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Factorial New App & other Startups News

At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the news and updates flying around. We did a summary of the month with 2019 startup news. In October, the HR management software Factorial has launched its brand new app to improve the relationship between companies and employees.

Factorial HR brand New App

This, together with its recent announcement of its partnership with Signaturit makes it for a very solid product!

For this month podcasts, we have some very special guests.

Startup Inside Stories Podcast

#109 : Juanjo Mata, from Y Combinator

In this week’s podcast, Juanjo Mata comes to our studio to explain his experience as an entrepreneur and as an investor at Y Combinator, the most successful startup accelerator in the world. We are so curious to know how a Demo Day looks like at YC!

Juanjo’s life is full of interesting stories from working at Netscape (Mozilla embryo) to being COO at bringing Spanish entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley!

#110 : Helena Torras, from PaoCapital

In this week’s podcast, Helena Torras talks about her learnings at different life experiences. She is an entrepreneur and an investor with a large experience in the startup sector having raised funds several times for different companies.

Helena explains her experience at the cloud-management platform Abiquo and how startups should do business with corporates. We also discuss the business model of B-Wom, her femtech startup, check it out!

#111 : Eduard Cabanas, from Ulabox

In this week’s podcast, Glovo and Ulabox

There are two companies having a business model based on a big number of operations. On the one hand, Ulabox is an online supermarket that stocks and ships items everywhere in Spain while Glovo is an on-demand courier service.

In this episode Eduard Cabanas (CFO at Ulabox) and Eduard Ros (CFO at Glovo) answer topics like how to get your company ready to rapidly grow and which metrics to pay close attention to keep on the right path.

#112 : César Miguelañez, from Factorial

In this week’s podcast, we take a deeper look to freemium businesses. The example of Dropbox comes first to mind when thinking of smart use of a freemium service. The online storage company used it as a way to gain customers and mainly, virality. 

Setting the right monetization strategy is one of the hardest things for startups so we have decided to share our learings from trying the Freemium model ourselves!

October Startup News & Updates

The Spanish startup ecosystem is sending mixed signs. On the one hand, the fintech startup Bnext raised $25M attracting 300K active users and processing €100M in transactions every month.

On the other hand, the fashion startup 21 Buttons is cutting on expenses, including firing employees, to change their strategic focus. It becomes true that no one knows what anything is worth!

Mark Cuban is a very successful investor, he recently assured he has “close to a billion dollars in Amazon stock“. If your startup is aiming at leading as Amazon does, check out our fund and boost your growth!

Flying cars is not just a sci-fi idea but also a big business. German flying car startup Lilium has been talking to investors about raising a huge funding roundsized between $400M and $500M. If they succeed, they could join the unicorn club as Grammarly has recently done. join Grammarly having unicorn status.

After raising €25M, Bnext is opening a new… crowdfunding round! The neobank is quickly growing like many other fintech startups. Don’t lose count and check out the European unicorn landscape.

On the other side of the spectrum, the once-claimed Tesla competitor Faraday files for bankruptcy. Other manufacturers are racing to capture the growing electric vehicle opportunity.

Of course, WeWork also had its show time this week as we got to know that it might run out of cash by mid-November.

The telecom sector is usually pretty flat but apparently, there might be some turbulences soon! The fourth Spanish operator MasMóvil seems to be partnering up with Goldman Sachs to buy Vodafone Spain.

On another note, a couple of tips! Do you know what’s the small difference between B2B and B2C design and marketing that makes all the difference? And, if you are low on marketing budget, take a look at some zero cost marketing hacks!

New Funding for Startups

Random Tech News

Those are October 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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Video Series with Quipu and Factorial & other Startups News

At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the news and updates flying around. Many businesses these days understand that video is the best way to reach their target market so better learn how to create engaging video series! We are doing so as in addition to our weekly podcast, Quipu worked on their own video series and Factorial relaunched their HR pills. Check it out!

Video Series with Quipu and Factorial

Creating videos for your future customers allows them to know you, and allows you to show your creativity. Why would they choose you instead of others? Being creative on the digital market can help you gain a new audience, or it can enhance customers’ brand loyalty.

Let’s move on to our podcast, because this month, you are spoiled with 5 of them!

Startup Inside Stories Podcast

#104 : Juan Zamora, from Signaturit

In this week’s podcast, Juan Zamora from Signaturit shares with us who digital signature works. The Barcelona-based startup counts now with over 100 employees dedicated mainly to engineer a product that reduces the hustle of traditional contract signing.

Bernat and Jordi chatted with him to further understand how the technology works. They also took this opportunity to announce the new collaboration between Signaturit and Factorial.

#105 : Dan Kragt, from Quipu

In this week’s podcast, we interview Dan Kragt, current CEO at Quipu. Before joining the Barcelona-based startup, Dan was leading TMF, the largest administrative agency in the world.

Bernat and Oriol base their conversation with Dan on how a startup can benefit from that expertise at a corporate level and how someone with a corporate background can fit into a startup. Check out it out here!

#106 : Mattieu Carenzo, professor at IESE

In this week’s podcast, we get deep into understanding how to know how much a company is worth. Mattieu Carenzo is a professor on Entrepreneurship at IESE and a successful early stage investor in companies like Glovo.

Mattieu, Bernat, and Juan discuss the importance of company valuation when investing. Mattieu even ensures that it doesn’t matter the valuation at which you invest but the valuation at which you divest!

#107 : Oscar Pierre, from Glovo

In this week’s podcast, Oscar Pierre, CEO at Glovo, explains the full story of the company and how it was about to collapse 3 times. The company has raised around €350M in just four years and we asked how that affected him and Glovo itself.

Oscar opens up and explains some hacks on how Glovo is growing and how it’s planning to expand in the near future following the strategy of becoming market leaders everywhere they land!

#108 : Alessandro Zanardi, from Codeworks

In this week’s podcast, Alessandro Zanardi comes to our offices to discuss how coding bootcamps have flooded our cities. The high demand for developers has allowed for this niche to grow quickly.

We challenge Alessandro to explain how can someone be ready to be a software developer in just 3 months and what traditional education has to do to keep up with the market demands.

September Startup News & Updates

Coming back from holidays is tough. What if I told you that you can buy an island? This project allows you to even get the citizenship of the island if the crowdfunding succeeds. Interesting, huh?

If you are lost getting to know which companies are planning on doing an IPO, don’t worry, the list is not long. Ahead of WeWork, Cloudfare, and SmileDirectClub, the pipeline for IPOs is quite thin! In this sense, we just got to know that Ping, the online ID management company has filed an S-1 form indicating that it plans to raise up to $100 million in an IPO on the Nasdaq .

Diving into this week’s startup stories, a couple of news from WeWork this time. The coworking company might be worth just half of its former $47B valuation increasing its instability, so after the scandal, it’s CEO has given $5.9M trademark payment back to WeWork.

Oh, and if you are the kind of person that tells everything over a beer, you may want to check out this Friend NDA generator. Quite handy.

We also want to take this opportunity to share with you some nice tools for your business starting from Google’s ranking factors in 2019. If you are looking into understanding finance, check out this article or directly check our recent podcast with CFOs!

The European startup scene is clearly growing and France wants to lead it. Macron has just announced an investment of €5B in French startups. Some European economies are getting ready for Brexit and that will affect the stock exchanges so better learn to predict it, it’s easier than you think!

A couple of news agitated last week news. To start off, Airbnb announced it will go public next year after WeWork delays IPO dropping valuation in half. Additionally, Stripe raised an additional $250M and now the payment company is worth over $35B! 

There is no week without news about WeWork. This time we got to know that it’s CEO Adam Neumann is stepping down. The story gets crazier over time and it looks more and more like the Unicorn Startup Simulator game (warning – highly addictive).

New Funding for Startups

Random Tech News

Those are September 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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Itnig Event Venue & other Startups News

At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the news and updates flying around. Last month, we told we opened up a new coworking space and a new coffice in partnership with Syra Coffee. Well, this month, we opened an event venue for up to 100 people.

Itnig Event Venue

This industrial building used to be a printer factory. Now it has become a space which welcomes events, but you will also find meetings rooms and  2 coworking spaces.  With it’s high ceiling and all the light from the lights t’s the perfect place for working , host and event or just enjoy a beer.

It’s on ground level, with it’s own terrace and lots of plants. The combination of wood and white concrete lakes the space cosy and gives a friendly and pleasant atmosphere.

If you’d like to organize an event in the future, don’t hesitate to contact us. 

Startup Inside Stories Podcast

#101 : Ildefonso García-Serena, from SocioGRM Consultoria

In this week’s podcast, we bring Ildefonso García-Serena, one of those inspiring people that should be taken as a reference. He has developed a successful career doing marketing for big brands and he tells us quite come anecdotes generated along the way.

Among many other things, he tells us about the story behind the “Sueldo para toda la vida” campaign that is still up and running. When working Moulinex 1, 2 3, he also had very big successes in its fight against Braun.

Ildefonso has just presented a book called El Hijo del Doctor that will be available on September 18 in the bookstores. Check out the podcast.

#102 : Gerard Martret, from Shotl

In this week’s podcast, Gerard Martret, CEO at Shotl visits our facilities to get an in-depth analysis of the on-demand mobility sector. 

Shotl is a family venture as the Martret brothers have started off the company together after their success building up Drivania, a with-chauffeur car rental service that targets high-end consumers.

Gerard explains how his fast-growing startup works and how he plans to compete with other international players. Check out the podcast:

#103 : Isaac Cabezas (Paack), María Fierro (Vilynx.com) and Lluís Vidal (COO at Exoticca).

In this week’s podcast, we bring financing to the table to answer the question “how to finance your startup?”. This time we counted on 3 CFOs members of BCNCFO, a group formed by CFOs of the top Spanish startups: Isaac Cabezas (Paack), María Fierro (Vilynx.com) and Lluís Vidal (COO at Exoticca).

To make things even more interesting, the guiding questions were asked by other startup CFOs interested in getting to know their opinion on matters like funding mechanisms or when should a startup have a CFO. Do you have more questions? Ask them in the video!

August Startup News & Updates

If you thought that fighting against Amazon was impossible, think again. Wish has raised a $300M Series H focusing on completely different ends of the online-shopping experience spectrum.

Some other giants might be suffering some damage as Uber has fired 400 people from its marketing team in restructuring and Lyft’s COO has just left the company. Better news for the food delivery sector as Takeaway and Just Eat are expected to merge in a $10B deal to take on Deliveroo and Uber Eats in Europe.

We know we are not the only ones trying to optimise software development so it might be useful to learn “The art of interrupting software engineers“.

Entrepreneurship has nothing to do with age and Alexandr Wang has proven it right as at the age of 22, his company Scale AI has locked down $100M in the market of data-labeling. The company has closed a deal at an over $1B valuation. But if you prefer working for Apple, we also have some tips for you.

As you might be developing your marketing plan, we’ve got you covered. Voice searches can be your secret weapon; consider developing your Instagram aesthetic by checking some companies doing it right, or take a look at a complete guide to paid advertisement.

WeWork has been flooding all the headlines by filing pre-IPO documents. It’s hard to understand what the market will say in the end but you can take a look at some charts to build your own opinions.

If you are planning on creating your own startup and you are looking into accelerators, check out this list mentioning 100 top accelerators around the world. If what you need is investment, you can also check out our early-stage fund!

Pau Fernández took a look into the reasons why Disney will dominate the media industry. Do you think the same way?

One of the key points of startup growth is to ensure correct finance management and we have invited some CFOs to explain to us how they do it. Having a good financial strategy is basic to get VC funding but do you know who are the major revenue-based VCs?

This week followed the trend of announcing a new fintech unicorns. In this case, it’s the turn of Numbrs which just raised $40M. If your startup is also and you are thinking of selling it, there are some things you have to have in mind when getting ready for it. 

New Funding for Startups

Random Tech News

Those are August 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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Itnig Coworking & other Startups News

At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the news and updates flying around. This month,  we (Itnig) expanded our coworking space as you may have seen in the news. If you want to join our ecosystem of entrepreneurs and techies, just let us know!

Itnig Coworking Space

On top of that, Syra and Itnig worked on what we call Coffice, an office space that offers coffee for everyone. We opened doors on August 5th (Pujades 100, Barcelona) so make sure to pass by to try our coffee!

Startup Inside Stories Podcast

#95 : Ignacio Fonts, from Inveready

This week we’ve interviewed Ignacio Fonts, Managing Partner at Inveready, one of the first early-stage investment firms in Spain. This VC fund is especially interesting as they have pioneered in many fields successfully.

Inveready’s most notorious investment is MÁSMÓVIL, the telecom company that has become a superstar buying bigger companies like Yoigo. Ignacio opens up and explains some of the toughest situations of the company and how a VC firm can support in such hard times.

No doubt this is one of the most educational podcast so far!

#96 : Andreas von Estorff, from ModelManagement.com

Andreas von Estorff is a German serial entrepreneur based in Barcelona that has built his career around the model management business. In this week’s podcast, he explains how he built some of his companies like Casting.net, a marketplace for models, actors and other artists.

His current project is ModelManagement.com, a website that has built a community that connects clients that need to find a model and people that want to perform as models, being or not professionals. He shows numbers and events tell us how much a model can earn per shooting!

#97-#98 : Christian Rodríguez, from ByHours

Christian Rodríguez is an entrepreneur with plenty of things to tell. In this week’s podcast, he tells us about some of his successes at Hawkers, Northweek and ByHours.

In 2011, Christian decided to setup ByHours, a company that allows users to book hotel rooms for 3, 6 or 12 hours. Since then, the business has grown and has become another success story from the Barcelona startup ecosystem.

Christian explains his businesses in detail and the conversation went longer than usual so when talking about the history of Hawkers, we decided to make a dedicated podcast so you can watch it fully at any time. Enjoy de Part 1 and the Part 2.

#99 : Marc Vicente, from ABA English

In this week’s podcast, we are chatting with Marc Vicente who is currently CEO at ABA English, a startup focused on teaching English. He has also been at other C-level positions in companies like Akamon and Rakuten Spain.

Marc discusses some of his insights in the marketplace business and explains some of the differences he finds between Amazon, Rakuten or other companies like Alibaba or Cdiscount.

#100: Yassir Raïs, from Syra Coffee

 We got to the podcast 100 already, and to celebrate it we have invited Yassir Raïs, founder and CEO at Syra Coffee. At Itnig we believe in the potential of his project and we are investing from the Itnig Fund to support its growth.

His claim is to democratise coffee, good coffee. He believes that specialty coffee should not be expensive but it should remain of outstanding quality. His success in his fist shop in Gracia (Barcelona) has encouraged him to dream big and scale the business to become the leader in the sector.

We compared the business to Luckin Coffee (over 1.700 shops) and Starbucks. Check it out here!

July Startup News & Updates

Neobank startups seem to be the golden pot of entrepreneurship as we got yet another astonishing figure from Monzo, which doubled valuation to $2.5 billion. But fintech doesn’t have just one leg and Freetrade, the European Robinhood, raised last month £1M via Crowdcube at £18M valuation. They did it in 1 minute and crushed the site… and this week they have raised £3M at £42M valuation! That’s nuts!

This technology is quite the present rather than the future and some investors don’t want to miss it out as proven by the Japanese startup Tier IV that just raised a humongous Series A of $100M! 

App developing companies must be happy as app revenue is up by 15% in the first half of 2019 compared to last year’s. The Apple Store continues to be the king with $25.5B spent in 6 months in contrast with the $14.2B in the Google counterpart. 

Oh, and if you are new to our newsletter you might have missed the 5 mega-deals that made Q2 2019 a record-breaking quarter for European startups. More to be expected soon as e-ventures raised $400M with $175 million going to its Europe-focused investment arm. 

Are you an Angel Investor? You may not be using your money right. Some people believe angel investments are meant for those willing to support ideas rather than purely making money. 

EU-Startups just published a list of 10 mobility startups to look out for in 2019 and the sector keeps booming. For instance, last week, we got to know that Uber’s rival Bolt has closed a $67M round, but… wait! They are not the only Bolt startup that raised $67M last week! 

We got to know that card-payment solution SumUp secured a $300M loan to finance its growth while the German neobank N26 has raised an additional $170M funding at $3.5B valuation. Also, the card aggregator Curve raised €49M and they partnered up with us for this week’s podcast!

The Apollo 11 turns 50, a project that might bring some insights for your own moonshots. Additionally, as entrepreneurs ourselves, we know sales is tough and being a team leader in the sales department is even tougher so Bernat wrote an opinion piece on what a leader should have.

Oh, and a couple more news to start off the week. Sifted explained how to do PR in a startup – tip, don’t hire an agency before Series A. And if you have a B2B model, you may be interested in learning how to build your Lead Generation Strategy.

New Funding for Startups

Random Tech News

Those are July 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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Itnig Fund, Pitch to Investors & other Startups news

At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the news and updates flying around. What happened in June? It’s a pretty big news for Itnig. We launched the Itnig early stage fund looking for brave entrepreneurs and great projects to invest about €100,000.

We are looking for unique projects and an incredible team that goes with it. We accept projects in a rolling-basis. Our investors will get back to you when the project is evaluated. If you want to give it a try, make sure to apply now!

Itnig Fund

That’s not it. You can also present your project during a live event “Pitch to Investors” at Itnig. More precisely, we offer the opportunity for entrepreneurs to pitch their projects in front of investors. What’s in it for you? You get instant feedback from them, and hopefully, positive news will follow, but that, we can’t promise. However, it’s always worth giving it a try!

Let’s have a look to our month podcasts. From Welcome to the Jungle to K Fund, these podcasts should indeed be your #workingfromhome next playlist.

Startup Inside Stories Podcast

#91: Andrés Askenasy, Maite Forcadell and Juan Rodríguez, from Camaloon

In this week’s episode, Andrés Askenasy (Industrial Director @Camaloon), Maite Forcadell (Printing Manager @Camaloon) and Juan Rodríguez (CEO @Camaloon) chat about how Camaloon uses technology to make a very successful B2B printing company.

Andrés and Maite emphasise on what makes them different. Camaloon is run out of optimization technologies that enable them to save costs and time for their customers while remaining a successful business model.

Their next challenge? Controlling the end-to-end process including shipping. What an exciting time for them!

#92 : Oriol Marimon, from eCooltra

This week’s guest is Oriol Marimon, CEO at eCooltra, an electric motosharing company with 3-digit growth figures.

He has explained to us how their business works and what has led their company to close 2018 with an €8M annual turnover chasing the vision of reducing the use of private vehicles in day-to-day rides.

Oriol gives us some clues to better understand their business model and the challenges that eCooltra is facing as an electric motosharing.

#93 : Sergio Balcells, from Welcome to the Jungle

Sergio Balcells is an entrepreneur and executive that started as a lawyer but realized he was more of a sales kind of person so after changing sectors, he created Glamourum the first subscription-based company in Spain. Glamourum was then sold to Joliebox that was quickly bought by Birchbox where he served as CEO for Spain for over a year.

Sergio focuses on the learning outcomes he got as a General Manager at different companies like Coches.net, Milanuncios and JOBS TODAY some of which he is currently putting in place at his current endeavor as a Country Manager at the French-based company Welcome to the Jungle to Spain.

We will keep our eyes wide open to see how all these projects get developed.

#94: Jaime Novoa, from K Fund

Jaime Novoa is especially known in the startup sector because of his job with the Novobrief newsletter, and more recently at the VC firm, K Fund.

He never aimed at being a journalist nor an investor. He just started writing posts for his own blog and for others out of passion and soon created the Novobrief brand. After a while, he decided to sell the blog but kept the newsletter which still he curates himself.

In our conversation, he explains to us how it is to work at an early stage fund and how he slowly turned into an investor.

June Startup News & Updates

Ready for your quick dose of startup and tech news? Here we go!

The European startup ecosystem is fastly evolving and catching up. Don’t trust us, trust the ranking made by StartupBlink in collaboration with Crunchbase and others that lists 1,000 startup ecosystems from 100 different countries (if you are curious, Barcelona ranks 27 and Madrid 31). On top that, some people suggest Silicon Valley should look to Europe to solve its IPO problem.

On another note, something that caught our eyes was the return of Foursquare to big funding rounds. The location check-in company has raised a $150M Series G round. This is more than four times larger than its previous round showing that a business can retake traction after pivoting.

SaaS startups have been the philosopher’s stone of entrepreneurship driving high margins and recurring revenues but the market seems to be a little bit skeptical. Last week, SaaS stocks dropped by over 5% in a single day, not just a company but the whole sector. Scary, huh? BTW, if you are one of those, you may consider getting repriced!

Booming leaders. The 30 under 30 list by FORBES is always interesting to check out but if you don’t want to miss some of the most influential raising stars, QVIXOTE LEADERS have just published their own list with 16 of the most disruptive entrepreneurs.

Oh, and pure tech. While Apple has been presenting its new cheese grater, we got to know that Barcelona is one of the cities chosen to host a supercomputing center financed by the EU. Additionally, Google has updated its Googlebot. No more server-side rendering?

How fast is the European ecosystem growing? GP Bullhound just assured that Europe will have its first Titan in 2021, as Spotify and Ayden will be the first startups reaching a $50.000M valuation. If you are more into the Chinese market, these are some of the tech trends to watch in 2019.

Bird is buying Scoot and ACCIONA has entered the business with 1.200 motorbikes only in Barcelona. 

And two extra tips. The madri+d foundation and F. Iniciativas have released a quick summary of financial resources for startups

Slack‘s first days in the stock exchanges have been crazy and just on the first day, they jumped from 26$ to over 40$ per share. The American company has a very promising future and is currently valued at $23B, any bets on its valuation in a couple of years from now?

Investments in Europe have matured quickly and as Cabiedes mentioned in our podcast, investing in copycats is more than a good option (and he is not alone in this belief). So… maybe your business also needs competition to thrive.

In another part of the universe… Pizza robots are getting into the business. The Paris-based startup Pazzi just secured a €10M funding round to launch its first restaurant with robots instead of chefs making pizzas!

New Funding for Startups

Random Tech News

Those are June 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!