Last chance to register for AWS Startup Day Online happening this Wednesday.

For developers and tech users, get insights on how to build an architecture that scales and applying DevOps at a startup. Not only that, you’ll get to hear how Wegow migrated to the cloud in record time and tips and recommendations to succeed at it.

If you’re more keen on business, get ready to hear all about innovation and startup culture, as well as best practices on hiring a tech team if you’re not really all that technical. The event will feature Jeff Barr (Chief Evangelist at AWS), tenured Amazonians and founders from startups like Fintonic, Jeff, Didimo, EMOTAI and Talkdesk to share learnings from their own journey. You’ll finish the day with great advice and insights from those who have done it before.

Register for the tracks in Spanish or in English.

Startup funding news 💸

• Bankinter published its Q3 funding report that looks at investment activity in Spain. An interesting read to find out what's going on in the Spanish VC and investment landscape. Here's an analysis of the same numbers but focusing on Valencia's startup ecosystem
• Madrid-based Savana, a machine learning-based service that turns clinical notes into structured patient information for physicians and pharmacists, raised $15m to take its technology from Spain to the US. The round was led by Cathay
• Madrid-based genetics startup Veritas International raised €5m from Charme Capital Partners and Amadeus Capital Partners
• WOW is a new startup created by Dimas Gimeno, former CEO of El Corte Ingles. There are not many details about the company, but it seems it will be a marketplace. The company starts with €2.8m in funding from FJ Labs
• Valencia-based Rosita, a product that wants to teach seniors how to live long, healthy lives, announced a €450k investment led by JME, which included the participation of K Fund and Seedcamp

M&A activity 🎊

• Securitize, the company co-founded by Carlos Domingo that offers a compliance platform and protocol for issuing and managing digital securities on the blockchain, announced the acquisition of DTM, a US-based broker-dealer and alternative trading system. Carlos explains more about the acquisition here

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• SeedRocket 4Founders has a new €40m fund to back startups. The firm expects to make investments between €100k and €1.2m
• El Mundowrote a long profile of All Iron Ventures, the firm co-founded by Jon Uriarte and Ander Michelena. The firm not only manages a VC firm focused on technology companies, but also a socimi (REIT or Real Estate Investment Trust in English) to make investments in the real estate sector
• Fundacion Repsol unveiled the name of the six startups that will participate in its accelerator program

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
• Amazon's AWS Startup Day Online is right around the corner. On October 21st, developers and business stakeholders will have an opportunity to learn from startups that have done it before as well as from senior AWS representatives. AWS Startup Day is a fully online, free and half-day event, with tracks in both Spanish and English
• Badi has launched a deposit-free rental product, which in essence means that tenants won't have to pay a deposit when renting a room or flat through the platform. The cost of the deposit will be assumed by the company. This is an interesting move by Badi, and something that other startups such as Rimbo Rent (in Spain) or Flatfair (in the UK) offer. In the article, Carlos Pierre also says that demand currently stands at 65% to 70% of pre-covid levels
• Jose del Moral of Gananzia decided to become a Glovo rider during the pandemic. He documented the whole experience in an article, focusing on labour conditions, the type of job that riders do and other aspects. Carlos Pierre, CEO of Glovo, replied to various of Jose's claims in a series of tweets
• Business Insider published a profile of Streamloots, the Valencia-based company that helps streamers monetise their content. The article says that Streamloots reached €3m in revenues in the first half of 2020
• Belvo, the open banking API for Latam, announced that it's officially launching its services in Brazil
• Crowdfunding real estate crowdfunding platform Urbanitae announced that it completed a funding process of €250k in just 15 minutes. Urbanitae is a portfolio company of ours at K Fund. Expansion also published an overview of the proptech and real estate sector in Spain
• Nannyfy started as a marketplace to match nannies with families who need in-home care. Now the company has pivoted to an online model, Nannyfy TV, in which nannies provide entertainment services remotely and children can interact with one another
• Flower marketplace Colvin says that one of its core areas going forward will be to offer interior plants on its platform
• CARTO announced support for deck.gl, a popular library and framework for visual exploratory data analysis of large datasets. Deck.gl was open sourced by Uber
• Declarando, the company that specializes in helping SMEs and freelancers file their taxes and manage their finances, said in an article that they plan to expand to Mexico in 2021
• Former Googler Davo Bastidas has joined Goin (K portfolio company) as COO. In an interview with Business Insider, Davo explains what attracted him to the opportunity and other topics
• Startup profiles: Arengu, Prezo, Heritae

Big company news 🏦

• Spain's Labour Inspection has forced Amazon to sign up as employees 4,000 of its Amazon Flex drivers. La Informacion has more details
• EBay generated €5.1m in Spain last year, up 52% compared to the previous year

Tech and policy 💂🏼‍♂️

• The Spanish government finally published the so-called Google Tax, which will impose a 3% tax on the revenues generated in Spain of various multinationals. It's not clear if the law will ever go into effect
• Another law that has been in the works for year, the fintech sandbox that will allow financial services startups to launch their services faster and easier. It has been now approved and it will probably go into effect early next year. Spanish startups combined for only 3% of all funds raised across the fintech sector in Europe last year

Interesting reads 🤓

• Javier Cañada of Instituto Tramontana published an interesting video presentation about design and the intersection with devices, users, context and content
• Jordi Altimira of Lanzame Capital wrote a post about competitor analysis and offers tips on how to build and what to include in the competitor slide of investment pitch decks
• Carina Szpilka of K Fund and Adigital published an op-ed in El Pais about the future of Spain and the role of education

Podcasts 🎧

• Itnig interviewed Pau Ramon, CTO of Factorial
• En.digital interviewed Borja Iribarne of Profesor CBD
• K Fund interviewed Carlos 'Txarly' Sanchez about product management
• MasQueStartups published a new episode of its Enseñame Tu SaaS series, with Vicente Solsona of Declarando