8wires.io is a studio with +6 years of experience specialized in data engineering for you to build, optimize and scale your business project, without bottlenecks and with the right information. We help you in data architectures for reporting, automation and advanced analytics.

We have realized that, fundamentally, there are two types of companies: those that trust their data and those that do NOT.

If you are in the first group, the good stuff begins. Do we need to optimize cloud costs or load times? incorporate more data? technical debt? implement an algorithm?

If your company belongs to the second group, let's change that. It is likely that you need a small reform (or an integral one), and we can help you, both in technology and in business.

At 8wires.io we work every day, side by side, with people who live your same challenges. We would love to meet you, either to share or to build.

Startup funding news 💸

• La Informacion, using Bankinter's data, and El Referente published analysis of the first six months of funding activity in the Spanish startup ecosystem. Volume is down compared to the same year-ago period
• Bilbao-based H2SITE raised €12.5M, with the participation of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investment firm launched by Bill Gates. The company produces onsite and renewable hydrogen for small and medium companies
• Barcelona-based health tech company Amelia Virtual Care raised €7M from Endra and CDTI. Amelia is an all-in-one VR platform trusted by over 2,000 therapists
• Madrid-based edtech The Bridge raised €5M from Atitlan
• Barcelona-based crypto and NFT startup VRM raised €2M, led by Swedish blockchain investment firm ChromaWay
• Barcelona-based edtech Metacampus raised €1.5M
• A Coruña-based Docuten raised €1.2M, co-led by Altia and Vigo Activo
• London and Bilbao-based ZenRows raised €1.1M, led by 4Founders Capital. ZenRows turns any website into structured data
• Barcelona-based Premiumguest raised €1M from various business angels
• Other rounds of funding: Habbility, Momoven, Lobo SpA,

M&A activity 🎊

• Furniture ecommerce site Hannun went public on the MBA Growth, at a €31M valuation. The company posted sales of €4.3M in 2021 and 27K orders, and a loss of €4.6M. More info and company financials here. Startupxplore, which supported the company at the very beginning, will reach a 5X multiple on its investment
• Consulting firm Izertis acquired cybersecurity company Sidertia. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sidertia has 100 employees and in 2021 had revenue of €6.3M and EBITDA of more than €2M
• Finnish company Talenom acquired Spanish fintech Nomo, a fintech startup launched by Innocells (Banc Sabadell)
• Hopu, a Murcia-based startup that does climate change mitigation for cities via data-driven services, got acquired by also Spanish company Libelium
• MioGroup acquired branding agency Firma. More info here
• David Miranda, partner at Osborne Clarke, collected in a single Twitter thread all of his previous threads about M&A. A lot of gems in there

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Forbes published a profile of early stage VC firm Enzo Ventures. The firm, co-founded by several young investors who are in their 20s, started off with a €1.5M fund (with the support of UK VC firm ProFounders Capital) and is now raising a new €20M fund with the support of Moira Capital Partners. They write cheques from €100K to €500K
• Inveready has a new €40M fund called Full Global Investments
• El Economista interviewed the founders of impact investment firm Creas, Emilio Ayanz and Luis Berruete. The firm has been doing it for more than 10 years
• Nara Capital is a new firm currently preparing a €25M to invest in biotech companies. One more investment firm, Brain VC, was also announced last week with the same size, focused on AI investments
• Nina Capital invested in Finnish health tech startup Formulator. The company provides a solution for mental health case formulations as a service to both individuals and professionals

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  8wires.io is a studio with +6 years of experience specialized in data engineering for you to build, optimize and scale your business project, without bottlenecks and with the right information. Get in touch with them here
• Motorbike marketplace Mundimoto plans to reach €100M in gross sales in 2022 and 30K motorbikes sold through its platform. As far as I understand, the company doesn't simply put in touch buyers and sellers, but actually has 2.5K bikes in stock, which sells in Spain and Italy
• Open banking and fintech infra company Belvo received authorization to develop payment initiation solutions in Mexico, which means Belvo will be able to process and issue bank-to-bank payments through its API platform
• Digital securities marketplace Securitize expands into Europe as it enters Spain’s fintech sandbox, where Securitize will serve a number of businesses and their investors under regulatory supervision
• HR startup Circular published an analysis of minimum salaries requested by developers in Spain
• Sifted talked to various Spanish and Portuguese investors to come up with a list of 14 deeptech startups to watch in Spain and Portugal
• Expansion published a long profile of Iker Marcaide's Zubi Group, a conglomerate of multiple entrepreneurial initiatives that incubate and invest in startups with a sustainability component. Iker is the founder of Flywire. Another profile of Zubi and Iker here
• French newspaper Les Echos published a report on the increasing number of French founders that have relocated to Barcelona in the past few years
• Startup profiles:
• Boske: online business school
• Embat: fintech and cashflow management

Big company news 🏦

• To follow the whole situation going at Indra, please find La Informacion's coverage here. Lots of new developments happened last week

Interesting reads 🤓

• Barcelona to continue to host the Mobile World Congress until 2030
• Madrid's regional government is working on a plan to attract more data centres to the region. The plan has yet to be unveiled, and news on the plans mostly focus on the availability of land and real estate to attract such infrastructures, with very few additional details. More about this in Xataka here
• Cinco Dias published a post on the negative impact that returns from ecommerce orders are having in the P&L of companies such as asos and Zalando
• Miguel Arias (K Fund) published "How to crack corporate sales channels for your scale up"
• Ahmad Hamouda, software engineer at Glovo, wrote a post to explain how the company does customer segmentation to run more efficient marketing campaigns
• Huw Slater, COO of Travelperk, published a post outlining "the 3 strategies TravelPerk used to emerge stronger from the pandemic"

Podcasts 🎧

• Historias de Crecimiento interviewed Joaquim Mach, co-founder of Incapto Coffee
• Itnig interviewed Pol Valls, co-founder of Submer
• K Fund interviewed Dani Solà, SVP of Data and Analytics at German insurtech Clark