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!
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
- Gymforless becomes Andjoy!
- Venture-backed Modis Therapeutics acquired by Zogenix for $250M
- Enjoy Raises $150M for its mobile store with ex-Apple executive as CEO
- Insurtech startup Ethos raises $60M in GV-led Series C
- Used car startup Cazoo raises further €27.7M, bringing total pre-launch funding to over €60M
- VeganNation raises $10M to create a digital vegan economy
- Swedish insurtech Hedvig raises €9M
- Canadian legaltech startup Clio raises $250M
- Madrid-based Soto Solar raises €100M to build solar panels
- Bellwether Coffee, ‘the fastest-growing company in coffee,’ raises $40M
- Paris-based Spendesk raises €35M for its spend management platform
- Exeter-based edtech startup Sparx raises €22M for its maths platform
- French startup Robocath raises €5M for its cardiovascular systems
- Home renovation startup Aquí Tu Reforma raised €650K
- Barcelona-based SaaS startup Quipu announces new CEO and €2 million in additional funding
- London-based Snyk accelerates dev-first security with €63M
- Industrial wearable startup ProGlove raises €36M to expand globally
- Keranova raises €24M for its robotic solution to treat cataracts
- Stockholm-based CAKE raises €12.6M for its electric motorcycles
- Lisbon proptech startup CASAFARI raises €5M
- Malaga-based ecommerce company Tiendanimal raised €12.5M
- San Sebastian-based startup Vicebiotech raised €3.5M
- Barcelona-based startup Ability Pharmaceuticals raised €3.5M
- HappyOrNot raises €22.6M in employee feedback solution
- Bilbao-based startup Lookiero raises €17M
- Sustainable food delivery service Cortilia raises €8.5M
- Lavanda raises $5M to legitimize short-term renting market
- Ability Pharma raises €3,5M from Inveready and others
- Barcelona-based fintech Mitto has raised €2M
- Morgage comparison startup Trioteca raises €1M
- Barcelona-based hospitality startup Amenitiz raises €620K
- Barcelona-based coding school CodeOp raises €320K
- Unbabel raises $60M for their B2B machine-human translations
- Kheiron’s $22M Series A funds early breast cancer detection
- Blockchain-based digital securities startup Securitize raises $14M
- Crypto Quantique raises $8M to solve end-to-end IoT security
- Smart Protection raises €5.2M in a funding round led by Nauta Capital
- Munich-based Building Radar raises €5M to digitise the building industry
- Barcelona-based healthcare startup Elma raises $3.2M
- Minsait (Indra) acquires Valencia-based Afterbanks
Random Tech News
- Amazon’s Ring partners with more than 400 police forces.
- Tim Cook sells apple stock and the iPhone 11 launch event is almost here.
- Climate activists plan to use drones to shut down Heathrow Airportnext month.
- Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s account was hacked.
- Tesla says its ex-employee caused $167 million drop in its market cap
- Bezos and Musk’s satellite internet could save Americans $30B a year.
- Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’
- What’s wrong about meetings.
- Amazon’s shipping empire is challenging UPS and FedEx.
- Why phones that secretly listen to us are a myth.
- Stripe may disrupt the entire financial services ecosystem.
- Facebook leak contained information on 419 millions users.
- Facebook’s dating app is finally here.
- Most searched electric vehicles in each country.
- YouTube fined $170M for collecting kid’s data, but is it enough?
- SpaceX declined to move a Starlink satellite at risk of collision with an Eurpean satellite.
- The Apple Event in 2 minutes.
- France and Germany agree to block Facebook’s Libra
- Most popular programming languages since 2008.
- Using Spotify data to predict what songs will be hits
- Period tracker apps caught sharing sensitive health data with Facebook.
- Stripe presents the “Corporate Card”.
- The gambler who cracked the horse-racing code.
- First hint that body’s ‘biological age’ can be reversed.
- Airbnb to become a publicly-traded company during 2020.
- Uber lays off 435 people across engineering and product teams.
- Fintech company Stripe joins Silicon Valley elite with $35B valuation.
- Apple and Foxconn confirmed they broke a Chinese labor law.
- Instagram is restricting posts that promote weight loss products.
- Google says it wasn’t sexist to give its voice assistant a female voice.
- Twitter discloses another 10,000 accounts suspended for fomenting political discord globally.
- Facebook, WhatsApp will have to share messages with U.K.
- China’s new 500-megapixel camera can recognize you in a crowd.
- Skyscanner undergoes global rebranding.
- WeWork CEO steps down.
- McDonald’s to test Beyond Meat burger.
- Wireless attacks on aircraft instrument landing systems
- Police officers are also suffering from range anxiety.
- You will be able to choose Samuel L. Jackson to be your Amazon Alexa.
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!