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Startup funding news 💸

• Barcelona-based fintech Pagantis raised €65 million for its e-commerce financing platform. The investment came from Prime Ventures, SPF Investment Management and Rinkelberg Capital Group
• Jewelry brand Apodemia raised €440,000

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Axon Partners Group closed its first fund. The firm claims to have reached an annual return of 65% for its investors and a multiple of 3.5X
• El Pais interviewed Patricia Layola, co-founder of investment firm Victoria Venture Capital. The firm solely invests in Spanish spin-offs from universities and transfer tech

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  Esquire looked at various audiobooks platforms available in Spain, featuring Storytel
• Jobandtalent went trough a touch stretch a couple of years ago. The company now mostly operates as a digital Temporary Employment Agencies (ETT in Spanish). In 2018 it reached gross revenues of €136 million (vs. €49 million in the previous year). Jobandtalent claims to be profitable in five of the six markets it operates in: Spain, Colombia, UK, Germany and Mexico
• Barcelona-based P2P crowdlending platform LoanBook to cease operations. In a statement, the company says that it has been unable to secure more funding to continue operating and that they’re exploring various alternatives
• Tomas Santoro of SumaCRM resumed his writing on the company’s blog. One of the better inbound marketing exercises I’ve seen in Spain. The company has €50,000 in MRR and wants to get to €100,000
• La Informacion looked at Spotahome’s cap table and found the name of investors that were not known until now. Former Uber executive Emil Michael, Justin Mateen (co-founder of Tinder) and other high profile business angels. Seaya is the second largest investor in Spotahome, with a 12% stake
• Barcelona Tech City to continue its expansion in the city, with more buildings focused on technologies such as blockchain, mobility and health
• Glovo users that pay for deliveries using their N26 cards will get a 50% credit for future purchases on the platform
• Reclamador says that it reached €3.9 million in revenues in 2018, an 18% increase compared to the previous year
• Madrid recently gave escooter licenses to at least 18 different companies. El Español says that only 7 are currently active in the city and that fewer escooters than expected are currently available. More companies were awarded licenses last week
• Spanish startups Peoople, Horbito and Woom Fertility to participate in Google’s Launchpad program in Miami
• Cabify launched a new campaign to promote itself as a Spanish company, claiming that it pays €40 million in taxes and generates 200,000 direct and indirect jobs
• Startup profiles:
• Lexdigo: legal tech
• Predictiva: AI and big data to make call centres more efficient
• Keima: company behind Overture, a powerful design software that delivers a holistic approach to modern network design

Big company news 🏦

• Inditex published its latest earnings report last week. Ecommerce sales grew to €3.2 billion in 2018, a 27% increase compared to the previous year, and represented 14% of the total amount of sales in the period in countries
• In 2014 BBVA acquired US neobank Simple. The acquisition has been quite rough for the bank. According to La Informacion, Simple has generated more than $100 million in losses since its acquisition and BBVA has lowered the value of the asset several times since the deal was closed
• Facebook to collaborate with Spanish companies Newtral and Maldito Bulo to combat fake news and misinformation. Also last week, La Informacion published a profile of Javier Olivan, the Spaniard Facebook executive that just got promoted in the company’s latest reshuffle
• Multiple Spanish journalists and media publications visited Mercadona’s new distribution centres that will be solely dedicated to their new ecommerce strategy
• Amazon wants more Alexa skills in Spanish and it has launched an incentives program to encourage developers to come up with new skills
• Banco Santander encouraged the OCDE to force tech companies to pay taxes based on the location where they generate profits and revenues
• The Spanish Tax Office (Hacienda) to give back to Telefonica more than €700 million as a result of the company paying more taxes than it should have

Tech and policy 💂🏼

• Spanish police arrested several people that scammed others on Wallapop for more than €190,000

Interesting reads 🤓

• Vicente Mira of Neol Biosolutions wrote about the biotech sector: ’The Spanish biotech sector has great potential’
• Pablo Ferrari, the Spaniard computer technician who finds housing for the homeless in San Francisco
• El Pais looked at Madrid’s positioning as a tech hub: ’Madrid strives to compete with other European tech hubs’
• Sergio Montoro of La Pastilla Roja published an interesting overview of voice assistants such as Alexa or Google Home and the impact they might have on consumers
• Ivan Malagón (Director of Engineering at Carto): ’The biggest change when you become a manager’
• How Jobandtalent uses Superset to gather and analyze lots of data in order to extract insights and trends

Podcasts of the week 🎧

• K Fund interviewed Kiko Monteverde, CEO of Codice Software and Plastic SCM
• First Tuesday interviewed Fernando Benito of Paack
• Itnig interviewed Jorge Dobon, CEO and co-founder Demium
• En.digital interviewed Diego Ballesteros, CEO of Bewe (previously of Sin Delantal)
• Code On The Rocks talked to Vicenç García-Altés and Laura Lacarra about serverless
• Lunes Inspiradores interviewed Nacho Sala, co-founder and CMO of Atrapalo