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Airbnb Files for IPO and Omio Raises 100 Million Dollars

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. 

Random Tech Stuff

Besides Airbnb’s IPO, the tech scene had a lot happening!

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!

Subscribe and keep up with the startup universe, or feel free to come back for more startup news of the month here.

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Payflow Joins Itnig Startup Portfolio

First of all, we’re excited to announce a new startup joining the Itnig Fund portfolio: Payflow, a new fintech that allows employees to collect the fraction of their salary that they have already worked instantly and through a mobile application whenever they want. The startup was founded in February 2020 and has already closed a €1.6M round with the participation of Rocket Internet, Lanai Partners, Itnig, Abac Nest, Michael Benabou, and Clement Benoit, among others.
– Curious about why and how Itnig invests in new startups? 

Let’s also talk about TravelPerk’s acquisition of Albatross, an early-stage API startup that offers information on post-COVID travel restrictions and local guidelines to travel applications. Travelperk visited Itnig podcast back in March 2019, Bernat and Jordi interview Javier Suárez, founder and CPO to learn about the company’s first 3 years. Albatross’s technology and data will be incorporated into TravelCare, TravelPerk’s existing travel risk management offering.  

Barcelona-based fintech Goin has closed a €5 million round led by Anthemis, recognized British fintech-specialized fund, K Fund, and  Encomenda Smart Capital. Goin allows users to save and invest, making it easier for people to achieve their financial goals. Check out our podcast episode with CEO and cofounder David Riudor!

📈Speaking of powerful teams, EU-Startups posted a list of 10 Barcelona-based startups that continue to grow fast despite the current crisis and we’re proud and want to congratulate our friends from Factorial and Payflow for being included!👏🏻

In the startup world, it seems that the goal is to have a unicorn, a company whose valuation has exceeded $1 billion. The pandemic crisis has made the entrepreneurial ecosystem begin to focus on another animal: the camel. Why? It’s simple: camels are able to survive droughts. Camels are resilient startups that can overcome extreme situations.

Startup Inside Stories Podcast

This month, we had very interesting guests and topics on Itnig’s weekly podcast.

  • 147: Technology and patents valued at more than €60M, Lleida.net and Sisco Sapena

Bernat Farrero and Juan Rodríguez interview Sisco Sapena, an Internet pioneer in Spain and founder and president of Lleida.Net, a 25-year-old technology startup, offering solutions and services for the certification and security of electronic mail, SMS and electronic documents. Sisco also explains what it means to be a publicly-traded company and is valued at close to 60 million.

  • 148: Product makers and their mysteries

Bernat Farrero talks to three digital product leaders, Ignasi Buch (Typeform), Kike Alonso (Tuenti, Carto, Microsoft and Factorial) and César Miguelañez (Factorial). Product people adopt all kinds of names, and it is a role that has gradually become a key role in any digital company.

They talk about how to identify a good or bad person in a product. Where do product people come from? What studies do they have? What does their day-to-day consist of? Where do they get ideas from? How do they measure their productivity? How are product teams structured? What is Product-led growth?

  • 149: Project Lobster with Oscar Valledor

Oscar Valledor, the young founder and CEO of Project Lobster, visits the podcast. Project Lobster is a local, independent brand of sunglasses and prescription glasses with the goal to revolutionize the optics industry and improve the consumer experience when. Oscar started the project in his last year of college, and now is an up and running business with 3 physical stores in Spain and a large volume of online consumers.

  •  150: Payflow And The Liquid Salary

We invited Payflow, the last startup in which Itnig has invested,  to tell their story on our podcast. This new fintech allows employees to collect the fraction of their salary that they have already worked instantly through the app whenever they want. The startup, born in the middle of the pandemic, has recently closed a €1.6M round! 

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July Startup News & Updates

In other news, Karma Kitchen, the London-based kitchen space startup, has raised more than €277M in a Series A funding round. Cofounder Eccie Newton, who currently operates one kitchen site, has a five-person team and had initially set out to raise £3m. Wait… what?!  “People think it’s a typo,” laughs Newton, “It’s not a typo.”  Within five years, Karma Kitchen hopes to be providing thousands of food businesses — from restaurants to caterers to meal kit companies — with flexible kitchen space.

Online marketplaces have played a central role in our modern economy, as seen by the rise of companies such as Airbnb, Amazon, or DeliveryHero. Nowadays, anyone can get access to almost anything in just a few clicks. Take a look at the European B2B Marketplace Landscape. 

After GrubHub being acquired by JustEat-Takeaway, the food delivery sector continues with its consolidation process. Another big negotiation between Uber and food delivery app Postmates is in the oven. The agreement, yet to be confirmed to be official, contemplates a disbursement of 2,320 million euros. The operation would boost the activity of Uber Eats, the group’s delivery branch, and thus offset the collapse suffered by the pandemic crisis.

⚠️Another acquisition alert: Asian e-commerce giant Alibaba negotiating the acquisition of Glovo, the Catalan delivery startup. Both companies have already maintained the first approach in this regard. It wouldn’t be the first time that Glovo, valued at more than $ 1 billion is targeted for sale. Just a year ago, Uber and Deliveroo were in contact with the Barcelona-based company with the aim of taking over. Although Glovo’s valuation exceeded those 1,000 million in 2019, becoming the second Spanish unicorn, the startup has been dragging losses for several years: it closed 2018 with a negative result of 45.7 million euros and a turnover of 52.3 million. Is this worth it for Amazon’s competitor Alibaba?

💰Nauta Capital, one of Europe’s largest B2B-focused VCs, investing in startups at seed and Series A, is launching its fifth fund with €120 million to back early-stage European B2B startups. With offices in London, Barcelona, and Munich, the firm has led investments in more than 50 companies, which include Brandwatch, digital consumer intelligence company with $100 million ARR; Onna, a knowledge integration platform that just raised €25M; and PromoteIQ, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2019, among others. 
 

K Fund has also launched a new €70 million fund. The firm looks for Spanish startups with an international outlook, as the plan is to invest from €200,000 to €2 million, writing first checks in 25-30 companies. A portion of the fund will also be set aside for follow-on funding for the most promising of its portfolio, with a mix of B2B and B2C companies across a wide variety of sectors, including travel, fintech, insurtech, and others.

SaaStr founder, Jason Lemkin, wrote about how these unprecedented times are the best of times for SaaS VCs. Why? He finds two related reasons: 

1. The stock market for public SaaS and Cloud companies is at an all-time high. 2. In many categories of SaaS, usage is way way up since March 15.  Work from Home has been accelerated by a decade.  Digital transformation by 5 years. Read the full post.
Sifted also took the opportunity to give more perspectives on the subject asking: Are SaaS startups kings of the coronavirus crisis?

💰 Early-stage venture capital firm CRV has closed a $600 million new fund. According to CRV, the fund was completely raised over 19 days of virtual meetings during the pandemic. The company has most recently invested in companies likeFactorial, Fauna, and Postman. Some of its most notable exits are Twitter and Zendesk’s IPOs.

New funding for startups 

Random tech news Satellite Antenna on Twitter Twemoji 12.0

Subscribe and keep up with the startup universe, or feel free to come back for more startup news of the month here.

This is a compilation of all the weekly newsletters we sent during July. We keep our community updated on everything related to startups, tech news, fundings, and we share our weekly podcast!

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Pitch to Investors at Itnig & other Startups News

At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the news and updates flying around. What’s new at Itnig? We organise a new recurrent event in January 2020 named Pitch to Investors. Entrepreneurs have the opportunity to pitch in front of investors. For example, investors can be from our team like Bernat Farrero or also external guest funds. Speakers get instant feedback from them.

So, if you have a project in mind and you are looking for funding, come and pitch at Itnig! After the event, you also have the opportunity to network around a beer. Nothing should hold you back anymore!

Startup Inside Stories Podcast

This month, we had very interesting guests and topics on Itnig’s weekly podcast.

#117: Alberto Espinós, from Tropicfeel

In this week’s podcast, we discuss crowdfunding and more concretely, reward-based crowdfunding. Alberto Espinós is the founder and CEO of Tropicfeel, a company that aims at becoming “the Patagonia of travellers”. 

Alberto started using Kickstarted as his main sales platform which allowed him to produce his first shoes at very low risk. We discuss how crowdfunding can be a great way to sell a product in B2C markets.

#118 : Rafa Blanc, from Vasquiat

In this week’s podcast, Rafa Blanc, CEO at Vasquiat explains to us how luxury fashion works and how he plans to change the sales season. The platform value proposition lies in offering discount for pre-season items instead of incentivising late consumers.

He has partnered up with Blanca Miró, fashion influencer and co-founder of the startup to bring in the unique value of product selection. Listen the full story here!

#119 : David Riudor, from Goin

In this week’s podcast, we are taking a look at Goin, an increasingly popular fintech that allows you to save and invest money. David Riudor’s objective is to make it easier for people to achieve their goals and he says they have the potential to be way more profitable than banks, so we are digging up why.

In spite of being super young, David has a very interesting business life that started with magic, leading him to meet David Copperfield and sell a company to Magia Borras. Triggered?

#120: Vincent Rosso, former GM Spain at Blablacar

In this week’s podcast, we talk to Vicent Rosso, former GM Spain at Blablacar. He tells us how he started working in the comfort of big corporations but soon jumped to the startup world by creating his own business in Spain during the crisis.

Vincent explains how he started his entrepreneurship journey and ended up managing one of the fastest-growing startups in Europe!

December Startup News & Updates

Now, here are the December startup news:

Holaluz going public seems to be doing great but what’s the difference between IPOs and Direct Listing? The NYSE wants to let companies raise capital through direct listings and that might be an option for some companies.

With the underperformance of IPOs like Uber and Lyft as well as the epic implosion of WeWork, the venture capital market has shaken quite a bit. But this week stories keep piling up as we got to know that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, have stepped down from Alphabet. Same happened with Xiaomi co-founder Lei Jun who has stepped down as China president in a leadership reshuffle.

On the other side of the spectrum, Glovo is about to land €200M and become the second Spanish unicorn. We also got to know that football giants Atlético de Madrid, Valencia CF and Schalke 04 signed an agreement with Sorare to join blockchain game. 

Delivery Hero is betting strongly on Asia as we got to know that they bought South Korean startup Woowa for the wowing amount of $4B! That’s an energetic beginning of the week!

You might also be struggling to reach out to clients or investors so this is how to send reply worthy cold messages! And to help you even more, let me suggest 5 viral content ideas that work even in a boring niche!

In the meantime, Glovo has been raising big money after it was announced a €150M round at a monster valuation (€1B+). That makes the Barcelona-based startup the second Spanish unicorn.

This week we are also taking a look at a giant startup. Blablacar is one of those businesses that made its own market and killed it with its superb acquisition strategy. Former GM Spain Vincent Rosso tells the origins of Blablacar!

New Funding for Startups

Random Tech News

Those are December 2019 startup news!

At Itnig, we write a weekly newsletter where we keep our community updated on everything related to startups, tech news, fundings, and we share our weekly podcast!
Subscribe and keep up with the startup universe, or feel free to come back for more startup news of the month here!

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Oscar Pierre On Itnig Podcast & Startups News

At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the news and updates flying around. This month, we had the opportunity to have a talk with Oscar Pierre, from Badi.

Oscar Pierre (Badi) Itnig Podcast

In this week’s podcast, we talk about Badi, the startup considered by some as the Tinder of the flatmates. Carlos Pierre tells us how he plans to become the all-in-one room renting solution.

The company has raised around €40M so far and it yet does not have a clear monetisation strategy as its main goal is to become the leading company in a sector traditionally led by agencies.

That’s not it, we have three other podcasts for you to listen!

Startup Inside Stories Podcast

#113: Eloi Gómez, from Jeff

In this week’s podcast, we interview Eloi Gómez, from Jeff (formerly Mr Jeff). The company started as an online laundry and after a few tweaks and fine-tuning managed to open close to 2000 shops in just two years.

Last week the company announced the purchase of the personal training startup Entrenarme and the partnership with the hairdresser company Oh My Cut! Eloi takes the chance to explain how he plans to turn Jeff into the service superapp.

#114 : Alejandro Fresneda, from Mr.Noow

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at restaurant preorders targetting lunches, an untapped business by the big delivery players. Alejandro Fresneda, founder of Mr. Noow, comes to our studio to explain to us how this works and how they acquire customers with coupons.

We took this chance to discuss how to balance customer-base growth versus revenue maximisation per user in the long run.

#115 : Juan Castillo, from Guruwalk

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the Free Tours. We invited Juan Castillo, founder and CEO at Guruwalk to explain to us how his company monetizes tours based on tips.

Juan believes his market is monopolistic so there can only be one player and he thinks Guruwalk has the recipe for it.

November Startup News & Updates

The Valencia-based startup Jeff bought Entrename and partner up with Oh My Cut! to become a super service app. We took the change to interview its CEO, Eloi Gómez to explain to us how they manage to run almost 2.000 laundry shops.

The startup landscape seems to be mostly fintech, but why is every startup a bank these days? If you want to try it yourself, here you can find 7 essential books for programmers. And hey, you might be wondering what replaces JavaScript, is WeAssembly the beginning of the end?

Plant-based food startups are spreading all over the world as you may know by the popular Impossible Burger. What you might not know is that European startups have joined this phenomenon as well. But, how to tell when one of these startups turn into a business?

Another startup trend that Europe keeps up with is the e-scooter market as we recently got to know that the Sweedish company VOI raised €85M to lead the sector in Europe. They are candidates to be one of the next unicorns, meanwhile here you can meet the unicorn class of 2019.

This week is all about crowdfunding. We tend to focus on VC led funding rounds but some startups are leaning towards the investments of the masses. We got to know that Madrid-based Bnext raised €3.3M in crowdfunding while Barcelona-based ID Finance captured €5.7M.

I know marketing is one of your main hassles but hold on for a second and check these 7 powerful ways to upgrade your email marketing campaigns and see why newsletters still work (I hope so!). If you use landings for your campaigns, we also got you covered with this free tool. Enjoy!

On another note, Uber ex-CEO Travis Kalanick has sold almost $900M in stock after lockup expired bringing his total sell-off to nearly $1B. And complementing that impressive figure, PayPal announced the acquisition of the Chrome-extension Honey for $4B! They should have tried a coupon code.

And a couple of things that might help you out. El Referente just published a report on initiatives to support startups in Spain. And this is how Slack content strategy expanded from a single page to a media company.

New Funding for Startups

Random Tech News

Those are November 2019 startup news!

At Itnig, we write a weekly newsletter where we keep our community updated on everything related to startups, tech news, fundings, and we share our weekly podcast!
Subscribe and keep up with the startup universe, or feel free to come back for more startup news of the month here!