Kick-start your startup with the Startup community at AWS Experience Madrid.

Get access to tailored startup resources offering some of the information you need during those early days, as well as technical expert support which you will be able to book through the website.

You will also be able to explore the AWS credit programs for startups, providing up to $100,000 in AWS Activate credits*. Join AWS Experience Madrid and get access to the Startup Community today.

Startup funding news 💸

• Madrid-based NFT-backed loan start up Unlockd raised $4.4M seed round, led by Blockchain Capital
• Barcelona-based remote coding school Microverse announced a $4M extension of its $12.5M Series A round, doubling the company’s valuation. The extension comes from existing investors Northzone, General Catalyst, Rubio Impact Ventures and All Iron Ventures, with new investors True Equity joining the round
• Other rounds of funding: Raiil,
• Startups looking for funding: Eternity

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Life Extension Ventures is a new $100M fund to focus on startups accelerating the science around longevity. The fund is co-founded by Iñaki Berenguer (Coverwallet, Pixable) and will have offices in Madrid, New York, London and San Francisco
• Cinco Dias talked to Jose del Barrio (Samaipata), Miguel Kindelán (GP Bullhound) and Ignacio Moreno (Capchase) about the current funding environment. Not many surprises in terms of the insights included in the article: preference for efficient growth, more impact at the Series A/B stage than in seed and recommendation for companies to increase runway to 24+ months
• Alter Capital, Abasys Sabadell and Balboa Ventures, among others, are all raising new funds at the moment
• Global VC firm Antler recently announced that it will be opening an office in Madrid and Lisbon to double down on Iberia's tech ecosystem. In this post, they wrote about their view of the market and what's to come
• Investment firm Axon sold its stake in Indian company Captronic, the last company in its Indian portfolio
• Telefonica, through Wayra, participated in the $2.5M round of Amsterdam-based company Stack

Startup news 💡

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  Kick-start your startup with the Startup community at AWS Experience Madrid, with bespoke learning resources for startups, technical expert support, and AWS credit programs, providing up to $100,000 in AWS Activate credits*. Join the Startup Community at AWS Experience Madrid today.
• 25 años del ecosistema emprendedor en España: Business Insider published a long article on the history of the Spanish tech scene, starting with the years right after the dotcom bubble until more recent times
• idealista posted its 2021 financials. Revenues of €101M (+23% YoY) and positive EBITDA of €54M (+53% YoY)
• Wallbox published its Q2 financial results. The company posted €39M in revenues (+124% YoY) and negative EBITDA of €34M. Wallbox also announced the acquisition of two companies: COIL, an EV charging installation service in the US, and Spanish company Ares Electronics, an innovative provider of printed circuit boards
• Lumo is a Spanish proptech startup that's currently participating in Y Combinator's latest batch. Lumo helps residential buildings with real time updates and more transparency on their spend
• Startup profiles:
• Glucovibes: glucose monitoring
• Bankflip: fintech
• Heura: foodtech
• Humara: waste management
• Petplan: insurtech

Big company news 🏦

• Bloomberg published a profile of Javier Olivan, COO of Facebook and most probably the top Spanish executive in the tech sector
• Amazon's postal and logistic services in Spain combined for €1.4B in revenues last year. The US giant is the second largest provider in Spain, only behind Correos
• BBVA says that it now has more than 1,000 people working on cybersecurity matters. The interview with CISO Sergio Fidalgo also highlights areas of focus for BBVA within security
• Uber Eats is exploring the possibility of working with freelancers for its last mile delivery services

Interesting reads 🤓

• Simon Muñoz, platform PM at Voicemod, published "The biggest lie about product management"
• David Roch, head of product at marketgoo, wrote "Perhaps having meetings is not work"
• Iñaki Arriaga, co-founder of Acumbamail, wrote "Side-project marketing"
• David Bonilla, CEO at Manfred, wrote about "one-man armies", or companies that are formed by just one person
• Xavier Ferrás of ESADE published "The crude reality of transfer tech in Spain". The article talks about what's missing in Spain to have more university spin-offs and researchers and professors launching companies
• Francisco Ortiz, software engineering at Audiense, wrote "Iterative and Incremental Development: we need both"
• El Pais wrote about the ability (or not) of Spain to attract foreign tech companies

Podcasts 🎧

• Historias de Crecimiento interviewed Alvaro Verdoy, co-founder of SalesLayer
• Itnig interviewed Javier Fernandez, CTO and co-founder of Loyal Guru
• Product Hackers interviewed Lupina Iturriaga, co-founder of Fintonic