture capital firm Vendep Capital has successfully raised €80 million for its fourth fund, aimed at backing early-stage SaaS founders in the Nordic and Baltic regions. The fund focuses on supporting innovative startups leveraging AI technologies, with strong backing from Nordic investors.
Mark Cuban encourages both current and aspiring job seekers to dedicate their free time to mastering AI skills. He suggests that instead of focusing on large corporations, AI-skilled workers should promote their talents to small businesses for better job prospects.
In the early stages of innovation, many companies are labeled as "tech startups" because they operate on the cutting edge of technology. Over time, technologies mature, becoming standard infrastructure rather than unique advantages. Many founders and investors struggle with this shift, holding on to outdated models that lead to misaligned expectations around funding, business valuation, and growth potential.
Historically, things like having a website, processing payments, SMS integrations, and GPS tracking were once complex technical feats that defined tech edges, but now have become baseline requirements or commoditized services. Uber’s early tech innovations exemplified what being a true tech startup meant, but newer ride-hailing services built on standard components are more tech-enabled operational businesses.
The fintech sector shows a similar divide between truly technical companies with proprietary data-driven models and firms whose tech is just a front-end on existing infrastructures.
The core insight: tech advantages have a half-life, transitioning from invention to commodity stages. Today’s frontier technologies like AI tools are following the same path—they will become standardized and lose their ability to differentiate.
Investors often fail by funding companies as if they are still in early-stage tech while these firms have moved into tech-enabled phases with fundamentally different risk and return profiles.
A simple test to distinguish the two is to assess how much of the business would work without proprietary tech and whether the core value can be replicated by SaaS solutions.
Being tech-enabled is not a disadvantage; many successful companies excel through operational excellence and sound economics, better suited for alternative financing rather than high-growth VC.
In summary, the difference between a tech startup and a tech-enabled company is crucial for founders and investors to recognize in order to align capital, expectations, and strategy with reality.
LexDo.it, a digital platform based in Italy designed for launching and managing new businesses, has successfully secured €1.7 million in a pre-Series A funding round. This investment aims to support LexDo.it's goal of making business creation easier and more accessible through its innovative platform. The funding round attracted various investors committed to advancing the platform's development and expanding its services to assist entrepreneurs.
By Julio Martínez
Rapid growth in startups often masks vulnerabilities beneath soaring metrics like MRR and expansion. As scaling introduces complexity—harder cash flow management, reactive hiring, and riskier investments—finance leaders play a critical role in establishing clarity, control, and consistency. Key to survival is treating financial discipline as a growth enabler rather than a constraint.
Financial visibility is foundational: startups must consolidate scattered data, manage cash flow vigilantly, and develop rolling forecasts to prepare for multiple scenarios. Understanding true growth drivers demands breaking down performance by segments and collaborating closely across sales, marketing, and product teams.
Sustainable success relies on customer retention, monitored through visible health metrics that prompt proactive interventions. Strategic investments require alignment of spending with measurable business outcomes, reinforced by continual reviews to ensure every dollar contributes effectively.
Talent data serves as a powerful predictive tool by linking hiring and performance insights, while aligning incentives with company goals fosters accountability and synchronized growth. Financial transformation can occur swiftly, typically within 60 days, by establishing clean data practices, consistent reporting, and embedding these processes into daily workflows.
Ultimately, startups that evolve their financial practices alongside their product growth achieve lasting strength, turning fragile foundations into resilient platforms for sustained success.
Julio Martínez is co-founder and CEO of Abacum, a financial planning and analysis software platform for mid-market firms. Under his leadership, Abacum has expanded globally, helping companies forecast revenue, plan headcount and cope with economic uncertainties.
Elon Musk recently discussed his vision for Optimus, a robot project he believes has the potential to eliminate poverty and the need for traditional work, ultimately supporting the implementation of a universal basic income system.
Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and astronaut who dropped out of high school, has been re-nominated by former President Trump to lead NASA.
Grasping key financial metrics is crucial for entrepreneurs to successfully expand their business and avoid failure.
Over five decades in the shoe industry, I have encountered numerous failures that shaped my entrepreneurial journey. Early on, I learned the importance of not investing time and resources in ventures unlikely to succeed, especially in sectors facing significant shifts, like UK footwear manufacturing moving to Asia due to cost efficiencies. I transitioned from manufacturing to importing, launching Browning Enterprises, which faced margin pressures as direct manufacturer-retailer relationships grew, making middlemen less competitive. This led to the founding of my own brand, Dune, in 1992.
I also experienced setbacks from opening unprofitable stores where optimistic sales projections were not met, teaching me to temper optimism with commercial realism. Diversification outside my expertise, such as launching a sustainable trainer brand during the pandemic, failed due to lack of uniqueness and inadequate marketing and sales efforts. Similarly, branching into children’s shoes highlighted the difficulty of entering different markets and the need for confident financial viability.
A critical insight was recognizing the importance of building a strong management team and knowing when to delegate control, especially as the business grew after acquiring Shoe Studio. I learned that failing fast on unprofitable projects and focusing on core strengths are essential to entrepreneurial success.