La newsletter de esta semana está patrocinada por Juan Leal y PROΛ. Si estás construyendo producto, o si lo has construido ya pero quieres mejorarlo y validar lo que tienes en mente, estoy seguro de que una conversación con Juan te será muy productiva.

Dejo que él mismo te cuente por qué y en qué ámbitos te puede ayudar.

PROΛ es un pequeño puerto de abrigo donde conversar sobre el estado de tu proyecto y analizar desde la perspectiva de producto en qué punto se encuentra lo que tienes o lo que quieres lanzar: validar procesos/flujos dentro de tu producto, tener feedback de las primeras propuestas de tu MVP, saber si te estás dirigiendo de la mejor manera a tus usuarios...

Una vuelta de tuerca a la consultoría tradicional, validada anteriormente con clientes y adaptada a los tiempos que corren: rápida, ágil, remota y a un precio único de 450€ (BTC y ETH welcome).

Juan Leal ha asesorado a más de una centena de empresas y es quien está detrás esta iniciativa que en apenas 5 meses de vida ya ha recibido más de una veintena de peticiones.

Visita PROΛ.

Startup funding news 💸

• Barcelona-based marketplace Wallapop raised €157m at a €690m ($840m) valuation, almost reaching unicorn status. The round was led by Korelya Capital, a French VC fund backed by Korea’s Naver, with Accel, Insight Partners, 14W, GP Bullhound and Northzone (all previous backers of Wallapop) also participating. Wallapop claims to currently have 15m users in Spain
• Madrid-based car subscription service Bipi announced the second closing of its Series A around, with an additional €6m in capital from Italian fund P101
• Barcelona-based ecommerce startup Hannun raised €3m from various investors
• Madrid-based fintech startup Card Dynamics raised €2.5m, led by Big Sur Ventures

M&A activity 🎊

• Apax Partners acquired a 17% stake in idealista for €250m. The movement is interesting because Apax had already been a shareholder of idealista in the past, but sold its stake to EQT in late 2020. This transaction values idealista at €1.4b, a 10% increase in valuation compared to the recent EQT transaction. Business Insider also published last week an interview with Carlos Santana, the EQT partner that led the idealista acquisition to talk about how the deal came through
• Austrian app marketing company App Radar announced the acquisition of Barcelona-based startup TheTool. According to the publication, this is a only-assets deal

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Nauta Capital led a £4m round in Gophr, a UK-based last-mile delivery provider. Gophr was co-founded by Seb Robert, who was also my colleague almost 10 years ago at London-based social media agency We Are Social. Congrats Seb!
• More good news for Nauta Capital. Brandwatch, the social media listening startup it backed more than eight years ago, got acquired by Cision for $450m
• Spanish VC firms Athos Capital and Capitana Venture Partners have merged and launched a €30m fund to invest in B2B startups
• Venture builder Nuclio announced the launch of a €12m fund to invest in companies born in the program
• GoHub announced the name of the six companies that will participate in its most recent accelerator program
• El Español published a profile of Mar Hershenson, the Spaniard behind Pear.vc, a successful Silicon Valley-based VC firm
• Expansion profiled Valencia-based early stage fund DraperB1, formerly known as Bbooster Ventures. DraperB1 has invested in startups such as Streamloots, Signaturit or Jeff, among others

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  If you're a startup looking for product advice from someone who has done it before, you should talk to Juan Leal and PROΛ. Juan has a lot of experience building and managing digital products, and I encourage you to reach out to him if you're in need of quick, agile and remote product help.
• Spanish hardware manufacturer BQ is going into liquidation. The company, which got acquired by Vietnamese group Vingroup two years ago, has declared itself insolvent, with debt of more than €40m and assets of €13m. A sad ending for one of Spain's larger hardware startups created to date
• Business Insider interviewed Avi Meir, co-founder of travel management startup TravelPerk. According to Avi, TravelPerk has increased its client base by 60% despite the pandemic
• Business Insider profiled Decowood, a bed furniture ecommerce startup that saw a 400% increase in sales during covid and expects to reach €10m in revenue this year
• Prisa appointed Pepita Marin, co-founder of ecommerce startup We Are Knitters, as an independent board member
• British startup TaxScouts, developers of software that helps individuals do their personal income taxes, is launching in Spain
• El Pais profiled Barcelona-based B2B logistics startup Freightol. According to the article, the startup reached revenues of €1.2m last year
• Ruben Sanchez, CEO and co-founder of hospitality SaaS startup Beonprice, wrote about the eight-year history of the company, the impact of covid and what's to come
• Expansion profiled digital signature startups Docuten, Signaturit and Ivnosys, which have experienced significant growth in the past few months as a result of the pandemic
• Tinybird published a couple of posts related to the field of DataOps: the first one focuses on '10 principles to develop data intensive projects' and the second one on 'How to develop, maintain and scale data intensive project'
• El Referente interviewed Polo Villaamil, co-founder and CEO of fashion marketplace rental La Mas Mona. The startup allows consumers to rent (instead of buying) clothes and also recently launched a clothing subscription service. According to La Mas Mona, more than 33,000 clothes have been rented through the platform
• Ecommerce startup Incapto Coffee says that it closed 2020 with 1,400 subscribers and that it expects to reach sales of €5.5m in 2021
• Cabify to integrate car sharing company Wible in its app, offering consumers the chance of also renting cars on its platform, a la Car2Go
• Typeform has a new Chief Product Officer, Irana Wasti, formerly of GoDaddy and Intuit
• Investment platform Micappital launched Eco, a new initiative to promote investments in sustainability and impact endeavour
• Startup profiles: AmphoraLogistics, Aprop, RatedPower, Fullstep

Big company news 🏦

• In the past few months, BBVA has sold its stake in two neobanks it owned, Simple and Holvi. On top of that, the bank did not execute an option to acquire 100% of British neobank Atom. La Informacion wrote about the strategy that might be behind these deals. All three neobanks combined for more than €500m in losses
• Crypto exchange Coinbase announced that it's going public via a direct listing. BBVA is a shareholder of Coinbase, with a stake of less than 5%. According to La Informacion, BBVA could generate more than $1b out of its stake in the company
• According to El Confidencial, Telefonica plans to name María Jesús Almazor as CEO of Telefónica Tech Ciber and Cloud, a new division that will focus on cloud, cybersecurity and IoT opportunities
• Mango to open its ecommerce platform to third party stores and brands, starting with Intimissimi
• Ikea acquired TaskRabbit in 2017, a US startup that connected freelancers with businesses and individuals. Ikea launched TaskRabbit in Spain in late 2020, but according to this article by elDiario, the experience of relying on its services leaves a lot to be desired
• GSMA is pushing to celebrate Mobile World Congress 2021 in June

Tech and policy 💂🏼‍♂️

• Both TechCrunch and Sifted published interviews with Francisco Polo, the high commissioner for 'Spain Entrepreneurial Nation', to talk about the recently announced Startup Nation plan and what the government plans to do promote entrepreneurship in Spain and make life easier for startups and investors

Interesting reads 🤓

• Eduardo Manchon (Mailtrack) published a new op-ed in El Confidencial, this time about the obsession of several Spanish cities of focusing on real estate to promote the creation of tech hubs, instead of focusing on the aspects that truly help this type of hubs grow
• Another article in El Confidencial focused on the opportunity Spain has to become a global destination of remote workers
• Aurore Falque-Pierrotin of Samaipata Ventures published 'How to create & measure Network Effects'
• LoversMagazine interviewed fellow galego Adrian Mato, who currently works as Staff Product Designer at Github

Podcasts 🎧

• K Fund interviewed Meinrad Spenger, CEO and co-founder of MasMovil
• SeedRocket interviewed Joel Pascual of Tenvinilo
• En.digital interviewed Diego Arroyo of laagam
• FinanziaConnect interviewed Rocio Pillado of Adara Ventures
• Itnig interviewed Nacho Sala, co-founder and head of marketing at Atrapalo
• Marketing4Ecommerce interviewed Belen Muñoz, head of ecommerce at TiendAnimal. Belen says that in 2020 online sales surpassed €50m, up 30% compared to 2019
• Jordi Altimira interviewed various players of the Latam VC scene
• Acelerando Empresas interviewed Jesus Alonso Gallo of Cupido Capital