The startup scene has seen a couple of interesting years, to say the least. The global market is still growing at breakneck speeds, and according to Crunchbase data, the total VC funding has grown from $335 billion in 2020 to $643 billion in 2021. That’s a staggering growth rate of 92% in a year. Although it’s great to see that the market is expanding and more innovative companies are getting funding and have a shot at making it, we also see some drawbacks in the super high-growth environment. First, valuations are getting a bit crazy in some spaces,making even the greediest investors abit skittish. Second, VC investments have always been hardly accessible to the retail investor, and the higher the valuations are — the more difficult it would be to bridge that gap. That’s why we consider a new approach for investors who want to have some VC exposure in their portfolio but not pay a monstrous premium. The solution might be simply to look towards the “emerging markets”, not necessarily Silicon Valley, since they can still find high-growth innovative companies at a more reasonable multiple. Kaloyan Stoycheff Startups to Watch in Southeast Europe 5
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