🚀 DRIZA celebrates the remarkable milestone of having consulted on 100 digital projects, of which we count 47 startups and 12 Big Corps.

💡 Key lessons in the process: every conversation has tremendous value. We’ve learned so much from our coffee chats with entrepreneurs, investors, and direct competitors that it’s hard to assign it a metric. We have found incredible talent to hire and outstanding MarTech to buy. And ideas, we have found ideas worth pursuing and translating to our clients’ business models.

☕ We want to pay these lessons forward, free of charge. Let’s have a coffee and a conversation: we’ll speed-audit your digital business model or debate about the future of marketing in the metaverse; we’re happy to hear your SaaS sales pitch or even just talk career paths and CVs 🤷🏼‍♂️ . This one is on us!

➡ ️ Feel free, whoever you are and whatever you do, to book a slot with us to chat. Happy to meet you anywhere in Madrid (for those lucky enough to live in the best city in the world), or online.

Startup funding news 💸

• Funding volume in Q3 2022 was 20% lower than in the previous year, according to Fundacion Bankinter. Not really surprising given market conditions
• CDTI invested a combined €3.5M in Basquevolt and Deepull
• Madrid-based reverse logistics platform IF Last Mile raised €3M, led by us at K Fund. Inveready and Lanai also participated in the round, as well as Grupo Romeu
• Valencia-based second hand bicycle marketplace Tuvalum raised €3M, led by Demium and Athos Capital
• Barcelona-based AllRead, a startup providing AI vision software to the shipping and logistics industry, closed a €2.5M round, led by venture capital firm Clave Capital
• Pablo Fernandez, co-founder of Clicars, acquired a 21% stake in Alicante-based sustainability startup Gravity Wave. Pablo already owned about 10% of the company prior to the transaction
• Other rounds of funding: Flappin, Bloome, Lexy,

M&A activity 🎊

• PE firms Thoma Bravo and Sunstone Partners announced last week that they’re acquiring customer insight platform UserTesting for $1.3B. Both funds plan to combine it with UserZoom, the US/Spanish startup Thoma Bravo acquired an $800M majority stake in a few months ago. Although headquartered in the US, UserZoom has a relevant tech and product team in Barcelona, and all of its founders are Spanish
• Empark, one of the larger companies in Spain in the parking management sector, acquired also Spanish electromobility solutions company Efimob
• Reed & Mackay, a London-headquartered corporate travel and events brand acquired by US travel startup TripActions (a competitor to TravelPerk), acquired its Spanish counterpart Atlanta Events & Corporate Travel Consultants
• Gerard García, CEO and founder of Deale, wrote an article titled "The unstoppable digital transformation of traditional M&A"

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Inveready plans to raise a new biotech fund of €50M, double the size of its previous fund for the sector
• Samaipata led a €9M round in German startup Retraced, a tracking tech platform focused on helping to map the textile industry supply chain
• Portuguese VC firm Armilar Venture Partners announced the hiring of Juan José González as the firm's Senior Advisor to the Spanish market. Juan Jose was previously part of Artur D Little and BCG, as well as Indra, where he actively promoted investments and alliances in cloud technologies, cybersecurity and control systems

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  Digital consulting firm DRIZA celebrates the remarkable milestone of having consulted on 100 projects, with a free coffee and conversation to chat about all things digital. If you want to take them up on their offer, book a slot here
• According to Cinco Dias, Spanish neobank Bnext is looking for a buyer. The company is interested in companies or investors that could acquire a majority stake in the company
• According to labor union UGT, 66% of companies looking for IT roles can't hire candidates because of salary expectations. The article also focuses on whether there's a bubble in IT salaries or not. David Bonilla, CEO of Manfred, had a good take here
• Here's a long profile of contextual advertising company Seedtag. The company, co-founded by two former Googlers, plans to do €150M in sales this year (up from €80M last year)
• In 10 years, legaltech company Reclamador, which helps travelers request refunds, has generated sales of €25M
• Digital native vertical brand Tropicfeel to open its first retail store, in Barcelona, and also said that it expects to close this year with €22M in sales
• Evaristo Babe, co-founder of fleet management company Pulpo, did an interview to talk about how to enable "smart fleet management through data integration". Pulpo, which is based in Madrid and Mexico DF, recently announced an $8M round
• Fortris, a Spanish digital asset treasury operations company, plans to double down its presence in Malaga with the hiring of at least 40 new employees
• British corporate expense management solution Payhawk said that Spain already represents 20% of its sales volume and that it's growing fast (+242% YoY)
• Danish podcasting platform Podimo said that it has 100K paid subscribers in Spain and that it plans to open recording studio in 2023
• Investment and crowfunding platform SegoFinance announced that's it's entering the real estate market with Sego Real Estate

Big company news 🏦

• 26 employees of Twitter in Spain have been affected by the round of layoffs announced last week
• Cisco to open its first EU chip design center in Barcelona

Interesting reads 🤓

• Jose María Hernanz, Partner at JME, published an article on nuclear energy, highlighting opportunities for startups and investors
• Julio Martinez, co-founder of fintech company Abacum*, published a post explaining the FP&A (Financial planning and analysis) pyramid. Julio "grouped the core concepts of modern FP&A into a pyramid that layers them in what I think is the typical strategic finance journey"
• Arnau Navarro, co-founder of restaurant software company Haddock, published an article about the company's fundraising strategy and why they haven't provided many details about their most recent round of funding
• David Bonilla, CEO of Manfred, wrote a post on the new Spanish startup law
• Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit, co-founder of MarsBased, published "You learn to invest by investing"
• El Español profiled Dario Gil, senior VP at IBM and also director of its research division, to chat about quantum computing
• Samaipata published "How to think about compensation for your B2B Sales team"

Podcasts 🎧

• Product Hackers interviewed Ignasi Vegas, co-founder and CTO of Mexican logistics startup Cubbo, and also did a special on Product Marketing, with Angélica Sanz (Aircall), Victoriano Izquierdo (Graphext) and Carmen Guerrero
• El Rincon de Aquiles interviewed JJ Velaz, co-founder of logistics API company Kosmo*
• Novicap interviewed Juan Rubio, co-founder of Genially
• K Fund interviewed Gil Dibner, founder of frontier tech VC firm Angular Ventures
• Itnig interviewed Pablo Fernandez, co-founder of Clicars and Clikalia
• Historias de Crecimiento interviewed Juan Pablo Tejela, co-founder of Metricool