The Lowdown #13

👋🏾 Hi friends!

As a tech enthusiast, I’m always left incredibly disappointed when tech fails.

Well today, I was reminded that even the richest (and possibly one of the smartest) people in the world can build products that don’t work as you expect them to.

In this instance, I’m talking about the Tesla.

Only a year in and a pretty significant failure which means I’m going to be spending most of my day today at the service centre. Sigh.

But on a more uplifting note, this week on Nothing Ventured I spoke to Fatou Diagne and Stephanie Heller. They’re the founders of Bootstrap Europe, a fund providing growth debt to high growth scale ups.

Here’s what you can expect:

➡️ Fatou and Stephanie discussed their ‘origin’ story: From boarding school in France > travelling across the dessert in Africa > ultimately founding Bootstrap Europe

➡️ We discussed how startups can use venture debt alongside equity investment to scale

➡️ How, despite being massive underdogs, Bootstrap Europe was able to acquire SVBs European venture debt portfolio (at a discount no less!) and continue to support great ventures in Europe.

Check it out!

This week there have been a few things that have caught my eye in the tech and venture ecosystem and what we’ll be talking about this evening, namely:

🤑 Friend of the podcast, Hussein Kanji, joins the Midas List Europe
📉 Venture funding in Europe slashed in half this year
🤖 ChatGPT one year on

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Now let’s get into it.