Sep 14, 2021

This Week in London Startups - Issue #20, 14th September 2021

By London Startup Club • Issue #20 • View online

Intuit is acquiting Mailchimp for $12B

Making headlines this week is Intuit’s acquisition of Mailchimp for a reported $12B!

There are two things with this acquisition that stuck out for me.

Firstly, Intuit is known for its accounting software and is not a player in the email marketing space. One conclusion is that Intuit is looking to double down on its market share across the small business market and expand from just accounting software with a foray into email marketing.

Perhaps this is the first of many acquisitions for Intuit in providing more products and services to its customer base?

Secondly, Mailchimp is probably the most well known fully bootstrapped startups. They’ve raised a total of $0 of venture capital and aren’t from Silicon Valley either!

It’s a great example to show that you don’t have to raise capital to make your startup successful, although it can certainly help to accelerate your growth.

Haris Qureshi, Editor & Co-Founder @ London Startup Club

Spotlight

This week’s spotlight is community member Dave Schools, who was the first full-time employee at Hopin!

During his time Hopin has gone from 2 employees to nearly 1,000 in only 2 years! They’re still hiring, a lot - check out a featured role below.

Dave’s written about this experience what he’s learned at a startup that grows from $0 to $7.75 Billion in 2 Years - a great read and would definitely recommend it.

Got something worth shining a spotlight on? Message me on LinkedIn, and we’ll get you scheduled in for an upcoming newsletter!

Top News

Remember the Future Fund? Here’s where the UK government’s money went, more here
SoftBank partner took investor meeting barefoot and smoking, says Monzo founder, more here
Apple patches an NSO zero-day flaw affecting all devices, more here
Revolut faces backlash for charging ex-employees “extortionate” fee to cash in shares, more here
Eight European startups tapped by Y Combinator to become the next big thing in fintech, more here
Insurtech Marshmallow becomes just the second Black-founded unicorn in the UK, more here
SoftBank commits $3B more to investing in Latin American tech companies, more here

UK Funding Rounds

London-based Numan bags £30M to help crush men’s sexual health taboos, more here
Bristol-based autonomous drone startup Perceptual Robotics picks up £1.6M funding, more here
UK founded developer security platform Snyk bags £380M funding for global expansion, more here
London’s Pi Labs participates in $2.5M oversubscribed seed round of warehouse management platform Fulfilld, more here
London startup Zedosh that rewards Gen Z users for watching ads bags £400K funding, more here
Batmaid, Booking.com of cleaning services secures £20M funding; coming to London soon, more here
Manchester-based online reporting platform Culture Shift secures £1.5M to expand in UK, more here
London’s ‘Netflix for beauty and wellness products’ picks £72M funding in Series B round, more here
Oxford biotech Exscientia enters £70M collaboration with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, more here
London-based proptech Homeppl secures £1M to make rentals easy, more here
PassFort, a RegTech SaaS for KYC and AML, nets $16.2M, more here

International Highlights

Swiss equity management platform Ledgy plans UK expansion, bags $10M funding, more here
With UK expansion plans, AI computer vision startup Mobius Labs raises £4.5M funding, more here
Digital freight marketplace BridgeLinx raises $10 million in Pakistan’s largest seed funding, more here
SpotOn raises $300M at a $3.15B valuation and acquires Appetize, more here, more here