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Movo's escooters raise €20m. Fintonic raises €19m. Rollbox acquired by Personio. BQ sold 51% stake for €36m. Stock options in Spain.

July 7, 2019 • Issue #160

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Startup funding news 💸

  • Madrid-based micromobility startup Movo has closed a €20 million Series A funding round to accelerate international expansion. The round was led by Mutua Madrileña and Seaya Ventures. Movo is a subsidiary of local ride-hailing firm Cabify, which provided the seed funding for the startup
  • Madrid-based fintech startup Fintonic secured €19 million in a new funding round that sets the valuation of the company at €160 million. The investment round was led by ING Ventures and PSN Group
  • Proptech startup Clicpiso raised €8 million in venture debt from Grupo LaFinca
  • Flexible compensation plan startup Cobee raised €375,000 from Encomenda Smart Capital, Banc Sabadell, Lanai Partners and Abac Nest

Startup M&A activity 🎊

  • German HR and recruiting platform Personio acquired Rollbox, a Madrid-based startup that offers an API-based payroll solution
  • A few months ago we talked about the acquisition of Spanish hardware manufacturer BQ by Vietnamese startup Vingroup. Now the price has been disclosed: €36 million for a 51% stake in BQ
  • Accenture announced the acquisition of Spanish creative agency Shackleton
  • JobFluent, a Spain-based company, is looking for a buyer for their data-driven recruitment marketplace in the software engineering niche in Europe

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

  • Big Ban Angels and Cuatrecasas to launch an invesment vehicle to invest in the startups coming out of the latter’s accelerator program
  • Abante Biotech is a fund promoted by Abante to invest in health and pharma. Cinco Dias says that the fund increased its value by 30% in 2019 aloen
  • Juan Roig injected €2 million into Lanzadera, the Valencia-based startup accelerator he owns. That’s the lowers amount in recent years due to the improving performance of the program
  • Canarias-based fund Archipelago Next and startup accelerator Conector presented Archipiélago Next Acelera by Conector, a new accelerator program
  • The European Investment Fund (EIF) and the Catalonian Institute of Finance (ICF) signed an agreement to improve access to funding by providing €15 million to businesses located in Catalonia
  • Roberto Gomez: ’What to expect in a meeting with K Fund

Startup news 💡

  • Spanish startups Gowe and Social Car to launch their own VTC service in Barcelona. The service will respect local regulation that imposes a 15 minute wait time for users
  • Fintech startup Kantox to try to obtain a payments license from Spain’s Banco de España as a consequence of Brexit and to decrease uncertainty
  • Cabify acquired escooter license holder SJV Consulting, bringing the total number of licenses to provide such services in the city of Madrid to more than 1,400
  • Valencia-based startup PLD Space is getting ready to launch its first rocket
  • Neobank 2gether bank has launched its services across Europe and expects to reach 100,000 clients by the end of 2019
  • Bilbao-based startup Chicisimo says that taste graphs will transform fashion
  • El Referente published a list of four startups that are tackling the HR sector from different angles: Hiwook, Zapiens, Happyforce, Wasabijobs
  • Last mile delivery startup Glovo published some numbers about its activity in 2018: orders increased by 217% to 2.4 million and says it generated €33 million in sales to SMBs on its platform
  • El Referente interviewed Alvaro Verdoy, co-founder and CEO of product information management startup Sales Layer
  • Startup profiles:
  • Rated Power: pvDesign software developer
  • Singular Cover: insurance broker for freelancers and SMBs
  • Clipit: product recommendation app
  • Billage: financial services CRM for SMBs

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Big company news 🏦

  • Banco Santander is working on a competitor to Fintonic. An app that will allow clients to control their finances from a single app
  • Amazon Spain Fulfillment, Amazon’s logistics subsidiary, posted revenues of €360 million in 2018, up 70% compared to the previous year, and €5m in profit
  • The ecommerce giant also said last week that Spanish SMBs increased exports through its platform by 50% in 2018, reaching €400 million
  • Google for Startups Spain (Campus Madrid) says that startups associated to the program generated 900 jobs in 2018 in Spain and raised a combined €546 million
  • Uber made changes in the prices it charges in Madrid for its UberX service. The company also announced that it will launch its escooter service (Jump) in Madrid in the near futuree
  • Giant Spanish brewery Mahou to give more importance in the future to its own online store, which will sell directly to consumers

Tech and policy 💂🏼

  • El Confidencial wrote several articles last week about escooter licenses in Madrid, which were handed out by the local government. More than 20 companies were assigned licenses and several complained that the process was fair from fair and transparent
  • The answers to these five questions might determine whether the founders of SeriesYonkis go to jail

Interesting reads 🤓

  • Barcinno published an overview of the mobility ecosystem in Barcelona
  • El Confidencial published a profile of El Rincon del Vago, one of Spain’s most iconic websites
  • El Pais interviewed Martin Varsavsky: ’Entrepreneurs need to convince legislators because the former need revenues and the latter votes
  • David Miranda, partner at Osborne Clarke: ’The main problem with Spanish stock options is tax and no one dares to tackle it
  • Martin Perez (Cisco): ’How to create effective Pull Requests
  • Dani Latorre (Zara): ’Incremental software design from iteractions
  • Carlos Sanchez (OnTruck): ’The reasons why we have changed the way we hire designers at Ontruck

Podcasts of the week 🎧

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