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Startup funding news 💸

• According to El Referente, Spanish startups raised a combined €200m in January 2020
• Barcelona-based Wallbox raised €33m to meet surge in demand for electric car chargers. The round was led by new investors Cathay Innovation and WIND Ventures
• Valencia-based biotech firm Highlight Therapeutics raised €22.6m, led by Columbus Life Science
• Barcelona-based Holded, developers of ERP software for SMBs, raised a $15m Series B round led by Elaia Partners. Holded says it has attracted more than 80,000 customers to date
• Madrid and Amsterdam-based Twinco Capital raised €3m in funding, led by Mundi Ventures. Twinco makes it easier for companies to access supply chain finance
• Barcelona-based fintech startup Payflow extended its seed round funding to €2m, with strategic investors leading the way (Wayra, Caixabank, Pkug & Play)
• Asturias-based additive manufacturing startup Triditive raised €1.49m
• Aflorithmic Labs, a London and Barcelona-based ‘Audio-as-a-Service’ startup, raised $1.3m from Crowd Media Holdings
• Other rounds of funding: Criptan, Delitbee

M&A activity 🎊

• MasMovil announced the acquisition of Sevilla-based Sofiathinks, a startup that has developed smarthome software and sensors for various use cases, including elderly care and home alarms
• Madrid-based Seedtag continues its expansion throughout Europe by announcing the acquisition of German company Recognified. This announcement comes two months after seedtag acquired its Italian competitor AtomikAd
• BBVA accepted an offer to sell Finnish neobank Holvi to Keru Fintech Investments, a new company owned by Holvi’s co-founder Tuomas Toivonen. BBVA acquired Holvi in 2016
• Metricson, a law firm that specializes in supporting startups, acquired legaltech company Terminis

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Adara Ventures co-led a $1.5m round in Lisbon startup Apres, that helps non-tech teams understand AI
• BBVA plans to invest as much as $150m in new capital to support Propel, bringing its total commitment to over $400m, including its previous investment in 2016. Propel plans to launch a new $50m fund in the next few weeks, followed by two additional funds in 2022 and 2023
• Expansion published a long profile of Kibo Ventures. The firm recently announced a first closing of its third fund, with a target size of €100m
• Wayra announced that it invested €4.5m across 39 startups in 2020
• Inveready to launch a €50m fund to focus on convertible debt
• Equity crowdfunding platform The Crowd Angel is now Dozen. El Referente talked to CEO Ramon Saltor about the change and what's new. In 7 years, The Crowd Angel has helped startups raise a total of €23m across 62 rounds of funding
• El Pais interviewed Jose Luis Cabañero, CEO of Eatable Ventures, to talk about the current state of the agritech and foodtech sector in Spain

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
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• Fashion brand laagam has recently started to do live sales on Twitch. Co-founder Diego Arroyo shared on Twitter some numbers about the initiative. Vogue also highlighted the company in an article about social or livestreaming shopping
• Expansion talked to Ted Julian, SVP of Product at Devo. According to the article, Devo increased revenues by 90% in 2020 and the company aims to IPO in the next two to three years
• Glovo appointed Narek Verdian as CTO. The company has the goal to hire 200 engineers and develop dark store tech. Narek previously worked at American Express as VP Engineering
• As a result of the WallStreetBets and stock market situation, lots of consumers are downloading broker apps to invest in stocks. El Mundo talked to Ninety Nine, which says that in just a few days signups have increased by 500% and XTB
• Business Insider profiled Melio, a Madrid-based preventative healthcare company that gives consumers frictionless access to diagnostics. Melio is currently available in 7 Spanish cities and also in the UK. We (K Fund) are investors in Melio
• Jordi Altimira wrote a long post about the story of ecommerce company Blue Banana, and how, fully bootstrapped, it has grown to more than €4m in sales in 3 years
• Bycicle ecommerce company Santafixie disclosed some numbers of its 2020 performance: growth in sales of +55%, 2,650 bikes sold and more
• Revista Negocios interviewed Alejandro Pons, CEO of second hand bike marketplace Tuvalum. Alejandro says in the article that last year was a very good one for its business, which grew 36%, as most people embrace this mode of transportation in urban areas
• Fintech startup Monei has launched a product that allows retail businesses to accept payments via Bizum
• marketgoo is a special company. They do stuff like this: they just published their marketgoo Operating System, a series of docs, spreadsheets and other content that defines the way they operate as a company
• El Español interviewed Florent Bannwarth, Blablacar's managing director in Spain and Portugal, to mostly talk about the company's performance since the pandemic
• Business Insider talked to the founders of Build38, a new cybersecurity startup with offices in Germany, Singapore and Barcelona. Most of the company's engineers are in the latter. The company offers fraud protection for your mobile businesses
• Startup profiles: Oriwami, Build83, Adictic, RawData, Flaps

Fórmate en Liderazgo Tecnológico de la mano de los CTOs más cracks de grandes empresas y startups. -250€ de descuento en matrícula y plazas limitadas. ¡Reserva ya!

Interesting reads 🤓

• Xataka looked at the number of electric vehicles sold in Spain in 2020, which were only 18,000. Meanwhile, in other European countries, sales have been doubling year-on-year
• Aurore Falque-Pierrotin of VC firm Samaipata wrote a blog post about 'network effects or the power of increasing returns'
• Michele Trevisiol, VP of Data at Jobandtalent, wrote a post about saving money and increasing workers happiness by optimising your workforce schedule
• Ivan Hernandez, VP Engineering at Ontruck, wrote 'care and trust your Teams, and they will overperform'
• Felix Lopez, Engineering Site Lead & Senior Software Engineering Manager at Eventbrite, wrote a post about 'opportunities in an equitable way'
• Joaquin Mencia wrote a post about the business model of Slice and Joe Coffee in the US, and the opportunity that exists to build a homogeneus coffee brand
• El Correo interviewed Manuel Recena, formerly of Inditex and Clinker (acquired by Cloudbees), about him joining VMWare, the experience of selling Clinker and other topics

Podcasts 🎧

• CodelyTV talked to various developers at PC Componentes to chat about what work at the Murcia-based company looks like
• Joseph Gelman interviewed Javier Andres, co-founder of Ticketea (acquired by Eventbrite)
• Life on Mars interviewed Pau Ramon, CTO of Factorial
• En Movimiento interviewed Juan de Antonio, co-founder and CEO of Cabify
• Itnig interviewed Josep Mitja, CEO of laTostadora
• K Fund interviewed Daniel Espejo, Managing Director of Klarna in Spain
• Acelerando Empresas interviewed Israel Pons of WBAF and Pitch at the beach