At Lightspeed, we know many of the best ideas and most innovative business models come from companies located outside of the US.
A few weeks ago, we hosted our annual marquee event, Leading Lights, in London. We’ve been holding this event for many years in the U.S., and this was the first time we held it overseas. The room was filled with 200+ entrepreneurs from the EU and the energy in the room was palpable.
Earlier that day, we announced our new office in London and new Partners in Paris and Berlin. The startup community in Europe is vibrant and growing — in fact, more than 1 million jobs have been created by venture backed companies in Europe since 2000. We believe many of the next generation of era-defining companies will be born outside the US, and our commitment to building a global firm came from this deeply rooted belief that innovation would be global.
As a result of our early commitment to be global, more than half of Lightspeed’s 70 investors are now located outside the US, across 12 offices in 6 countries. And 45% of our approximately 900 portfolio companies are international. That generates a whole lot of learning that we look to bring to founders we partner with.
The “Leading Lights” event series originated with our desire to celebrate Founders and offer a close up and personal look at the ups and downs of their company-building experience. It’s especially important to recognize innovative entrepreneurs in the context of the many challenges facing Founders today, from a global pandemic to economic downcycles.
We’re grateful to our amazing lineup of speakers for their time and especially for their candor. Read below for a few of the insights and learnings they shared with the Lightspeed Founder community:
We heard from two gaming visionaries about the status and future of gaming — Lior Shiff, CEO & Co-founder of Tripledot Studios — a London-based mobile games company which was recently valued at $1.4B — and Carolin Krenzer, CEO & Co-founder of Trailmix, the London-based makers of the hit game Love & Pies.
Euan Blair, CEO and Founder of Multiverse, took the stage with Mercedes Bent to discuss the future of work and education.
Henry Ward, CEO and Co-Founder of Carta sat down with Will Kohler to discuss the company’s past, present and future.
Arif Janmohamed chatted about the incredible story — including the highs and lows — of building TripActions, with its CEO and Co-Founder Ariel Cohen.
Grafana Labs’ CEO and Co-Founder Raj Dutt sat down with Gaurav Gupta to talk community, and share some advice for Founders/CEOs.
And Will Kohler and Alexi Robichaux, CEO and Co-founder of BetterUp, talked about what’s happening in the mental health and well-being space, as well as how to scale as both a leader and company.
Lightspeed’s commitment to building a global firm began 15+ years ago from a deeply rooted belief that innovation would be global, that insanely talented and ambitious founders would build everywhere, and that the pace of technology adoption would accelerate in all large markets — all things that we know to be true today.
A few photos from Leading Lights in London 2022 follow below. For info and an invite to future Lightspeed events, please reach out to events@lsvp.com.
About Lightspeed: Lightspeed Venture Partners is a multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise, Consumer, Health, and Fintech sectors. Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped build more than 500 companies globally including Affirm, Carta, Cato Networks, Epic Games, Faire, Forty Seven, FTX, Guardant Health, Mulesoft, Netskope, Nutanix, Rubrik, Sharechat, Snap, TripActions, Udaan, Ultima Genomics and more. Lightspeed and its global team currently manage $18B across the Lightspeed platform, with investment professionals and advisors in the U.S., China, Europe, India, Israel, and Southeast Asia. www.lsvp.com
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