Sensa is the design studio that built both this newsletter and Dealflow.es a couple of years ago.

When I made the decision of building a new brand and product for this newsletter, I talked to various design agencies in order to choose the one that I felt could do a better job. I ended up going with Sensa because of their past history working with both startups and large companies such as Facebook, the BBC or Forbes, and most importantly, because of my previous friendship with Manu Gamero, one of Sensa’s co-founders. Human connections are important!

I’m glad that they’ve decided to sponsor this week’s newsletter because I really like the work that they do, and also because last week they announced a transparency exercise that I quite welcome in the agency space: they made their prices public.

Pricing was one of my main questions when I started thinking about Dealflow.es, and the only way to find out what was benchmark was to talk to a bunch of agencies.

From €3,000 per month or €6,000 per project, any company can make their product look like one of the best out there. And on top of that, they offer a 10% referral to anyone who introduces a client to Sensa.

I really welcome this move and I recommend Sensa.

Startup funding news 💸

• Fundacion Bankinter published its 2020 report, a detailed look at investment activity in the Spanish startup ecosystem last year. Business Insider published his own analysis of the report here, and so did El Español, and El Referente too
• Copado, a Madrid-based startup that’s built a devops platform for Salesforce, closed a $96m Series B round of funding. The round was co-led by Insight Partners and Salesforce Ventures. Business Insider published the deck used by Copado to raise the round here
• Madrid and California-based sports VR company YBVR raised $1.5m from Wayra, Verizon Ventures and others
• Murcia-based health startup Inbentus raised €500k via Crowdcube
• Li Jin is a VC that coined the term "passion economy" in 2019. Jin announced last week that it's launching her own fund to invest in the passion economy. One of her first five investments is Streamloots, the Valencia-based live streaming company

M&A activity 🎊

• Italian company TeamSystem acquired Madrid-based invoicing startup Billin. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Billin had previously raised funding from us, K Fund, and also from Kibo Ventures
• Elche-based telco Aire Networks acquired Portuguese competitor AR Telecom. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As a result of the acquisition, Aire Networks increases its sales numbers to €110m

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Barcelona-based VC firm Aldea Ventures participated in the €11.2m round of Copenhagen-based podcasting startup Podimo
• Demium's fund, Think Bigger Capital, will have Andbank Spain as one of its LPs
• Expansion wrote a long profile of BCN Tech City and its manager Miquel Marti, who continue to play a key role in the development of the Barcelona tech ecosystem

Startup news 💡

• El Pais wrote a profile of video on demand platform Filmin. The company reached €15m in sales last year and increased its 2019 profits of €800k. Seaya Ventures and Nazca Capital acquired a majority stake in the company a few months ago
• Eduardo Manchon, CEO of Mailtrack, published a Twitter thread about how the technology and go-to-market strategy of the startup works. Mailtrack has 6.7m signups, 1.8m active users and 80k paying clients
• At-home lab testing startup Base launched its health services in the US with a $3.4m seed round to help improve sleep, diet and sex drive. Base is headquartered in the US but has several of its employees in Spain. Lola Priego, co-founder of the company, is also Spanish. Local investor The Venture City participated in the round. Business Insider also wrote about the company
• Uber acquired 30% of Moove Cars for $5m, the Spanish VTC company and one of the main providers of cars to Uber. Moove Cars was in a tough financial situation due to the coronavirus crisis
• La Opinion de Malaga wrote an overview of the Malaga startup ecosystem, following the announcement of Google opening a new cybersecurity centre in the city
• El Español profiled Capchase, the Madrid and Boston-based fintech startup that provides liquidity to startups in the form of advancements of annual contracts. The company raised a $4.6m pre-seed round from US investors
• Fintech startup Indexa Capital, mostly known for its roboadvisor product, announced that it's lowered the fees associated to its pension fund product
• Expansion wrote an overview of the Spanish crypto landscape, featuring startups such as 2gether, Bitnovo, Criptan and Bit2Me
• ABC wrote a profile of fintech startup Nomo, which helps freelancers and SMBs do their invoices and taxes. Nomo claims to have 100k users
• Smart Travel published an interview with Raul Jimenez, CEO of Minube, about the current state of the travel market and what's to come
• A Coruña-based startup Barkibu launched a new health product aimed at pet owners
• EU-startups put together a list of what they consider to be 10 skyrocketing Spanish startups to watch in 2021 and beyond
• According to Cinco Dias, e-scooter company Voi had more than €8m in sales in Spain in 2019, with a loss of €1.1m. The company plans to continue to be involved in the Spanish market in coming months
• Spanish real estate startups Floorfy and Housell signed a partnership to integrate the former's real estate audiovisual technology in the latter
• Spanish and US insurtech startup Coverwallet (acquired by AON last year) plans to open an engineering office in Sevilla
• Italian real estate iBuyer Casavo is doubling down its efforts in Spain, in order for it to become its second largets market
• Startup profiles: Worldpats, Neuromobile, BeMore3D, RebellionPay, Polaroo, idoneo

Big company news 🏦

• Twitter is looking for a new Spain CEO
• According to La Informacion, Amazon to hold talks with Spanish regulator CNMC. It will be the first meeting of CNMC's new director with a technology company. On the table several topics such as the so-called Google Tax, worker conditions, audiovisual regulations and more
• Orange continues to bleed subscribers and money. The telco has seen seven consecutive quarters of dropping sales. Also on the telco front, MasMovil CEO Meinrad Spenger talked to La Informacion about the current state of the Spanish telco market and their recent M&A deals
• MasMovil to launch a new personal finance division that will provide loans to consumers of up to €60k

Tech and policy 💂🏼‍♂️

• Business Insider talked to various Spanish VCs and entrepreneurs about taxes and stock options, and what the government could do to solve this issue
• Adigital, Endeavor Spain and the Spanish Startup Association published an op-ed suggesting that they should also be included in current conversations and negotiations to regulate, among other things, labour conditions in the last mile delivery sector
• According to El Pais, the Spanish government is planning on making it easier to start a company in Spain, making it a 10-day and fully online process
• El Español interviewed Francisco Polo to talk about the government's plans to make life easier in Spain for startups

Interesting reads 🤓

• Expansion talked to various entities and companies about the evolution of digital payments sector in Spain in recent years, and where the market might go next
• Sergio Alvarez Leiva of K Fund (and Tinybird, CARTO), published 'Making your first product hire'
• Helena Martínez, PM at Packlink, published 'Product Manager & Team Lead Handbook'
• Simon Muñoz, Platform Product Manager at Voicemod, published 'Mission-Driven Product Management'
• David Bonilla of Manfred wrote about the 'Google Tax'

Podcasts 🎧

• Andres Torrubia interviewed Victoriano Izquierdo of Graphext
• Jordi Altimira interviewed Jorge Diaz and Alberto Martinez, co-founders of Hello Tickets
• MasQueStartups interviewed Javi Santana (Tinybird) and Juanjo Traver (Declarando) about technology decisions
• En movimiento interviewed Julio Ribes, CEO of Swipcar
• K Fund interviewed Clara Fernandez, co-founder of Hearts Radiant (Rosita)
• Itnig interviewed Ana Maiques, CEO of Neuroelectrics
• Novicao interviewed Ousman Umar of Nasco Feeding Minds