Have you heard of Re:invent ?

Well, it’s the world’s premier cloud learning event. This year, instead of its usual Vegas location, it’s online, it’s free and it lasts for three weeks!

The agenda is so packed with great things that this newsletter would not be enough, but some of the highlights are its +50 content tracks, including one fully dedicated to Startups with an Ask The Experts series to connect with European startups and AWS experts on GoToMarket strategies or how to get started with AWS technology; a Female Founders event and pitch competition ; and a CFO panel on how to manage recovery and getting to growth during COVID, among many more.

The event lasts until December 18^th, so you still have plenty of chances to take advantage of it!

Startup funding news 💸

• Sponsored
  2020 has been a year full of stories from startups that are worth telling. Google for Startups wants to give visibility to how the entrepreneurial ecosystem has evolved and adapted to a year full of challenges and opportunities, through a series of video conversations between founders from impacted industries. This week learn more about how the year has been for startups in the EdTech and Gaming industries. Discover their stories here!
• According to El Referente, Spanish startups have raised a combined €950m to date in 2020
• Valencia-based Jeff raised $21m in a Series B round led by All Iron Ventures, Alma Mundi Ventures and FJLabs. The company says that around 2,000 businesses have now been launched across more than 40 countries under the Jeff banner, and that it plans to launch in the US soon
• Asistensi, a Madrid-based insurtech startup that wants to improve medical coverage for migrants’ relatives back home, secured $3 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by the venture capital funds Alma Mundi Ventures and Mexico-based Mountain Nazca
• Valencia-based blockchain startup Bit2me raised €1m led by Inveready
• Barcelona-based biotech company Invivo Impulsa raised €1.5m
• Other rounds of funding: AdQuiver, Next Tip, CargaTuCoche, OX Motorcycles, EPowerlabs, Solatom
• Startups looking for funding: FrankieTheKing

M&A activity 🎊

• Video on demand startup Filmin announced that funds Seaya Ventures and Nazca Capital have acquired a majority stake in the business. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Filmin expects to reach €20m in sales this year
• Seedtag announced the acquisition of 100% of Italian company AtomikAd as the next step in the company’s growth plan to consolidate its leading position on contextual advertising in Europe and Latam
• Last mile logistics startup Mox announced the acquisition of Supertech, to move beyond last mile deliveries and into the digitalisation of supermarkets, restaurants and retail

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• ASCRI, the Spanish association that represents many of the country's VC and PE firms, published a document that they presented to the government to help in the development of the local tech ecosystem
• Equity crowdfunding and investment platform Startupxplore announced changes in its business model, which mostly focuses on charging investors instead of startups
• Nauta Capital participated in the $8m round of existing portfolio company Zephr. The round was led by European investor BDMI
• Basque Culinary Center announced the name of the 10 startups that will participate in its new accelerator program

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  Did you miss AWS’ Startup Day Online a few months ago? Fear not, because we have great news! You can now watch all of the sessions that were hosted in English or Spanish. It was the first local edition of this event for founders and startup members. It had both a business and technical track, and big names presenting like the founders of Jeff, Fintonic, Didimo and Emotai.
• Transfer tech is the term often used to refer to companies that are born within universities and research centres and later on spun off. Expansion wrote an article about Spanish spin offs in the health tech sector, featuring companies such as BrainGuard, Nanoelectra or Cyber Surgery
• Expansion profiled 011h Sustainable, the new construction company launched by Lucas Carné and José Manuel Villanueva, co-founders of Privalia. The company describes itself as "a new generation building construction company"
• I posted the wrong link last week, my bad! You gotta love lagaam's transparency. The fashion startup wrote a post about their marketing strategy, including conversion numbers and other interesting tidbits
• Typeform published a blog post explaining how Berlin-based startup Pitch, who is trying to reinvent powerpoint presentations, used Typeform to try to find product-market fit and improve their onboarding flows: "We’ve received 3x the responses using Typeform than from a professionally commissioned market research study we ran in 2019"
• Expansion profiled Simplr.io, the new startup of Angel Bou (formerly of Google, Zuora). Simplr promises to be the world’s first Life-as-a-Service marketplace for all your subscriptions and on-demand needs
• Bicycle marketplace Tuvalum disclosed some 2020 numbers. Sales have so far increased by 36% to €4.1m and 3,100 bikes sold through the platform
• Privalia, now part of Vente Privee, disclosed its 2019 financials. Highlights include profit of €130m (up from €12m in 2018) thanks to the sale of its Mexican subsidiary and sales of €218m
• Ecommerce startup Tradeinn announced sales of €25m during the week of Black Friday, up from €12m in 2019
• Ecommerce bootstrapped startup Decowood said it plans to close 2020 with €5m in sales. The company sales wood furniture
• Carlos Domingo of Securitize introduced project Aquaman, which aims to drive liquidity in the digital securities market
• Business Insider profiled Basque startup Irisbond, which has created a system to help people affected with ELA and other diseases control computers and gadgets with their eyes
• idealista launched a new product that allows tenants and landlords to sign contracts online
• According to a Deloitte study, consumers don't trust fintech companies with their savings, instead opting for traditional financial institutions. I'd love to know what other companies are behind the study
• Startup profiles: Vyootrip, Kulto

Big company news 🏦

• Brands such as H&M, Cortefiel, Decathlon and Fnac are implementing ecommerce 'buy now, pay later' solutions from multiple providers, such as Aplazame, Sequra, Pagantis, Oney and others. According to Oney, this way of paying will increase from €500m to €5b in online sales in Spain in three years
• BBVA signed an agreement with Xiaomi to pre-install its app on the phones manufactured by the Chinese company

Interesting reads 🤓

• Alane Lira, UX writer at Cabify, wrote about how the startup approaches copy writing in a blog post titled 'Why it can be great to be a non-native UX writer'. Here's another interesting post about how Cabify does agile in fraud prevention, written by software engineer Antonio Jesus Rodriguez
• David Zambrana of Coverwallet wrote a post about automation and QA at Coverwallet, titled 'Automation was all about an inner quality in the end'
• Carina Szpilka of K Fund and president of Adigital, was interviewed in El Español to talk about the current state of affairs in Spain's digitalisation process, as well as her opinion on topics such as the Google Tax, Glovo/Uber, stock options and more
• Eduardo Manchon, CEO of Mailtrack, published an op-ed in El Confidencial that sparked quite a bit of controversy and conversations. Titled 'Size matters', Manchon talks about the Spanish startup ecosystem and the risk adversity of investors, among other topics. The article continued on Twitter with several threads about bootstrapping vs. raising VC money, such as this one by Ignacio Arriaga (Acumbamail) or this other one by Jose Cortizo
• Mauricio Prieto, co-founder of eDreams, published an interesting analysis of Airbnb compared to Booking

Podcasts 🎧

• MasQueStartups interviewed Pablo Ruiz, co-founder of Kaleidos
• SeedRocket interviewed Carlos Fellonosa, CEO of Optimus Price
• Itnig interviewed Yara Paoli, former VP of Growth at Skyscanner
• En.digital interviewed Ruben Ferreiro, CEO of Viko
• Andres Torrubia interviewed Victoriano Izquierdo, CEO of Graphext