Optimus Price es una startup de Inteligencia Artificial que automatiza los precios, compras e inventario. Funciona para todas las tiendas, online y física, de cualquier tamaño y vertical. Buscamos inversores visionarios y retailers innovadores que quieran acompañarnos en esta aventura para liderar la revolución de la IA en retail.

¿Compartes su visión? Contacta con Carlos hoy.

Startup funding news 💸

• La Informacion published a profile of Madrid-based Paack, a last mile delivery solution for large & small businesses. The company says in the article that it wants to raise €15 million before the summer. Current investors include Kibo Ventures, Bonsai Venture Capital, Big Sur Ventures and FJ Labs
• Robo-advisor startup inbestMe announced a €1.3 million investment led by GVC Gaesco
• Barcelona-based IoT startup Cobugs raised €650,000 from JME Venture Capital, Athos Capital, Lanzame and other investors
• Travel startup FlyKube raised €400,000 from Bbooster Ventures, Archipielago Next and other investors
• Security and door access startup Akiles raised €232,000 via The Crowd Angel

Startup exits 🎊

• El Confidencial published a profile of Ricardo Garcia Cobaleda, the very much unknown entrepreneur behind the €150 million acquisition of Milanuncios by Schibsted
• German company Urban Sports Club acquired Madrid-based Bonofit, a subscription service of wellness services. Bonofit stems from Neboola, a company that’s building a portfolio of direct-to-consumer brands. Neboola says that it expects to reach €5 million in sales in 2019

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Mexican fashion startup GoTrendier raised $3.5 million from Latam investors and Banc Sabadell. Other Spanish investors had previously backed the company, including Antai, Bonsai Venture Capital or Pedralbes Partners
• El Español interviewed Andres Saborido, director of Wayra, to talk about the accelerator’s new strategy and how Telefonica wants to work and collaborate with startups
• The Crowd Angel crowdfunding platform announced that it helped 13 Spanish startups raise a total €5 million in 2018
• El Mundo interviewed Pepe Borrell, Crowdcube’s Spanish director. In the interview, Borrell talks about how Spain’s regulation for crowdfunding has affected his company
• Spanish bank Abanca announced the startups that will participate in its fourth accelerator program: Lendmarket, Sharenjoy, Dooing IT and Converfit
• Galician telco operator R announced the launch of an accelerator for digital content providers

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  Hilary McElwain of Optimus Price teaches us how to optimize prices and increase our sales and margins using Artificial Intelligence. In this 15-minute webinar you will learn which AI techniques work best to approach new retail challenges, such as global competition, intermediaries with power, and the low cost disruption, by changing your competitive model
• ’Inside TravelPerk: a look at Europe’s fastest scaling SaaS startup’ - pretty in-depth article about the Barcelona-based startup
• ElPeriodico interviewed Oscar Pierre, CEO of Glovo. In the interview Oscar says that 4 out every 5 deliveries in Spain are food-related and that the company is profitable in Spain and Italy
• Cabify is developing a mobility-as-a-service model to fight competition in Brazil
• The same newspaper also interviewed Pep Gomez (Fever) to talk about his new startup Reby. Reby offers an urban mobility service with escooters and has raised an undisclosed round of funding from international investors
• The Spanish association for the videogame industry published a report about the current state of the sector. The association believes that Brexit offers an opportunity to attract gaming studios to Spain and asks the government for fiscal incentives
• Ecommerce DNVB startup Meller said that it plans to open offline retail stores in the next few months, with the expectation of reaching between €2 and €4 million in sales in 2019
• Badi announced at the beginning of the year a €26 million Series B round. The company doesn’t make any money yet, but it plans to start implementing monetisation plans very soon, starting with payments
• OkDiario talked to Shoppermotion, a Madrid-based startup that’s built a retail analytics platform used by giants such as Coca Cola or Unilever
• According to Cinco Dias, the taxi strike that’s taking place in Madrid has increased Cabify and Uber’s business in the city by 25%
• Car selling marketplace Clicars says that, since its launch in 2016, it has sold €50 million worth of cars. In 2018, the company saw an increase of 160% in revenues and 119% more cars sold through the platform
• Eight electronic scooter startups are currently cooperating with Madrid’s local government to offer their mobility services in the streets of the Spanish capital. The companies are Eskay Mobility, Movo, Koko Kicksharing, Bird Rides Spain, Tier Mobily, Scoot, Ufo and Flash
• ElPeriodico interviewed Xavier Amatriain, a Spaniard that has worked in Silicon Valley at companies Netflix or Quora and has now co-founded health startup Curai
• UK food delivery company Deliveroo is now live in Vigo, Valladolid, Salamanca and Marbella, totalling 12 cities in Spain
• El Refernete profiled Woolax, a startup that wants to help people relax by using virtual reality. The company stems from VR accelerator Oarsis

Factorial is building tools to revolutionize the way organisations create human teams, with more than 20,000 companies using their HR SaaS product on a monthly basis. The company is looking for an all-round Digital Marketing Talent to join them in their Barcelona headquarters to power their marketing and communications efforts. A great opportunity for someone with an entrepreneurial spirit who’s also looking for a high degree of freedom and responsibility, and who’s eager to take on the role of coming up with new marketing and acquisition strategies for Factorial.

Big company news 🏦

• Renfe probably has one of the most used websites in Spain, despite how bad it works. The company announced that it has a budget of €700,000 to improve it and is looking for vendors. Xataka has an interesting article on the topic, as many web developers consider the budget to be too law for such a project
• Person-to-person payments platform Bizum, which is managed by a consortium of some of Spain’s larger banks, has plans to start offering in-store payments in February in a selected number of retail locations
• TikTok, the short-form video app from Chinese tech company Bytedance, began testing ads in the U.S. and the U.K. this month. What’s interesting is that Spain is Europe’s region with more active users on the platform
• El Español has some details on El Pais plans to implement a paywall

Tech and policy 💂🏼

• The taxi wars continue: last week Cataluña passed a law that requires users to book VTC cars 15 minutes in advance. As a result of this, both Cabify and Uber decided to abandon Barcelona, hurting consumers. Owners of VTC licenses could sue the Catalan government for up to €1.2 billion as prices of the licenses are dropping fast in the past few days
• Catalan VTC companies announced lay offs affecting more than 2,000 employees a couple of days after the law was passed
• Three years ago, Spanish competition regulator CNMC published a report asking for the liberalisation of the taxi business, but those suggestions have never been implemented. La Informacion looked at the content of such proposal
• La Informacion has more details on the Spanish government tech tax, that will go against digital advertising, online intermediaries and data transmition services. The data component means it could also tax activity from banks. A study from PwC published last week says the tech tax could cost Spanish consumers more than €665 million. Tech companies that will be affected by the tax hope that the Spanish Congress will stop the law from being implemented

Interesting reads 🤓

• Marketing4Ecommerce published an interview with my good friend Alex Barredo, creator of the must-read daily newsletter mixx.io and its podcast
• Xataka talked to 12 Spanish experts about what technologies to learn if you were to start your computer science career in 2019
• Enrique Penichet (Bbooster Ventures): ’Truths and lies about raising funding’
• Jorge Gomez Sancha (Carto): ’The bad and the ugly, yes. But also the good’ - about giving feedback
• Jaime Novoa (K Fund): ’Three quick notes about the Spanish startup investment market in 2018: €1 billion, SaaS and Madrid & Barcelona’

Podcasts of the week 🎧

• K Fund interviewed the founders of Erasmusu, the Murcia-based company acquired by Spotahome
• Itnig talked to Factorial about how they recruit for sales positions
• Lunes Inspiradores interviewed Maurici Badia, CEO and co-founder of Hannun