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!
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
- Student debt refinancing startup SoFi has raised $500M from the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) among others
- The location check-in startup Foursquare raises its largest funding round to-date with €150M and buys Placed
- The password management startup Dashlane raised $110M in a Series D round led by Sequoia Capital
- London-based yulife, closed an €11.3M Series A round to further grow their life insurance business
- Paris-based startup Mindsay raised $10M in a funding round led by White Star Capital.
- Mapping drone startup Wingtra raises €9M further scale its business globally and invest in R&D.
- SKIOO and SKITUDE merge in an €8M operation
- The Barcelona-based proptech startup Housfy has announced a €6M funding round to grow internationally.
- Wineissocial, the online wine club based in Barcelona, has closed 1M€.
- The Barcelona-based startup Carts Guru raises €900k gathering €2.15M in 2019
- Nanusens closes a €600k funding round through Crowdcube
- Madrid-based proptech startup urbanData Analytics is acquired by Alantra CPA
- London-based mobile payment company WorldRemit raises $175 million in Series D funding
- Security-focused SentinelOne raises $120M Series D
- Fiverr, the Israeli online freelancer platform plans to raise $100 million at a valuation of $600 million, post-money.
- Depop secures $62 million in funding for their online fashion marketplace
- The British startup TrueLayer scores $35 million to expand its in and outside of Europe
- Manchester-based startup Matillion raises €31 million Series C to scale its data transformation software.
- CARTO acquires the Andalusian startup Geographica.
- Barcelona-based Onna Technologies raises €9.8 million for its internal enterprise search engine
- Madrid-based traveltech startup PANGEA raises €9 million.
- The fintech startup Verse closes a 7M€ seed round to expand in Europe
- German foodtech startup YFood Labs secures €4.2 million in Series A funding
- Spanish-American startup Cien raises $3.5 million
- Barcelona-based learning startup Learnlife raises €3.1 million
- Salesforce buys Tableau for $15.7B becoming the largest M&A deal ever.
- The financial planning platform Wave Financial is set to be acquired for $537 million CAD.
- Volkswagen leads a $1B investment in Northolt to create a massive battery.
- Infarm raises $100M to help shoppers harvest on demand.
- Fintech startup Brex raises $100M.
- Vectra raises $100M in a Series E funding round for AI-driven network security.
- Swedish startup Stillfront raises €46M.
- Paris-based Lifen raises €20 million to transform communication in French medical institutions.
- Ÿnsect gets €20 million from the European Commission for its new protein plant in France.
- Active.ai increases its Series A from InnoCells.
- The Barcelona-based startup Gamestry raises €300K from their first investment
- Slack Sets Reference Price At $26 Per Share
- Collective Health raises SoftBank-led $205M Series E.
- Photography Platform Meero raises $230M In France’s Largest Series C To Date
- Druva Raises $130M for Cloud Data Protection, Becomes Latest SaaS Unicorn
- Paris-based PayFit raises €70 million to revolutionise European payroll
- German real estate investment platform Exporo raises €43 million to expand to neighboring countries
- Housell cierra una ronda de 12M€ con el apoyo de Cerberus and Axel Springer
- Paris-based pizza robot startup Pazzi raises €10 million and plans to launch its first restaurant
- The traveltech startup Pangea raises €9M to expand in Bilbao and Valencia
- Idealista purchases Tercero B completely for a total of €5M
- The Catalan startup Vottun raises €500K to grow its business in Spain
- Flash buys the Spanish startup Koko for an undisclosed amount to lead the electric scooter market in Madrid
Random Tech News
- What to expect from today’s Apple’s WWDC.
- What separates the best VCs from the rest of the pack.
- New ‘order’ sticker in Instagram Stories.
- WhatsApp with in-app ads from 2020.
- DJI with airplane and helicopter detectors from 2020.
- Spanish YouTuber gets 15 month prison sentence + 20.000€ fine.
- iTunes is about to go away after 18 years.
- Check out this solar-powered website.
- V-shaped planesand in-wing seating to make aviation more sustainable.
- Youtube to remove videos pushing extreme views.
- Michelin rolls out “puncture-proof” airless tires.
- 7 absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer.
- Do IMDB reviews ratings suffer from recency bias?
- Xiaomi explains how its under-screen camera actually works.
- Amazon just got FAA approval to fly drones.
- Adobe is working on a facial manipulation detection tool.
- Bitcoin causing CO2 emissions comparable to Hamburg.
- Boston Dynamics prepares to launch its first commercial robot.
- Amazon Spark shuts down.
- Explaining crypto with wardley maps.
- Huawei starts showing ads on smartphone lock screens.
- Spotify will finally have a Podcasts tab where you’ll be able to find ours.
- Meet Libra, Facebook’s new cryptocurrency.
- Genius lyrics site accuses Google of lifting its content and proves it by examining the apostrophes.
- Why Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles.
- Slack stock jumps on first day of trading.
- Amazon launches car rental business in Spain.
- Walmart is using AI cameras to catch thieves.
- Niantic’s new game based on the Harry Potter universe goes live.
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!