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Startup funding news 💸

• Madrid and NYC-based revenue based financing startup Capchase raised $125m. The round was a mix of equity and debt and was led by QED Investors, bringing the total raised by Capchase to $190m. Since launching, Capchase has issued more than $390m in financing to over 400 companies
• Barcelona-based fintech API startup Belvo raised $43m in Series A funding. A mix of Silicon Valley, Europe and Latam-based VC firms and angels participated in the financing, including Future Positive, FJ Labs, Kaszek, MAYA Capital and VentureFriends, as well as Spanish VC Kibo Ventures
• Barcelona-based motorbike sharing platform Cooltra raised €20m from Francisco Riberas (Gestamp) and others
• Barcelona-based brand protection platform Red Points secures up to €15m in debt financing from the EIB
• Fracttal, a startup with Chilean origins but now headquartered in Spain, raised $5.3m from Seaya, GoHub and others
• Barcelona-based food startup Heura raised €4m via Crowdcube
• Salamanca-based hotel revenue management platform Beonprice raised €2m in Series A round, led by Adara Ventures and CDTI. K Fund is an investor in Beonprice and we also participated in this round
• Valencia-based MESbook raised €2m from Bewater and others
• Madrid-based medical devices startup Marsi Bionics raised €943k via Fellow Funders
• Logroño-based car leasing startup Idoneo raised €550k, led by DraperB1
• Sevilla-based edtech startup Wuolah said it's working on a round of funding with the goal of launching in Latam
• Other rounds of funding: Kleta

M&A activity 🎊

• Catalan telco Parlem Telecom plans to float on the BME Growth stock market (previously known as MAB) with a market cap of €43m
• Private equity firm EQT has made an offer to acquire Telefonica's submarine cable business for €1.8b
• Iñaki Ortega, professor at the Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, wrote a post about the lack of coverage of Flywire's IPO in most of Spanish general media: 'Spain is no country for startups'. Also on this topic, Valencia Plaza published a long interview with Flywire's founder Iker Marcaide, to talk about the event and also what he's now up to at Zubi Labs

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Bankinter, Wayra and Endeavor signed an agreement to launch an initiative that aims to help Spanish scaleups scale. The program has chosen 15 startups to help them over a period of 6 months with connections to founders and people who have founded and scaled companies before
• All Iron published the second issue of its newsletter, which features an interview with Cristobal Viedma, co-founder and CEO of Madrid-based edtech startup Lingokids, and Antoine Nussenbaum, co-founder of London VC Felix Capital. Felix has previously invested in Olapic (based out of NYC but co-founded by three Spaniards and TravelPerk)
• Suma Capital has completed the final closing of its new €160m growth fund
• Antai and Riva y Garcia to launch a €35m debt fund
• Spanish firm Crea led a €7m investment in French second-hand clothing company Patatam
• German insurtech startup Wefox announced last week a €540m, which included the participation of Spanish firm Mundi Ventures
• Jeeves is an expense management startup for the Latam market that came out of stealth last week while also announcing a $131m round. Two of the business angels in the company are Spaniards Uri Tintore and Pablo Viguera, co-founders of Belvo

Startup news 💡

• Second hand bicycle marketplace Tuvalum has implemented a way to verify that bikes on its platform have not been stolen. They explain how they do it in this article
• Jorge Gomez Sancha, co-founder of Tinybird, published a Twitter thread on the topic of founder-led sales and when (and how) to build a sales team at a B2B enterprise startup
• El Pais published a profile of Durcal and its CEO Guillem Viladomat. Durcal has built an app to build better connections and relationships between the elderly and their respective families. Durcal is a K Fund portfolio company
• Another Amazon FBA aggregator with presence in Spain: London-based Heroes, which has raised €82m to date, has opened an office in Barcelona and hired 6 employees
• Another hot sector right now is the 10-minute grocery delivery space. In Spain there are a few active players in the sector, one of which is Barcelona-based Blok, co-founded by former employees of Deliveroo, Glovo and Uber Eats. Business Insider talked to its founding team about their plans for 2021 (which is to reach €25m in gross sales) and other topics. Blok has raised pre-seed funding from Berlin-based VC Cavalry Ventures
• Business Insider talked to various Spanish business angels and VCs to ask them what companies they're more interested in in the retail sector. The list includes the likes of laagam, Yaba, StockAgile or Bcome
• Xataka published an article about popular chefs that have launched dark kitchen businesses, featuring La Gran Familia Mediterranea (a K Fund portfolio company)
• Startups' Oasis also published a list of 10 promising Spanish travel tech startups
• Malt, a Paris-based B2B marketplace for finding freelance consulting gigs, announced the completion of a funding round worth €80 million. Malt has a big office in Madrid, where it has more than 80 employees
• Startup profiles: SmartMonkey, Smartvel, HeyTrade, Circoolar, Criptan

Bit2Me is a suite for buying, selling, exchanging, and managing cryptocurrencies and euros that currently has 49 cryptocurrencies listed. Its purpose is to facilitate access and support new users who are interested in this sector by offering them all the solutions to their crypto needs.

Big company news 🏦

• According to La Informacion, Amazon has injected €1m in capital into its Spanish Twitch division, as it wants to give more relevance to the product in the country (which has already become quite popular)
• Telefonica continues its disinvestment strategy to reduce debt, now moving forward with the selling of its fiber business in Chile and Brazil
• Ryanair plans to hire 50 engineers and developers in Madrid

Interesting reads 🤓

• Eduardo Manchon (Panoramio, Mailtrack) published a thought-provoking essay on Spanish tech talent: 'Stunted talent: why Spain lacks highly talented tech works'
• Samuel Gil (JME) continued his series and interest on biotech with 'Genetics edition and CRISPR-Cas9'
• Percival Manglano has an interesting analysis of Madrid's city government to regulate mobility in the city, which focuses on sustainability and how to regulate innovation
• Rafael Ortiz, co-founder of cannabis startup Uncanny, wrote a blog post about the challenges he's faced in launching and operating a cannabis business in Spain
• Marketing4ecommerce published a list of more than 200 software tools to better manage your ecommerce business

Podcasts 🎧

• Novicap interviewed Raul Marcos, co-founder of Carbono, and Edu Saez, to talk about crypto
• Travel Tech interviewed Juan Castillo, co-founder and CEO of Guruwalk
• David Bäckström, co-founder of Barcelona-based Sequra, gave a talk about this entrepreneurial journey and the evolution of Barcelona's startup ecosystem
• Hack & Hustle interviewed Nico Goulet, co-founder of Spanish VC firm Adara Ventures
• El Español interviewed Blablacar's Spanish country manager Florent Bannwarth
• Masterminds interviewed Jimena Catalina, co-founder of Slides Carnival, a side project that has reached €70k in monthly sales
• Itnig interviewed Elena Bates, co-founder of insurtech startup Rastreator