Huawei Mobile España, EL PAÍS Retina e Ironhack, organizan el primer Hackathon enfocado a la Inteligencia Artificial en España el próximo 16 de Diciembre en Madrid. 11 equipos de 4 personas cada uno, competirán en este evento durante 12 horas, optando a ganar hasta €5.000 en premios. ¡Apúntate ya!

Startup funding news 💸

• Coinbase and others invested $12.75 million in Securitize to create ‘digital security offerings’. Securitize is led by Carlos Domingo, former R&D lead at Telefonica
• Motosharing startup Yego raised €1.2 million from The Crowd Angel and business angels
• Carsharing comparison app Chipi has raised funding from Angel Cano (former BBVA CEO) and Rodríguez Zapatero (former country manager of Google in Spain)

Startup exits 🎊

• According to Kippel01, Wallapop sold the remaining stake in Letgo USA, the join venture it created when it merged its US business with its local rival Letgo, to the parent company for $189 million

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Sponsored
  DayOne Caixabank is once again looking for startups to join the 12th edition of its ‘Premios Emprendedor XXI’ contest. This year’s edition has a special focus on companies in the fields of agritech, travel, ecommerce, fintech/insurtech, impact tech and health, as well as local champions in each of Spain’s 17 regions and Portugal. There’s a combined €525,000 to be distributed amongst the winners and the possibility of joining previous successes such as RedPoints, Waynabox or Scutum. Applications are open until December 12th
• Startupxplore published its annual review of the Spanish investment landscape: 3,400 startups, €1.2 billion invested across 142 deals
• Pitchbook interviewed Carles Ferrer, Partner at Barcelona-based VC firm Nauta Capital: ‘Why this VC puts efficiency above unicorns’
• Spanish incubator Demium Startups signed an agreement with legal firm Metricson to offer legal advice to over 100 projects incubated at Demium Startups in 2019
• Mapfre announced the launch of insur_space, an acceelerator program for insurtech startups. Last week it was also disclosed that Mapfre will invest up to €25 million in Mundi Ventures’ insurtech fund
• Berlin-based insurtech startup ELEMENT raises €23 million Series A. One of the investors in the German company is Madrid-based fund Mundi Ventures
• Merlin launched proptech accelerator with IMPACT, seeks European startups

Startup news 💡

• eDreams Odigeo posted a loss of almost €17 million in the first six months of this year, down from a profit of €6.5 million in 2017. The company says that this is due to heavy investments it’s making to evolve its business model
• Cabify announced that Spanish clients will be able to pay with cash
• Spotahome announced the hiring of Balaji Nageswaran as Chief Product Officer. Balaji who previously worked at Amazon and HelloFresh as Head of Product, will be based in London, where the company expects to open a new office
• Barcelona-based adtech startup Marfeel expects to reach €30 million in revenues next year, up from €17 million in 2018. The company 132 employees in its Barcelona and New York offices and says it will increase its staff by 55% next year. Kippel01 also published last week an analysis of different Spanish initatives associated to the media sector, including Marfeel
• Elderly care marketplae Joyners disclosed that it’ll be launching a B2B offering. The company expects to reach €1.5 million in revenue in 2018
• Xataka profiled ‘La Casa de las Carcasas’, an Extremadura-based company that sells cases for smartphones and that expects to reach €30 million in revenues this year
• Spanish energy startup Lucera says it expects to close 2018 with €7.5 million in revenues
• El Confidencial profiled Como Una Marmota, the Spanish ecommerce startup that sells mattresses online. The company expects to reach €5 million in sales this year
• Low-code SaaS platform Apply Digital Systems has chosen Barcelona to locate its headquarters. The company expects to reach €1 million in revenue this year and €3.4 million in 2019
• Madrid-based smartphone manufacturer BQ signed a partnership with Vietnamese company Vingroup to create a manufacturing centre in the country and sell two its phones there
• Sevilla-based startup Footters announced a partnership with the Spanish football association to stream matches in the 2B and Third divisions
• El Pais profiled Jorge Díaz, former VP of marketing at Ticketbis, and now co-founder and CEO of ticketing startup Tracer
• La Voz de Galicia wrote about Todotaladros, a Coruña-based ecommerce company that this year expects to sold €5 million worth of power drills and other appliances
• El Pais profiled various startups operating in the cybersecurity space, including AlienVault, Devo, Blueliv or Countercraft
• El Referente interviewed Christian Rodríguez and Guillermo Gaspart, co-founders of Barcelona-based travel startup ByHours
• Product Hackers is looking to select the best Spanish digital products. The awards amount to €300,000 for the various winners

Big company news 🏦

• Telefonica launched Conecta Empleo, a chatbot that guides candidates towards online courses that suit them best based on their CV and market needs from companies
• If you can’t beat them, join them: El Corte Ingles announced a partnership with Alibaba that includes various commercial agreements

Tech and policy 💂🏼

• According to Cinco Días, Spain will announce the launch of its first ever sandbox for fintech and insurtech startups before the end of the year. This, in theory, will allow startups to try their services with consumers without the need of obtaining a license from regulators
• If new laws are passed, the Spanish government will be able to shut down websites without the involvement of a judge
• Last week the DGT (Dirección General de Tráfico) announced that in August a pedestrian was killed in Barcelona by an escooter. Apparently, the DGT is looking into restricting even more the use of escooters, banning their use on sidewalks and limiting their speed to 25 km/h

Interesting reads 🤓

• Spain’s video game industry is experiencing a boom in jobs, turnover: €1.4 billion in revenues and 8,700 jobs
• David Miranda (Osborne Clarke) has been publishing some very interesting tweetstorms lately. Here’s on one how liquidation preferences work and another one on ESOP and stock options
• Alfredo Artiles (Audiense): ’Post-mortem one-on-one meetings’
• Caroline Lagergren (Expand To Spain): ’The search for elusive startup talent leads to Spain’

Podcasts of the week 🎧

• BBVA announced the launch of two podcast shows, ‘Deep Talks’ and 'Data Historias’
• En.digital interviewed Guillem Barnolas (technical director at BQ)