Dawn Capital’s latest partner, Shamillah Bankiya, stopped by Equity this week to talk about the European landscape and the biggest misconceptions Americans have about the European startup world.
Dawn Capital is a marquee firm in the U.K. with more than $2 billion in AUM, 34 exits, and 11 unicorns. Names in the portfolio include AI companies Collibra and Dataiku. It focuses on early-stage companies, backing them from seed to Series C. It’s currently investing from its $620 million Fund V.
Bankiya, meanwhile, is one of the few Black women venture partners in Europe. Her investments at the firm include AI company Qogita and the marketplace Fonoa.
She spoke to us about growing up in a family of entrepreneurs and with a desire to learn new things.
“Venture lends itself to that extremely well,” she said. “So in some ways, yes, like for the last 20 years, I wanted to be an investor of some sort.”
She said the European landscape has been exciting for some time now, and indeed, some of the hottest startups, especially in AI and fintech, have come from the continent (think Lovable and Klarna, the latter of which just had a blockbuster IPO in New York). What’s changed, she said, is the interest American investors have taken in European countries, a shift she says the pandemic contributed to significantly.
She did admit, however, that the landscape has work to do when it comes to having European founders IPO in their countries. In fact, one of the biggest advantages of the European landscape is, at times, its biggest determinant.
“Europe is a bunch of large disaggregated exchanges,” she said. “It creates an imbalance that we probably need a solution around.”
The other part is regulation, something for which Europe is notoriously known.
Before the conversation wrapped up, we had to talk about the biggest European stereotype — that of the extended holiday, or the “Euro summer,” which touches on the idea that European investors take long breaks in the summer, unlike their American counterparts. Bankiya wants that stereotype to end and says everyone can rest assured, there is a lot of work being done.
“It’s a little noise around that, but again, we will see the outcome proof from themselves,” she said. “We’re going to see this interesting pattern of amazing European companies coming out and winning globally, as they’ve always won.”