Startups, business & tech
It’s been a crazy month. While renowned companies like WeWork, Deliveroo, and Uber are facing major layoffs due to the pandemic crisis, N26 reaches $3.5B valuation. It’s an important time to be aware of what’s going on, here’s our selection of news of the month.
Continue reading “WeWork, Deliveroo, and Uber Facing Major Layoffs”At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the news and updates flying around. What’s new? Well, there have been some changes in Spain. We have some news considering what’s happening in the Spanish Ecosystem. Are you aware of the latest time and attendance law?
It has come to action on the 12th of May 2019 giving the obligation to businesses to track the attendance and time spent at work of every single employee; to find out more considering this law, you can take a look here.
We published an article on the blog of itnig, where we discuss why this law will kill the innovation in Spain and Europe; you can take a look right here! Also, Factorial developed a free feature that companies can directly download to be compliant with the law.
Ok, so now that we are updated on legal news, we should maybe check out our podcasts of the month. You will not be disappointed as we are welcoming 5 guests this month for 5 explosive podcasts.
Roger started his first company in 1999, Powerdata, after self-teaching to program in C. He dedicated himself to solving company’s management problems and started different businesses that were sold later on. One day, when explaining his Product to a customer, he found himself with another issue leading him to develop Password Bank (a software centralising all passwords compatible with any platform).
Password Bank obtained 1M€ of private investment with Inveready among others. This amount was multiplied several times with Spanish public financing rounds. He moved to the USA because that’s where he found his “5 ps”: Potential customers, investors, partners, competitors, suppliers. At the beginning it was costing him a lot, until he realised that as a small foreign startup, he did not meet any of the characteristics to sell to any big American Company.
After much frustrations and complications he ended up selling it to Symantec, for 25 times his Revenue, and became it’s executive. Roger explains the problems of international taxation, tells us about the functioning of companies in Delaware, price competitiveness in technology between USA and Spain and his experience with government loans. His latest project is Plazah, a Marketplace recommendation where any company can sell products with direct sales from its own users.
In this week’s podcast, the product-focused serial entrepreneur Pablo Villalba shares with us his story.
Discover how he launched RedBooth, and grew this communication and collaboration platform to a 7-digits yearly revenue business.
Find out how the MVP of the 8fit was originally a basic Google Doc sheet and how grew into a multi-million users App bringing tens of millions of dollars of yearly revenue.
Find out about the Product-focused innovation and the Challenges that hide behind the scale of an innovative business.
In this week’s episode of Startup Inside Stories, Bernat Farrero (CEO @itnig), Jordi Romero (CEO @Factorial) discuss with Eduardo Manchón the CEO @Mailtrack and founder of Panoramio, one of the first exits to big tech companies produced in Spain. He is also a self-proclaimed grandpa in the Spanish startup ecosystem.
He studied psychology and focused on learning human sciences, which combined to his nerd roots brought him to human computer interaction, he learnt Nielsen principles and before he knew Ubaldo Huerta (previous guest in our podcast) hired him to work on his startup Loquo. There he learnt everything to start his own bootstrapped company, Panoramio, in 2003 with cofounders Cuenca and Florido, each working from their home.
Panoramio was the origin of geolocalized photo-sharing in Google Earth initially and Google Maps later on. After some ups and downs in the collaboration, Google finally made an offer to acquire the company paying from “1M to 5M per Kg of founder” on the 31st of May 2007. He worked at Google Switzerland while the “vesting period” lasted and then went back to live sabatically at his hometown.
In 2013 he joined Mailtrack initially leading Product and becoming the CEO afterwards. Mailtrack is an email notification SaaS with tens of thousands of paying users. The company was cofounded by Nacho González (also previous guest in the podcast), who later left to start Hireflix, his last venture.
In this week’s podcast (in English) we talk to Tyson Kallberg, head of design at Asana, about how he ended up in the company, how the founders Dustin and Justin left Facebook to start it and the growth the company has experienced since he started working there.
We discuss how important the fact of starting a business in SF is, compared to other cities in the world, the work culture in the Bay Area, and why he thinks Asana’s culture is different to others.
We obviously talk about design, and Tyson shares with us how Asana’s design team is structured and the challenges of keeping the hierarchy as flat as possible while growing fast. We talk about their roadmap and how the different teams join efforts to drive it together.
Tyson finally gives us his thoughts on what a product manager does or at least should do.
In this week’s episode, Bernat Farrero (CEO @itnig) and Juan Rodriguez (CEO @camaloon) discuss the life of Vicens Martí, entrepreneur and executive of many companies.
Vicens defines himself as sector agnostic, he thinks that business is business and there is no such thing as “this industry is different”. After being entrepreneur in the hospitality industry, playing different roles at Cirsa, AMC and Port Aventura, he went on to become one of the initial executives who started Vueling and brought it to the IPO. He learnt a lot from this process and specially from its founder Carlos Muñoz.
After a short period as CEO of the family-owned Custo Barcelona, he then was convinced by Carlos Blanco to lead Akamon and accepted the challenge for 5 years until he brought it to the 28M$ exit to a Canadian company. He keeps involved as the CEO of the acquiring company, then renamed to Tangelo Games.
Vicens thinks he can play a crucial role and “bring agency” to the places where he gets involved and have a rich personal life at the same time. He is now President at El Row, which makes over 30M€ and 5M in EBITDA by organizing electronic music shows. He especially enjoys this sector as he is a big fan of electronic music. As a bonus, he tells us the experience of participating in the Burning man annual festival.
Last week the IPOs season continued, and also new gigantic private rounds. These are exciting times for many Internet industries, but also for the fans of good coffee like we are at Itnig (soon we’ll share some related news of our own! 😉). Luckin Coffee, a Chinese coffeeshop chain that opened only in 2017 went public in Nasdaq last week, raising 561M$ in the public market on top of the 550M$ previously raised in venture capital. The goal of this ambitious 3b$ priced retailer is to replace the giant 96b$ Starbucks in China with new 2.500 locations, all opening this year. Boom! Yes, that’s the pace in which China intends to replace western brands (hello, Apple)!
Also, Softbank strikes back in Europe with the 484M$ monster round in the German Atrapalo-like travel and leisure booking platform, GetYourGuide. Lastly, but not least, Glovo will have now a harder time competing after the biggest operations company in the world, Amazon, invested 575M$ in Deliveroo to compete against the leader in last mile food delivery service, Uber Eats. People wonders if the service will integrate with Amazon Prime or if Amazon will build the new AWS for cloud kitchens (or ghost kitchens)… as we said, exciting times ahead!
One of the biggest recent success stories in Europe is undeniably the money transfer startup Transferwise. The company has recently announced a $292 million in secondary share sale which won’t bring fresh money but will make some of their initial shareholders and employees pretty happy. Reports claim that this round has made 33 new millionaires. We might be seeing a wave of great Estonian startups coming up soon !
This month was also very positive for the cloud-based identity platform for developers Auth0 as they raised $103 million to become a unicorn. And we lost the count. Unicorns don’t seem to be so rare in recent times and some start to question if the real unicorns are actually the profitable startups (like Transferwise seems to be).
This week the European Funding Rounds have been led by the United Kingdom, followed by Spain, Germany and Switzerland. Here is what has been happening :
🇪🇸 SPAIN
The Madrid based startup Playtomic has raised €6M and is leading the funding round of country, followed by the Barcelona based startup Holded that has secured €6M during their Serie A funding round. Finally, the video-based insurtech solution Bdeo has raised €1M
On the Spanish territory the Famous Barcelona-based delivery app Glovo has raised €150M in Series D funding by the venture capital Lakestar.
Almost 18M€ raised in Spain:
🇬🇧 UNITED KINGDOM
In the United Kingdom, the week has been rich in investment starting by the investment of €17.4M for ButternutBox, which is a fresh food delivery service for dogs; surprising right? 💸🐶 Closely followed by Wheely, the luxury ride hailing startup that secured €13.4M in Serie B Funding. Finally, two London-based Startups Muso raised €4M to address digital piracy and Sythesia has raised €2.8M
In the United Kingdom, it is the London-based payment solution platform Checkout.com that leads this week’s investment with the raise of€269M in Serie A Investment, followed by the funding of FutureLearn with €58.6M from SEEKGROUP. We can also note smaller investments such as; Pharmaseal International closing a funding round of €1.1M and the video-based hiring platform startup Tempo raising €2.05M.
🇩🇪 GERMANY
In Germany, the startup Rum has received €10M from SAP
In Germany, it is the Berlin based digital freight forwarder Freighthub that leads the national investment round with the raise of €26.8M in Series B fundingfollowed by the 7-Figures SeedFunding of the miRdetect which developped a detection method of testicular cancer
🇨🇭 SWITZERLAND
The Zurich Based startup RosieReality raised €2M to build AR games for kids
🇫🇷 FRANCE
To finish the week, the Paris-based trucking marketplace Fretlink that raised €25M in Series B Funding.
Other news in Europe this month:
Those are the May 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!
At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the startups news and updates flying around. We are quite delighted about this month’s podcasts. If you’re interested and passionate about tech, Xavi Sans, CEO of Orain Technologies, is having a talk about his company and their challenges on our weekly podcast.
Orain converts vending and self-service machines into intelligent devices (“smart”) offering a communication interface to consumers via chatbots; using their own phones as a modem. They are connecting machines to the Internet while allowing them to keep their database synchronized.
The company faces a huge but highly atomized market with many possible verticals to conquer. Their business model is a SaaS, paying the companies that sell the machine’s products.
Orain has a double challenge in its ‘Go To Market operation’ through the engagement of the companies and users. They now have 20 employees and are pursuing both objectives and growth. He mentioned that their growth rate corresponds to 300% a month and that in the last year they closed 400k€ turnover between Spain and Italy.
The business-funded itself in a first phase, and at the end of 2017 closed a round of 1M€ with business angels and a vending machine plastic cups manufacturer. Xavi is currently preparing another much larger round to continue growing.
What about other successful businesses and their stories? Let’s move on to three other podcasts where you’ll learn about VR technologies, WeFitter and B2B. Finally, you will discover the great project and enterprise Bound4Blue, a tech product which is having a great environmental impact.
Jordi Valls claims that VR technologies are in its sweetest moment. Among other aspects, its market acceleration is caused by the hardware improvements and reductions in costs, with devices like the Oculus VR Gothat can be purchased for as little as 219€. Jordi anticipates that Oculus was a very visionary acquisition by Facebook with the potential to become even bigger than Facebook itself.
Today gaming is the main application we see on VR and Sony is the current vendor leader. However, there have been some new companies using it for therapies, training, and many other uses. In the b2b space Mentor VR is one of these new models, inspired by the American STRIVR that used VR to train over Walmart’s 1M employees. They plan to start as an agency that records and prepares the 3D videos and productize it along the way.
Jordi finishes by telling us his previous adventures as an entrepreneur, its stay in Palo Alto to found 1sleeve (customized iPad cases), then Startup Embassy (apartments for entrepreneurs), to come back to Spain to work for a packaging company and then move to Menorca to lead a “startup deacceleration program” called Menorca Millennials.
Wefitter was founded in 2014. applied to Itnig’s “acceleration program” (when it still existed). They did not enter as it was too early for the team. At this time, he also lost his CTO. Carlos shares with the frustration and importance of having a good CTO to boost a startup on the Internet, which Wefitter did not get.
After long existential debates between B2b and B2c, a recurring theme in the stories of Itnig podcasts, WeFitter opted for the B2b. Its model is the sale of the sports information of its users to companies and insurers. Carlos debates with Jordi and Bernat how to evangelize in a market that is not yet ready (insurers). Bernat cites the models to Google performance, but also Marfeel and Red Points as a formula to explain new ways to solve problems.
One of the key elements of Wefitter’s story is the number of accelerators he’s been through. It passed through Seedrocket (Barcelona), H-Farm + Technogym (Italy), 500 startups (San Francisco), Articstartup (Finland) and Katapult Accelerator (Norway). Carlos jokes that being accelerated becomes a lifestyle and that he takes more learning into the next project than those that can be achieved in an MBA.
In this week’s podcast, Pau Fernandez (CFO of Quipu and Factorial), and Dan Kragt (CEO of Quipu) discuss with José Miguel Bermúdez, CEO of Bound4Blue.
José explains about being passionate about sailing and aeronautics all his life. He co-founded in April 2015, his company Bound4Blue. Boats use a lot of energy and resources that hurt the environment and the income statements of naval companies; Bound4Blue provides boats tailored complementary rigid wingsail technology. Their product uses the power of the wind to provide maritime transport with a solution to decrease emission levels and fuel consumption.
He explains that the combustibles of the boats are extremely dangerous for the environment, as well as dirty and of very low quality. Bound4Blue’s products could be applicable to 80% of the world’s fleet, representing more than 50.000 boats. Their technology is adaptable to existing boats and can be implemented to the design of new ones. The concept is not new, as the wind has been used since the beginning of ages; all Bound4Blue as done is to industrialize and transform it into promising technology.
José explains that fuel can represent over 50% of the costs of a trip and a solution like Bound4Blue’s can represent a big boost in the margins. José also explains how they design, install (with the actual production outsourced) and maintain the installations. Therefore they can have a margin on the setup of the sails and on the recurring revenue they can charge to their clients
José underlines that the maritime sector is very conservative and that the real challenge is to prove the positive impact their product would have on the industry and the environment. He mentions that some other well-known companies are working on the development of technologies in this sector; such as Airbus, working on the development of technological kites to pull boats.
To finish the discussion, José concludes that maritime transport is viable and that it’s all about modernizing it and giving it time to adapt to technology. In the future, he sees Bound4Blue the leader of this technology type.
Those are the April 2019 startups 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!
At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the startups news and updates flying around. This month, we’re having a blast as we welcomed Javier Suárez, from Travelperk, for our weekly podcast. We discover how he got where he is today, his experience and more about Travelperk.
Javier started his career in Booking as a restless seller which quickly passed to the product and “innovation” section. Here he discovered the huge demand for business travel that the market leaders weren’t covering. This led him to write the business plan of Travelperk, for when he will meet the rights co-founders. He finally met them, and his new associate Avi Meir convinced him to move to Barcelona to start their journey.
His first proposition was an algorithm that was calculating the complete cost of the travel, but while selling it they realised that their potential clients were looking for a more complete solution that will allow them to buy directly the whole travel online. So they started working in order to close funding round ( from seed to series C) until being one of the only European companies that raise that much money in such a short period of time: 71M€ in 3 years.
The product to construct is infinite, but they did it quickly. According to Javier they were “building the plane in the middle of the flight!”. In order to do it, from the first day they used “manuals” operations to compensate the fact that parts of the product weren’t ready.
Their ambitions are huge, they already have a workforce of more than 300 employees and offices in the USA, Berlin, Londres and Barcelona and are currently opening ones in Paris and Amsterdam.
Let’s continue and discover other great podcasts we had during this month.
Jorge explains the peculiar model of “pre-idea” and “pre-team” incubation. The entrepreneurs get to know each other at an event called “All startup”. There, they are forming teams and decide on which project they want to invest their time for the next few years. Demium is associated founder of every project with 15% of the capital, a team will involve itself during the first phases to help to raise the next funding round.
Bernat poses the problem of when an associate from the first steps continue with the project on the long-term (11:19) and the difficulty for the entrepreneurs to appreciate his contribution to middle-term. Juan delves (14:20) and finds it difficult to understand the “cover charge” of 15%. Jorge responds that a lot of entrepreneurs learn and decide to launch their projects thanks to Demium, and that the satisfaction level is really high. Concretely Demium launched 57 companies, even though it obviously counts with some unhappy entrepreneurs.
Jorge explains what exactly is it to incubate a company during the first 6 months (20:00) and how they study markets to assure an easy way to raise money. He gave us as well his comparative vision on the obvious reference of YCombinator (33:16) and why accelerators are models of brands building and of winner takes it all (42:30) and from there his international expansion strategy.
We finished joking about their last articles published on the press which made a buzz on Twitter (50:35).
This week Bernat Farrero (CEO @Itnig) and Jordi Romero (CEO @Factorial) discuss with Oriol Blanc (Product @Quipu) and César Miguelañez (Product @Factorial) on what criteria should be used to lead the construction of a digital product in 2019.
20 years ago Ben Horowitz described a good product director as the CEO of the product (05:17). Oriol and César give their views and insights on what this responsibility actually means on a daily basis and where they take their main inputs. Both explain how their teams are structured, what interesting profiles form them (21:00), and how they fight to continuously point efforts towards the customer while keeping a steady long term vision and strategy.
César and Oriol explain what methodology they use to generate roadmap, how they delegate responsibility on their multidisciplinary teams to fully focus on one problem at a time, what is the cycle from idea to production (25:15), what is a Minimum Viable Product and a Minimum Lovable Product (33:48), the differences between testable, usable and lovable. They also tackle the relationship with technology and marketing (42:40), with whom they constantly interact. Finally, they share what tools help them successfully coordinate efforts and people (52:30).
This week Bernat Farrero (Itnig) and Juan Rodriguez (Camaloon) talk with Javier Aracil, who founded Mr Wonderful with his wife in 2011.
Mr. Wonderful is a Digitally Native Vertical Brand that was created by a creative couple in the spare time while they both worked at different creative agencies in Barcelona. Their particular vertical is optimistic messaging and design that they print on different products including mugs, notebooks, glasses, you name it!
Mr. Wonderful is also an example of a blog/community first business, as Angie (Javi’s wife) was already blogging in 2011 even before selling the first product online. Their starting niche market was “original weddings”, but they managed to extrapolate it to mothers, families and mass market. Early offline distribution was key to their success, but “without a powerful online community, they would have never convinced main retailers”.
Mr. Wonderful has been profitable since they one, as this is “how the founders understand business”. They alone brought the company from 0 to over 30M€ in 2016. However, last year they sold a part of their business and prepared their company for international expansion, letting a VC firm from Madrid in their capital and scaling their team from 70 to 140 people.
Those are the March 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!
At Itnig, we know it’s hard to keep up with all the news and updates flying around. We have a special surprise for you this month. On our weekly podcast, we had the opportunity to welcome Andrés Pla, Founder and CEO of Prontopiso, and talk proptech and more. You will discover an animated talk with Bernat Farrero (Itnig CEO) and Juan Rodríguez (Camaloon CEO). Moreover, you will discover startups news and other 2019 updates.
