Jul 29, 2019

Novobrief #174: Varsavsky's Overture raised $20m. ValidatedID gets €2m. BBVA invests again in Atom. Legal status of Deliveroo riders.

Revue

Last week in the Spanish startup ecosystem

July 29 · Issue #130 · View online

Manually curated by Jaime Novoa. The best way to keep up with the Spanish startup and tech ecosystem.

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by Goin. Goin is a Spanish fintech based in Barcelona that helps users achieve their objectives through automatic finance. The user selects an objective -buy an iPhone-, connects her bank and card and will start saving automatically. Download Goin for iOS and Android.

Currently Goin has more than 222,000 users and has already started its European expansion. That’s why they are looking for new positions to expand their team (more info below). They are currently located at 22@ (Barcelona) at Cabify’s former offices (+500 square meters) and they are looking for a startup of 10-24 employees to share the space, activities and knowledge.

Startup funding news 💸

○ Martin Varsavsky’s Overture raised $20 million from Khosla Ventures, Rakuten, Felicis Ventures, the Wojcicki sisters and more

○ According to La Informacion, Scytl could soon raise €5 million

○ Invoicing and eSignature startup Validated ID raised €2 million from Caixa Capital Risc and Cuatrecasas Ventures

○ Madrid-based Leuko, a startup developing a non-invasive white blood cell monitoring device, raised $1.8 million in seed financing from Good Growth Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures and Nina Capital

○ Valencia-based Endurance Motive, developers of new energy solutions for handling vehicles and industrial logistics, raised €700,000 from Tech Transfer UPV

○ Barcelona-based Picker raised €650,000 from Lanai Partners, Reus Capital and business angels

○ Food startup Allergeneat raised €200,000

○ Barcelona-based cloud computing startup Abiquo raised funding from Nauta Capital and Wayra

Startup exits 🎊

○ MasMovil acquired MVNO Hits Mobile. MasMovil also posted financial results for the first half of 2019

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

○ Spanish VC firm Cardumen Capital disclosed investments in Israeli startups MiltiVu and CoreTigo

○ Axis is looking for a management firm for its FOND-ICO program, to continue to invest public money into Venture Capital firms

○ Carmen Alfonso Rico (Samaipata Ventures): ’5 things about careers (in VC) nobody told me’

Startup news 💡

○ EU-Startups published an overview of startup institutions and people that comprise Madrid’s startup ecosystem

○ Seedtable: ’100 Barcelona Startups to Watch in 2019’

○ El Referente published a long overview of the Spanish proptech sector

○ TravelPerk launched flexible refunds to help businesses save on cancelled trips

○ Javier Andres, founder of Ticketea which got acquired by Eventbrite last year, is leaving the company

○ El Referente interviewed Olivier Bracard and Carl Julien, founders of hospitality professional network Hosco. The Barcelona-based startup has 5,500 clients and more than 0.5 million users

○ UK challenger bank Atom raised another £50 million from BBVA and other investors at £530 million valuation. BBVA owns 39% of the British neobank

○ Online groceries startup Tudespensa.com to shut down. The company says that penetration of online groceries shopping in Spain remains too low

○ Bankia to start selling loans on iAhorro, becoming the 18th Spanish banking institution to rely on the Spanish startup

○ Startup profiles: ARVision (adtech AR), Click&Drive (car subscription service), Stayforlong (travel)

Goin is hiring for a marketing management position, UX designer, Customer Support (Italian + English required) and Expansion lead. It’s a great opportunity to join the company in sunny Barcelona, 15 minutes away from the beach and join their super passionate team.

If you’re interested in any of the above positions, reach out to Goin’s CEO David Riudor here.

Big company news 🏦

○ Cinco Dias interviewed Jose Cerdan, head of Telefonica Empresas. The division has the goal of replacing Indra and IBM as the main provider of IT products and services to large Spanish corporations

○ Telefonica posted financial results for the first half of 2019. Profit increased by +2% YoY to €1.7 billion, but revenues slightly decreased (-0.8%)

○ Xataka interviewed Pedro Garcia, Spain’s country manager of Amazon Alexa

Tech and policy 💂🏼

○ A Spanish judge says that Deliveroo’s riders should be considered employees instead of contractors. I’ve lost count of the contradictory claims in Spain regarding this topic. Deliveroo will appeal

Interesting reads 🤓

○ According to OCDE, only 15% of startups in the world have a female founder and only 6% have been founded exclusively by women. The numbers in Spain are slightlier positive. El Pais looked into this and talked to Tatiana Lopez, founder of Nanogap, and Laurence Fontinoy, founder of Woom

○ In-depth profile of Pilar Manchón by Xataka. Pilar built and sold Indisys to Intel out of Sevilla and then moved to Amazon and now Roku

○ Marc Antoni Macia (Novicap): ’From 0 to €100 million: four lessons learned in scaling Novicap’

○ Luigi Mallardo (Intuitive Art): ’Three types of European SaaS CEOs when it comes to Sales: 1. Bottleneck 2. Maradona 3. Scaleup Challenger. Find out more insight in this article’

○ Felix Lopez (Google): ’You can also learn from the bad’

○ Caroline Lagergren (Expand To Spain): ’Reasons for a startup to include Spain in the Market Expansion 2020’

○ Pablo Ventura (K Fund): ’How to hire non-EU workers from Spain’

Podcasts of the week 🎧

○ K Fund interviewed Iñaki Arrola

○ Marketing4Ecommerce interviewed Javier Andres, founder of Ticketea, sold to Eventbrite

○ Itnig interviewed Marc Vicente of ABA English and formerly of Rakuten

○ Lunes Inspiradores interviewed Francesc Riverola of FXStreet

○ En.digital interviewed Jesus Alonso Gallo (PC Futbol, Restaurantes.com)

Want to promote your products and services to 5,080 relevant thinkers and doers in the Spanish tech ecosystem? To sponsor this newsletter or promote your open job positions, contact us and we’ll provide you with more details.

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