Esta newsletter está patrocinada por WeRoad.

WeRoad es una travel tech que nace con el objetivo de crear una nueva forma de viajar, uniendo a personas curiosas que viajan solas y están deseando descubrir el mundo, conocer nuevas culturas y hacer nuevos amigos.

Organizan viajes alrededor de todo el mundo durante todo el año, guiados por un coordinador/compañero de viaje, para personas afines en pequeños grupos, compartiendo la misma franja de edad y el mismo mood de viaje.

WeRoad nació en Italia en en 2017 y, tras dos años de éxito con más de 12.000 WeRoaders descubriendo el mundo, se han establecido en España como la comunidad referente en viajes en grupo para jóvenes trabajadores.

Startup funding news 💸

• Glovo completed the acquisition of PizzaPortal in Poland. PizzaPortal was owned by Amrest, and as a consequence of the €35 million transaction in cash and stock, Amrest now owns 7.5% of Glovo's shares
• Barcelona-based hospitality startup ByHours raised €8 million. The company had gross sales of €5 million in 2019 and has a gross margin, on average, of 23%
• Barcelona-based fintech startup Nomo to receive €1.8 million in funding from Banc Sabadell
• Madrid-based Hangry raised €1 million from various investors

M&A activity 🎊

• Banco Santander's Consumer Finance division acquired Madrid-based car marketplace coches.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Coches.com was founded by my colleague Iñaki Arrola 16 years ago, and had raised funding from All Iron Ventures and business angel Marek Fodor. Congrats!
• According to Expansion, Acciona could be interested in acquiring a 100% of motosharing startup Silence

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• European VC's increase presence in Spain looking for startup investments
• Three startup verticals in Spain likely to receive more venture capital

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  WeRoad is an Italian startup that's creating a new way for young people to travel and meet people. The company also recently launched in Spain and is looking to hire sales and marketing staff locally, as well as travel coordinators. More info here.
• La Información published a detailed article about Cabify's financials and cash position. According to the site, Cabify is looking for a new round of funding as a result of higher expenses at the beginning of 2019 due to interest payments, acquisition of VTC licenses and higher operating losses than expected. Up until November 2019, Cabify had GMV (gross merchandise value) of €650 million, and its performance improved towards the end of the year
• Glovo to start s elling €6 meals (including delivery fee) to corporate consumers. This takes place mere weeks after the acquisition of Instamaki. Also last week, Glovo announced that it's leaving the Middle East and two additional Latinamerican markets, as part of a goal of pushing for profitability by 2021
• Barcelona-based rental platform Badi has surpassed 300,000 room listings in Europe. With 450% year-on-year growth in listings from launch to 2019, the proptech platform receives a booking request every two minutes
• Indexa Capital reached a new record in new clients in December 2019, with 1,600
• El Pais profiled A Coruña-based startup Docuten. The electronic invoicing and signature startup was founded 10 years ago, grew bootstrapped to €1 million in annual revenues and recently picked up €1.5 million in funding
• Language-learning platform Busuu was originally founded in Spain but later moved to the UK. The company is now opening an office in Madrid because "the London hiring market has become increasingly more competitive over the last couple of years (also due to Brexit, competition from Facebook and Google etc.), while the Spanish startup ecosystem has made tremendous progress"
• CARTO released CARTOframes 1.0, their own library for Spatial Data Science
• Belvo, an open banking startup for the Latam market, launched its services
• I'm not a big a fan of startup lists, but here's one by Sifted with what they consider as the top Spanish startups to follow in 2020

WeRoad launched its operations in Spain last October with the first trips taking place over the christmas period and +40 destinations already confirmed across the year including Easter and Summer.

We are experiencing exponential growth and looking for team members in the field of Sales and Marketing together with coordinators, giving you the opportunity to change your life travelling the world without quitting your job. If you want to know more about WeRoad has to offer, click here.

Big company news 🏦

• Bizum, the payments solution developed by a bunch of Spanish banks, disclosed figures for 2019: 60 million of transactions, €2.7 billion in total payments and 6.25 million users, up 145% year-on-year
• La Información published a long piece about Netflix's activity in Spain and the fact that the company does not disclose figures about its performance in Spain
• Telefonica's innovation lab, Alpha, lost its director, Pablo Rodríguez. In other Telefonica news, apparently the company is in advanced negotiations with Disney to integrate the video streaming service Disney+
• LinkedIn posted sales of €5.5 million in 2019 in Spain, but only paid €52,000 in taxes

Interesting reads 🤓

• Simon Muñoz (Director of Product Management at Flywire) wrote about mental models in product management: "Las cuatro fuerzas que moldean la demanda"

Podcasts 🎧

• Soluble Studio interviewed Helena Torras
• Scale This Up interviewed Andres Dancausa (TheVentureCity) and Bill Murphy (OrbitalAds)
• K Fund interviewed the founders of 42CAP, a German VC firm that's backed three Spanish startups to date
• Turismo y Emprendedores interviewed Iñigo Balbin (We Road)
• Itnig interviewed Luis Diaz (Product Hackers)
• En.digital interviewed the founders of Bicicleta Studio