Alqua: banqueros de inversión convertidos en geeks digitales

Somos especialistas en definir e implementar estrategias y productos digitales para impulsar el negocio tanto de startups como de grandes marcas.

La empresa nace de la unión de varios socios de banca de inversión y consultoría estratégica con un objetivo: dar un servicio holístico adaptado al nuevo ecosistema digital.

Ofrecemos desde servicios más tácticos como la generación de contenido, estrategias de influencer marketing o campañas de captación de leads a servicios más estratégicos como proyectos de transformación digital.

Resolvemos los principales retos digitales:

- ¿Cómo incrementar tus ventas a través de palancas digitales? - ¿Cómo darte a conocer y aumentar la penetración de tu marca? - ¿Cómo aprovechar el poder del Data para mejorar tu negocio? - ¿Cómo mejorar tu producto digital? - ¿Cómo maximizar la escalabilidad de tu startup? - ¿Cómo mejorar la experiencia de usuario, optimizando la marca, servicios y productos?

Para más información, consulta su web.

Startup funding news 💸

• Madrid and US-based Boopos, a company operating a platform that provides M&A financing facilities so that talented individuals can become business owners, raised $30m in a combined debt and equity seed financing, led by Fasanara. Other investors in the round include ourselves at K Fund, Zubi Capital, The Venture City, Plug and Play Tech Center and FJ Labs
• Barcelona-based motorbike selling company Mundimoto raised €20m, led by Italian VC firm P101
• Barcelona-based Sateliot is finalizing the closing of a capital increase of €10m with Indra and Cellnex as new partners. More details here
• Madrid-based video marketing platform Snippet raised €6m, led by Moira Capital
• Valencia-based longevity coach Rosita raised €2.4m, led by Barcelona-based impact fund, Ship2B ventures. Other investors include ourselves at K Fund, JME Ventures, Seedcamp, Bankinter, Seedlink Health, Telefonica Wayra and the University of Chicago. Co-founder Juan Cartagena wrote about the funding round and the company's progress here
• Madrid-based edtech startup Alterschool.travel raised €1.7m
• Madrid-based foodtech HarBest Market raised €1m
• Barcelona-based biotech company Nanoligent raised €1m
• Asturias-based augmented reality no-code builder Onirix raised €700k led by GoHub Ventures
• Other rounds of funding: FisioReact, Foodcoin, Hobeen, Langoo, Talentomnia

M&A activity 🎊

• Delivery Hero reported Q4 2021 earnings and the stock took one more tumble. DH's shares are down almost 60% so far this year. This negatively affects Glovo's all-stock acquisition, which at the time of the announcement was pegged at €2.3b. Given DH's stock drop, the value of the transaction, as announced, would be €1b. Glovo's transaction did not include a collar agreement, a mechanism to establish a floor price to avoid situations like this. David Miranda of Osborne Clarke has a good thread about how collar agreements work. In the earnings report, DH said that it expects Glovo to hit €4.3m in GMV in 2022 and negative EBITDA of €330m
• Jobandtalent could look to IPO in 2023, according to elEconomista
• Atrys Health was listed on the Main Spanish Stock Market on Feb 7th. With this milestone, the company finalises a six-year journey on the BME Growth in which it has multiplied its market capitalisation almost fortyfold, from €16m to more than €600m

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Seaya reinvested in French BNPL startup Alma, in a €210m round to support retailers and consumers across Europe
• Nauta Capital led a $8.2m round in UK startup Hullabalook
• Sonia Fernandez, partner at Kibo Ventures, published a blog post explaining their recent investment in German proptech startup Evernest
• Cathay International, the French investment firm that backed Glovo and Wallbox, is considering opening an office in Barcelona

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  If you're a startup or a corporate looking for either strategic or tactical help in your digital endeavors, you should take a look at what this week's sponsor has to offer. Alqua has already worked with companies such as Danone, Mercedes or Goiko and they want to continue doing what they do best: to help others scale and get the most out of their digital assets.
• For many years, Spain was seen by a bunch of startups as a bridge towards Latam in terms of market expansion. Now, more and more Latam startups are taking the opposite route: using Spain as a European entry point. This is the case of Betterfly, Getin and many others
• As a public company, Swedish giant Kinnevik needs to disclose the value of some of its investments, including Spanish startups TravelPerk and Jobandtalent. In its latest report, Kinnevik disclosed a 15% stake in TravelPerk and that the value of its shares have increased by 80% since the last funding round. More details here
• Here's a profile of car buying and selling company Clicars. The company closed 2021 with €250m in sales. The company sold a 65% stake to Grupo Aramis in 2017. Seaya is also an investor, with a 2% stake
• Voicemod signed its first ever IP deal with Rovio Entertainment for its Angry Birds franchise. Thanks to the agreement, Voicemod users will have access to a library of sounds from the popular game series
• ThePowerMBA is now called ThePower Business School. The edtech company expects to hit 10k students this year and continued growth of its B2B business
• La Vanguardia published an article on the topic of Spanish startups that decide to move their headquarters to the US, often before or after a large round of funding. The article (wrongly, in my opinion) focuses on the fiscal aspect of the move, instead of on the more important topic, which is why those companies decide to move their HQs instead of keeping them in Spain
• Insurtech startup Cleverea to launch a car insurance product
• Open banking company Unnax and Onyze, to launch a crypto-as-a-service solution
• Gigas to launch its own fibre network for companies across Portugal
• Spanish platform Stadioplus has rolled out its own cryptocurrency called $Stadio Token
• El Referente published a list of who they believe are 15 promising proptech startups
• If you're interested in following the Basque startup ecosystem, this guide by Ander Lopez is a must-follow
• Startup profiles:
• Vidext: AI video creation platform
• Cocunat: ecommerce cosmetics

Big company news 🏦

• Amazon currently has 18k employees in Spain, after hiring more than 6k in 2021. With this growth, Amazon becomes one of Spain's top 15 companies in terms of employees in the country. Amazon also announced that its cashierless retail stores Go will open in Spain in 2024
• IE University and IBM team up to consolidate Madrid as one of Europe’s leading artificial intelligence ecosystems
• Telefonica received regulatory approval to acquire the mobile assets of Brazilian telco Oi
• El Pais says that it has 180k online paid subscribers

Interesting reads 🤓

• Helena Martinez, product manager at Packlink, published a post on the company's design system "This is how our startup saved days (and money) to focus on UX"
• Product Hunt interviewed Hana Mohan, co-founder of Barcelona-based MagicBell. The interview focuses on the topics of isolation, trans identity as a founder, and making space for change
• Octavi Uya, co-founder of Nautal, published an entry on his blog about dealing with the company's M&A process in the middle of covid
• Ferran Basora, web developer at Factorial, published "How we migrated 400K+ lines of code from Flow to TypeScript"
• A report by Adigital and BCG says that the digital economy represents 22% of Spain's GDP. You can access the full report here

Podcasts 🎧

• Marketing4Ecommerce interviewed Maria Borras, marketing manager at Freshly Cosmetics
• Itnig interviewed entrepreneur and investor Carlos Blanco (Encomenda)
• Novicap interviewed Dimitris Bountolos, CIIO at Ferrovial
• Product Hackers published a special on web3