2023 was a challenging year for many in private capital. While the market remains uncertain, sentiment is shifting. The State of European Tech 2023 points to green shoots of recovery while acknowledging this is a critical moment. Ray Zhou Co-Founder & Co-CEO, A昀케nity Our research reveals a similar story: 87% of European dealmak- ers foresee doing the same or more deals in 2024, but each deal requires 10 more hours of research than a year ago. It’s a time of cautious optimism. Securing access to capital and customers As in previous years, we asked founders to share their biggest commercial, operational, and 昀椀nancial chal- lenges, both looking back over the past 12 months and looking forward to the year ahead. Looking back over the past 12 months, the top three most frequently cited challenges highlighted by founders were: securing access to capital (38% of founder respondents), securing new customers (37%), and managing longer sales conversion cycles (30%). Other frequently-cited challenges over the past year included 昀椀nding product-market 昀椀t, building repeatable sales processes and managing cash burn. Looking to the year ahead, most founders cited a similar set of expected challenges, led by securing new customers (44% of founder respondents), securing access to capital (41%), and building repeatable sales processes (27%). By stage, founders of Seed stage companies are relatively more concerned with securing access to capital in the next year (+10% compared to overall) while Series A founders have burn rates on their mind (+16%). As is to be expected, founders at Series B stage and beyond aren’t worried so much about 昀椀nding product-market 昀椀t, but are most focused on minimising existing customer churn instead. Turning the page over to founder demographic, women founders are relatively less worried about managing burn rates, mostly as a function of a high concentration of women founders in Angel and pre-Seed funded companies where companies are still in the early stages of product development. | 94