Between Airbnb’s IPO and Omio’s new $100 million funding, August was full of surprises. Let’s take a look at a fast recap on everything that happened in the startup and tech universe during the last month of summer!
Airbnb’s IPO is finally real! The company submitted a draft registration statement for IPO, according to a press release. The vacation unicorn was valued at $31 billion in 2017, but only at $18 billion this year and still plans to go public by the end of the year, in spite of its 40 percent decrease in valuation in three years.
Meanwhile, giant Just Eat Takeaway.com recorded losses of 158 million euros in the first six months of the year, largely attributed to integration costs of its merger, as well as the acquisition of Grubhub. The company’s Ebitda grew 133%, to 177 million euros in the first semester with a 44.2% increase in revenue in comparable terms, to 1,031 million euros.
☠️No market need, running out of cash, user-unfriendly products, competition, and disharmony on teams are among the most common reasons why startups fail. CB Insights broke down the top 20 reasons for startup failure by analyzing 101 startup failure post-mortems.
In other news, Berlin-based travel startup Omio has raised a new $100m funding round. It has also maintained its unicorn status, despite seeing revenues drop to almost zero in March. Travel restrictions, border closures, and safety concerns are here to stay for the next months and business is not exactly rocketing forwards. So how did Omio convinced new investors?
Speaking of funding, Crowdcube launched a new secondary product: the Direct Community Offer (DCO), which gives later-stage businesses a way of offering early investors a return on their investment while simultaneously giving new investors a chance. The product represents an exciting next step in the evolution of investment crowdfunding.
Startup Inside Stories Podcast
This month, we had very interesting guests and topics on Itnig’s weekly podcast.
- 151: Creating The Travel Sector with eDreams and Mauricio Prieto
Bernat interviews Mauricio Prieto, co-founder of eDreams ✈️ to explore the history of one of the largest and most successful travel agencies in Europe: the difficulties of starting, the experiences of the first online purchases, the evolution of the travel sector, and the crises that they managed to overcome when other players couldn’t.
- 152: The Journey of Juan Rodríguez (Part l)
Bernat interviewed Juan Rodríguez, CEO of Camaloon, one of the key figures within the Itnig ecosystem, both for his high level of knowledge and experience in the business and entrepreneurship world and for being one of the investors at the Itnig Fund.
- 153: The Journey of Juan Rodríguez (Part ll)
In this second part of the episode, Juan talks about his experience with his second unicorn: OtterBox. Juan explains how he transformed everything they had been building and drove the business to a greater growth through an aggressive distribution strategy. His most recent adventure is taking over the e-commerce world with Camaloon.
- 154: Digital Marketing with Sergi Sans
Sergi Sans talks about his career in the world of Digital Marketing and SEO. In this episode, Sergi highlights the evolution of SEO, keys to good SEO, and at a general level, the knowledge necessary to sell online.
- 155: The Shareholders’ Agreement with Josep Navajo
Bernat Farrero and Jordi Romero talk with Josep Navajo about one of the most important documents when developing a business: the Shareholders’ Agreement. Josep, being a lawyer and the CEO of Delvy, shares all his knowledge about what establishes, regulates, and orders this pact, as well as the usefulness of clauses.
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Startup News & Updates of the Month
Airbnb’s IPO wasn’t the only big announcement this month, lots of acquisitions, funding, initiatives and cool reports and insights are worth mentioning:
Jean-Eric Paquet, the EU’s urbane director-general for research and innovation, has a €10bn war chest to turn the European Innovation Council into “the biggest deeptech equity fund in Europe.” Could it be the next “unicorn factory”?
Ironhack and Landing.Jobs scholarship program has been launched to help people shift into a career in tech and fight unemployment with a €300,000 scholarship fund. Also, Ironhack has recently launched Ironhack Remote, which allows any student to join their tech bootcamps regardless of their nationality or location.
A new ‘Facebook Accelerator: Commerce’ welcomes startups from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa focused on e-commerce solutions that help “bridge the gap between online and in-store experiences.” The program will adopt an entirely virtual format, providing startups with training, mentorship, and support.
The Latin American fintech industry is booming, and women have been an integral part of the region’s success stepping up as fintech leaders, with five times as many female-founded fintechs as the global average.
🚴♂️ Glovo, Deliveroo, and Delivery Hero share millions of users have raised funding rounds worth billions and reached unicorn status. Here’s a short table to see them side-by-side.
Jeff, Declarando, and GrowPro Experience will be part of the Scale-Up phase of the Lanzadera program next September. This Scale-Up phase expands Lanzadera’s scope of action by targeting those startups that have grown a lot and have a proven and profitable business model. Through the program, the accelerator will support them in addressing new goals and new markets.
In other news, Delivery Hero acquired InstaShop, an online grocery marketplace valued at $360 million. The initial purchase price was about $270 million. Based in Dubai, the grocery platform launched five years ago and has hit up to 330 percent year-on-year growth. With Delivery Hero’s support, the plan is to continue expanding into new markets.
Pagantis has been acquired by Afterpay for at least €50 million! Pagantis’ existing technology will be re-configured to provide the Afterpay core product, and the business will be rebranded to Clearpay.
Valencia-based Jeff opens its first fitness center in Valencia and begins its expansion. The new business line adds to its already consolidated laundry and dry cleaning franchise that has already expanded in more than 30 countries. You can check out our past episode with Eloi Gomez, CEO, and founder.
New Funding for Startups
💸Europe recorded $17 billion in funding in the first half of 2020, down 20 percent from 2019. However, the continent experienced an increase in funding dollars to seed, angel, and early-stage rounds. You can check Crunchbase’s “The State Of Global Venture Funding During COVID-19” report.
- Croatia – Infobip secures $200 million+ at unicorn valuation in its first round of funding
- London/Singapore – Thought Machine, cloud-native core banking tech firm announces $125m Series B funding round
- Monte Carlo – IQONIQ secures €100 million to expand its sports fan engagement platform worldwide
- London – ComplyAdvantage nabs $50M for an AI platform and database to detect and stop financial crime
- Berlin – everphone raises €34 million to expand internationally
- Switzerland – Advertima raises $17 million for AI that tracks in-store shopping behaviors
- Estonia – RangeForce raises $16 million Series A
- Amsterdam – Siilo raises €9.5 million to help healthcare professionals collaborate across Europe
- Barcelona: Shopery closes a €1,25M round
- Bonus: TransferWise hits $5bn valuation
- Paris – DNA Script expands Series B to €75.5 million to launch the world’s first DNA printer
- UK – Thought Machine raises another $42 million, closes Series B round at $125 million
- Munich – 3D printing DyeMansion raises $14 million Series B
- Madrid – Bnext raises €11million
- Poland – Infermedica scores $10M Series A
- Portugal – PICadvanced raises €4 million from Verizon
- Madrid – GeoDB smashes Seedrs campaign by 150% with €1.6 million aiming to reward users for their big data
- Bonus – APEX Ventures launches €50 million fund for early-stage digital health startups
- Bonus: July closed the first half of the year with an accumulated investment of € 578M in Spanish startups.
- Madrid – Professor CBD closes a round of € 250,000 aimed at consolidating its position in Spain and opening international markets.
- Finland – Varjo seals $54 million Series C
- Berlin – La Famiglia raised a €50m fund to invest in early-stage B2B startups
- London – Habito completes £35M Series C
- Copenhagen – health tech Practio lands €8.2 million
- Berlin – Klima takes $5.8M Seed
- London – Mashroom raises £4 million to expand end-to-end rental platform
- Scottland – fintech Nude raises €3.9 million
- BONUS: VC firm Axon Partners Group has launched its sixth fund to invest in scale-ups, the first ‘crossover fund’ in Spain.
- Norway – SaaS company Visma has reached a $12.2 billion valuation with new funding.
- London – Form3 closes $33 million Series C
- Denmark – Cobalt raises $29 million Series B
- Helsinki – Quuppa raises €20 million for its real-time Bluetooth location tracking
- Amsterdam – Castor raises €10.13M in Series A to support COVID-19 research
- Switzerland – Bloom’s new testing system after €10 million Series B
- Hamburg – Claimsforce secures €7 million
- Helsinki – iFarm raises $4 million to expand vertical farming platform
- Dublin – Offr raises €3 million led by Barclays
- Madrid – Movo gets€13 million from DeliveryHero
- Barcelona – ProntoPiso raises €1,6 million
- Paris – Dataiku closes €84.5 million Series D to boost its enterprise AI solutions
- Helsinki – Supermetrics closes €40 million funding
- Munich – The Mobility House gets €15 million to spur adoption of electric vehicles
- Reykjavík – GRID raises €10.1 million to make spreadsheets more beautiful, dynamic, and interactive
- Stockholm – Challengermode nabs €10.1 million
- Belgium – Ampacimon raises €4 million for its power grid monitoring tech
- Berlin – Seed-stage startup Amie gets €1.2 million from Creandum – the youngest founder Creandum has backed to-date.
- European fintechs have raised over $3bn since lockdown began, but where’s that money gone?
Random Tech Stuff
Besides Airbnb’s IPO, the tech scene had a lot happening!
- SpaceX and NASA successfully return Crew Dragon spacecraft to Earth with astronauts on board.
- TikTok’s new CEO says company will reveal how its algorithms work.
- NASA launched its new perseverance rover to Mars.
- Twitter reveals exactly how bitcoin scammers hacked Elon Musk’s, Kim Kardashian’s accounts.
- Quantum physicists say time travelers don’t have to worry about the butterfly effect.
- Amazon investing $10 billion to compete against SpaceX in satellite broadband.
- Rolls-Royce exploring sustainable supersonic flight.
- Trump may demand TikTok’s Chinese owners sell it, and guess who may be interested.
- Stories and lessons from working with Jeff Bezos on the original Kindle.
- France is pointing fingers at consumers’ video streaming habits for generating too much pollution.
- Why does Microsoft want a bite of TikTok? Twitter is also interested in buying it!
- N26 vs Revolut: Which one offers the best options for managing your money digitally?
- TNW Tech Cities of the Future 2020/21 Winners
- For the first time, Shopify processed more transaction volume than eBay.
- Former SoundCloud cofounders to launch a new e-bike subscription service.
- Tinder is testing a new top-level subscription plan, Tinder Platinum
- Facebook sues EU antitrust regulator for excessive data requests
- Clubhouse has a message for all of us!
- Mediapro ‘partners with Netflix’ on Téléfoot OTT offer
- CARTO & Google Cloud announce a partnership
- TikTok is establishing a new European data center in Ireland. Trump signed an executive order to block all U.S. transactions. This chaos is all about AI, data, and power.
- Trump also says he is considering a pardon for leaker Edward Snowden and considering ban on Alibaba.
- Rally launches Creator Coin cryptocurrency for influencers.
- It’s a time of change for the internet and for Mozilla.
- Zin Boats reinvents the electric speedboat in a bid to become the Tesla of the sea.
- Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps.
- Older men charged more for using Tinder’s premium service.
- Travel startups cry foul over what Google’s doing with their data
- Russian watchdog says Apple abused mobile app market dominance
- Chinese tech companies could face trouble in Europe
- BONUS: Top tech startups in LATAM and the Caribbean.
- Benedict Evans – The eCommerce surge 📦
- Apple becomes the first US company to reach a $2 trillion market cap
- Zoom is coming to Amazon, Google, and Facebook smart displays
- Can Epic Games actually take on Apple and Google?
- Are children prepared for the AI era?
- London Tech Week
- Germany’s anti-trust authority launches investigation into Amazon’s relationship with third-party traders
- Only 2 companies should buy TikTok, and Oracle isn’t one of them
- Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI
- SUMMER BONUS: Books that will make you smarter.
- Elon Musk shows Neuralink brain implant working in a pig
- The Case of the Top Secret iPod
- Why consumers just don’t trust fintechs
- Asana Files To Go Public on NYSE
- TikTok CEO quits after less than 3 months
- Fitbit launches a $330 Apple Watch competitor
- Team.Video challenges Zoom with features to fix ‘common meeting frustrations’
- Data and AI Virtual Forum
- App stores, trust and anti-trust
- Amazon is delivering nearly two-thirds of its own packages as e-commerce continues pandemic boom
- ‘F*ck the algorithm’? 5 ways algorithms already rule our lives
- London Tech Week
This is a compilation of all the weekly newsletters we sent during the month. We keep our community updated on everything related to startups, tech news, fundings, and we share our weekly podcast!