Summer time has ended and it’s the perfect time to get back to learning. If you’re an early stage startup or are looking to take your project to the next level, you can join the Q4 sessions of AWS Startup Academy.

AWS Startup Academy is a program designed to support startups find the tools – whether business or technical - to launch, scale and grow. In the upcoming sessions you will find lessons from How to Hire a Tech team to Foundational Security on the AWS Cloud.

Sessions are usually delivered by a mix of ecosystem players, AWS experts and customers who have been where you are right now. Browse now through AWS Startup Academy available both in Spanish and English.

Startup funding news 💸

• Christopher Janz of Point Nine Capital wrote a blog post with 5 lessons learned from Factorial. The Barcelona-based startup announced last week an $80m Series B. On Factorial's round, I also recommend this podcast that Bernat Farrero and Jordi Romero recorded last week
• Madrid-based hybrid marketplace Wow raised €8m from Athos Capital and FJ Labs
• US and Spanish solar-powered aircraft developer Skydweller Aero raised $8m and announced a partnership with Palantir
• Barcelona-based Seqera Labs raised $5.5m to help sequence COVID-19 variants and other complex data problems. The round was led by Talis Capital and Speedinvest
• Barcelona-based gaming startup Gamestry raised $5m in seed funding, led by Goodwater Capital, Target Global and Kibo Ventures
• Barcelona-based gaming company The Breach Studios raised €3.5m from MY.GAMES Venture Capital
• Valencia-based edtech startup GoKoan raised €1.2m, led by Sabadell Venture Capital
• Madrid-based Jotelulu, a cloud platform that transforms small IT companies into cloud service providers, raised €1m from Big Sur Ventures and Bankinter
• Aragon and Madrid-based agritech startup Ixorigue raised €1m
• Barcelona-based Prestalo raised €1m
• Other rounds of funding: Beseif, Cash The Closet
• Startups looking for funding: Tot-em

M&A activity 🎊

• Gigas acquired Ommovil, an MVNO aimed at the B2B market. Gigas paid €9.1m for the company

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Lots of news from Kibo Ventures: the firm announced a new website and brand, the promotion of several people in its staff, new hirings and more news
• Lanzadera has welcomed 100 new startups to its various accelerator and investment programs. Here's the list of all the companies
• Business Insider profiled Enzo Ventures, the investment firm aimed at Gen Z founders and startups
• Pepe Agell, co-founder of gaming adtech company Chartboost (recently acquired by Zynga), is joining US-based VC firm Pear.vc as visiting partner

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  AWS Startup Academy is back for these last few months of the year on the 2 last Thursdays of each month. Join the upcoming sessions and gain insights on How to Hire a Tech Team, How to integrate Machine Learning to your product or Fundraising for Early Stage Startups.
• Wallapop to launch in Italy. The company was really aggressive at the beginning of its history when it came to expanding outside of Spain, but after years of battling with Letgo in the North American market, it decided to stop its expansion plans and sell its US business to Letgo. According to La Informacion, Wallapop could have reached €25m in revenue
• Mobile gaming startup Codigames had a monster 2020. The firm announced a profit of €18m and distributed €15m in dividend payouts, revenues reached almost €72m, up 60% year-on-year. Angels Capital owns 20% of Codigames and the rest is owned by its co-founders
• Spanish cybersecurity startup CounterCraft has been awarded a production contract in order to more quickly and easily scale their deception technology solution across the United States Department of Defense
• Voicemod, the Valencia-based company building augmented voice and interactive audio, announced that it is a launch partner in the new Agora.io marketplace. Voicemod also announced last week the launch of Bits, an extension for Twitch
• Cabify published a series of tweets and a blog post about the evolution of its brand and new branding changes it has now implemented
• Glovo announced plans to double its investment in Africa and expand its operations on the continent. The company has invested up to €25m by bringing its food delivery service to six African countries (Morocco, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria)
• Wired wrote an article about the rider law and its impact on the gig economy. "Spain had a plan to fix the gig economy. It didn’t work: Couriers say their working conditions are worse than ever as gig companies scramble to avoid calling them employees"
• Spotahome has expanded to 26 more cities in Spain and 88 in total across Europe
• Urban mobility startup Meep and Aena announced a partnership to make it easier for Barcelona travelers to get to the El Prat airport using the former app
• Expansion published an overview of the farm-to-table sector in Spain, featuring startups such as HarBest Market and Agrari
• Business Insider interviewed Mike Massaro, CEO of Flywire, to talk about the journey of the company from him joining as CEO to its recent IPO
• German fintech Trade Republic plans to launch its mobile app broker in Spain in the near future. The Berlin-based startup has raised almost $1b to date
• Startup profiles:
• Frankie The King: food subscription service for pets
• Submer: cooling system for datacenters
• Twenix: edtech, language learning

Big company news 🏦

• Bizum has now more than 17m users and more than 20k retailers accept Bizum payments
• HBO Max will launch in Spain and in the Nordics this fall, followed by Central and Eastern Europe and Portugal in 2022

Interesting reads 🤓

• WeRemoto is a job board in Spanish for remote positions. Although the company is not Spanish, its founder Gaston Levy published an interesting blog post about how he transformed a side project and no-code product into a successful acquisition
• La Liga became the first top football league to offer NFTs of all players, as a result of a partnership with French startup Sorare
• Sam Ahmed of Nauta Capital published a post with tips and advice on how to do PR at startups: 'Data-driven insights on nailing PR for your Series A round'

Podcasts 🎧

• SeedRocket interviewed Marek Fodor, to talk about investing
• Antonio Rull interviewed Isabel Garate, co-founder of Conkau and formerly of both CARTO and Ontruck
• Finanzia Connect interviewed Sebastian Fernandez of Samaipata Ventures
• Startups For The Rest Of Us interviewed Hana Mohan, co-founder of Barcelona-based MagicBell