Hay muchos modelos de open innovation para tu corporación, pero el que traemos nosotros es distinto: Corporate Venture Building. Somos la primera venture builder corporativa en España: el modelo de innovación disruptiva que combina lo mejor de corporaciones y startups para construir nuevas empresas escalables y disruptivas. Para ello tenemos un alineamiento estratégico con la corporación desde el primer momento y asumimos los riesgos al mismo nivel. Puedes acceder a nuestra web para saber más sobre nosotros, también te lo podemos explicar en detalle en persona si nos pones un mail. Leed sobre nuestra historia y podéis ganar un Workshop sobre Lean Startup y Design Thinking para celebrar este excelente 2018!

Startup funding news 💸

• Barcelona-based hospitality recruitment startup Hosco raised €5.4 million in a funding round led by Nauta Capital, with participation from Athos Capital and several business angels
• SaaS startup BEWE.io raised €2 million from DILA Capital, The Venture City, TORO Ventures and other investors. The company sells a SaaS product for the beauty and wellness industry and is led by Diego Ballesteros (co-founder of Sin Delantal and Sin Delantal Mexico, both sold to Just Eat)
• Spanish biopharmaceutical company AbilityPharma raised €1.2 million, the largest ever on crowdfunding platform Capital Cell

Tech M&A 🎊

• Vietnamese company Vingroup acquired 51% of BQ, the Spanish smartphone manufacturer. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Xataka has a good story on BQ’s current state and how the company’s business has decreased in the past few years. Just months ago, apparently BQ laid off more than 200 workers in Spain

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
• ’Desnudando, con datos, a K Fund’: K Fund’s Iñaki Arrola explained in a post how the firm manages dealflow and how its investment process works
• Innocells, a division of Banco Sabadell, participated in a $6.5 million round closed by Mexican startup Undostres
• I’m a bit tired of writing about VTC (the licenses that both Cabify and Uber need to operate in Spain), but this is significant news: Auro New Transport, one of the Spanish companies that has a higher a number of licenses, raised €50 million in debt from private investors to be able to continue to operate. Tech entrepreneurs and investors such as Félix Ruiz (Tuenti, Jobandtalent), Zaryn Dentzel (Tuenti) or Hugo Arévalo (Hawkers) are investors in Auro
• Kippel01 talked to Quino Fernandez, CEO of startup accelerator Conector, to discuss the program’s future plans and their experience in running corporate programs for companies such as Abanca, Bankia and Seat
• Public institution ICO says that it will invest €209 million in 10 different Spanish investment vehicles (including VC firms) next year

Startup news 💡

• La Información published an interesting profile of Keatz, the Berlin-born startup that operates a network of ghost kitches around Europe. La Informacion talked to Keatz’s Spanish managers, Joaquin Mencia and Carlos Maribona. Keatz is a portfolio company of K Fund. We invested in the company about 18 months ago and JME joined as an investor a few months later
• According to El Confidencial, Hawkers has a new CEO, Nacho Puig, who replaces Francisco Perez. El Confidencial published a story a few weeks ago about the different troubles the ecommerce company is facing
• Marketing4Ecommerce interviewed Ramon Martinez, CEO of ecommerce startup Dentaltix. The company will close 2018 with almost €4 million in revenue and it expects to hit €7 million in 2019
• El Mundo profiled Guillem Viladomat and his startup Safe365 (previously called Alpify). The app allows users to look after and find the geolocation of children, old people, etc
• Barcelona Tech City interviewed Carlota Pi, CEO of energy startup Holaluz. The company has 160,000 clients and expects to reach half a million in the next few years
• Here’s a profile of Tuvalum, the marketplace for second hand bycicles. The startup expects to reach €2 million in gross sales this year and is looking to raise €1 million
• El Pais published a short profile of Lavin Luis, co-founder of SaaS pricing startup Boardfy
• Spanish startup Bdeo won the 2018 edition of South Summit Mexico

Big company news 🏦

• Alphabet’s (Google) cybersecurity group Chronicle is expanding to Spain with a growing team of virus hunters
• El País interviewed Miguel Álava, president of AWS in Southern Europe. In the interview, Miguel talks about adoption of cloud computing in Spain, both amongst private companies and public institutions
• Japanese giant Rakuten could be interested in buying more real estate in Barcelona in order to open a bigger office in the Catalan capital, perhaps creating as many as 100 new jobs

Tech and policy 💂🏼

• Madrid’s local government has requested escooter companies Lime, VOI and Wind to stop operations in the Spanish capital, since they don’t comply with local regulations. All three companies have met Madrid’s request and got rid of escooters for now
• Spanish regulator CNMV has fined BME (Bolsas y Mercados Españoles) with €150,000 for not doing a good enough job in checking Gowex’s activity
• More fines in Spain, but in this case, Oracle has been able to put off a €25 million fine from the Spanish tax office. The US giant won’t have to paid, at least for now

Interesting reads 🤓

• Barcelona Global, with the help of CaixaBank DayOne and Barcelona Tech City, published an analysis of the Catalan capital as a startup hub: the conclusions are the usual, that the city needs more senior talent, Series B capital and a better tax system, especially when it comes to stock options
• David Miranda (Osborne Clarke) published an interesting tweetstorm about andilution clauses in SHAs and term sheets
• Vicenç García-Altés (software developer at ThoughtWorks): ’Offoboardings’, or how to properly say goodbye to people who have worked at your company

Podcasts (and videos) of the week 🎧

• K Fund interviewed Miguel Arias (Wayra and former COO of Carto)
• Lunes Inspiradores interviewed Xavier Pladellorens, co-founder of Deporvillage
• David Bonilla published Andres Torrubia’s keynote at the 2018 Tarugoconf
• En.digital interviewed Daniel Vecino (The Hero Plan)