Desde Intelectium llevamos más de 18 años colaborando con emprendedores de startups y pymes innovadoras en potenciar las finanzas de sus negocios, ofreciendo servicios que se adaptan a las necesidades financieras de las compañías en todas sus fases.

Nuestro equipo, con más de 25 años de recorrido y experiencia en estrategia, finanzas corporativas y startups, ha logrado canalizar más de 200 millones de euros a través de financiación privada, bancaria y pública, lo que ha permitido a las más de 400 empresas que confían en nosotros, (como Glovo, Seedtag, Exoticca, Mespack y tantas otras) crecer de forma rápida y eficiente.

Además, para aquellas startups o empresas que quieran profesionalizar su departamento financiero, ofrecemos servicios de CFO on Demand y Gestoría Avanzada, ayudándoles a digitalizar procesos, automatizar transacciones y generar dashboards personalizados, lo que permite a los emprendedores comunicarse más eficazmente con sus inversores, ahorrar tiempo y poner foco en las actividades que aportan verdadero valor a su negocio.

Startup funding news 💸

• Cajal Neuroscience is a US-based company co-founded by Spaniard PhD Ignacio Munoz-Sanjuan. The company announced last week a $96M funding round co-led by The Column Group and Lux Capital. Cajal Neuroscience is a drug discovery company focused on neurodegenerative disease. Josh Wolfe, co-founder of Lux Capital, wrote about the investment here
• Barcelona-based restaurant and foodtech company Flax & Kale raised €22M, co-led by Didac Lee and Javier Rubio
• San Sebastian-based EPowerlabs raised €3M, led by Lazpiur. The company offers engineering and product development services to develop electric mobility applications
• Carlos Rivera, co-founder of Clicars, acquired a majority stake in Recomotor, a marketplace of used auto parts
• Barcelona-based quantum computing company Quside raised a "seven-digit" Series A round, led by Trumpf Ventures and Bullnet Capital
• Pablo Fernandez, co-founder of Clicars and Clikalia, acquired a 10% stake in We Are Knitters. The ecommerce and fashion company did €12M in sales in its last fiscal year
• Other rounds of funding: Exheus

M&A activity 🎊

• Barcelona-based accounting and invoicing company Quipu was acquired by French company Sellsy. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Quipu has 8,000 customers and revenues of €1.5M

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• According to La Informacion, Seaya sold 35% of its shares in Glovo for €13.7M, or around €50 per share. The remaining stake of Seaya in the company would be now valued at €20M, or 23% less than a couple of months ago since Delivery Hero's stock price has dropped since then. When the transaction was first announced, in December 2021, Delivery Hero's stock price was close to €100 a share. According to the article, Seaya invested a total of €15.5M in Glovo, and expects to get a return of 3X on its investment
• Interview with Luis Martin Cabiedes of Cabiedes & Partners. Luis claims that one of the issues with the Spanish startup ecosystem is the abundance of capital and, more specifically, public money
• Expansion wrote an article about the relationship between investors and founders, and how investors tend to back for a second time certain entrepreneurs despite their first try and investment together failing. In this other article, Manuel Silva of Mouro Capital (previously Santander InnoVentures) talked about the same topic
• Antler is looking for startups to join its accelerator/investment program in Spain, which starts in early January. The program is aimed at both entrepreneurs that have already launched but also at those who have an idea but haven't made the jump yet
• Eutopia, a French VC firm created by the founder of Smartbox, made its first hire in Spain: Manal Salah, ex L Catterton. The firm plans to make investments between €10M and €50M with a specific focus on edtech and health
• La Vanguardia published a profile of Irene Gomez, director of Open Innovation at Telefonica

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  Take control of your startup's finances and take your company to the next level with Intelectium: private funding, public funding, bank financing and external CFO services. Check them out here
• The Spanish Startup Law has been finally approved. More info and reactions here and here. David Miranda of Osborne Clarke published a series of tweets on the aspects of the law that could have been improved more
• According to Cinco Dias, ING has hired the services of Citi to try to sell its 22% stake in Fintonic. ING sets the value of all of Fintonic at around €100M. In 2021, Fintonic had sales of €12.8M (+63% YoY) and a loss of €10.4M (down by 51% YoY)
• Galgus, a Sevilla-based company that specializes on building robust and scalable WiFi networks and solutions, said it plans to reach €10M in sales next year
• During Black Friday (or more specifically Black Week), Tradeinn increased its sales by 30% compared to the previous year, surpassing €37M (vs. €28M in 2021)
• PC Componentes to shut down its generalist marketplace, Unilae, less than a year after its launch. The company says that it didn't meet the expectations it had. More info here. Also about marketplaces, Leroy Merlin announced the launch of its marketplace service in Spain
• Just Eat in advanced conversations with supermarkets to deliver groceries to end customers, as a complement to its traditional restaurant delivery service
• An article in Techcrunch about founder factories, or companies that create a lot of founders of future startups, mentioned Glovo as an example. The article also highlights Glovo House, a program designed specifically to support Glovo alumni founders via mentorship, networking and support for raising money. Glovo also last opened a new office in Barcelona with more than 30k m2
• EU-Startups published "Barcelona: The past, present and future of a European startup hub"
• Automated crypto investing company Quance won first stop in Asturias of Venture on the Road, organized by BStartup, Seedrocket and Wayra

Big company news 🏦

• BBVA plans to hire 400 data scientists and data engineers in the next few months. The bank says it has more than 2,700 data employees and that it also plans to open an AI centre in Mexico
• Amazon unveiled in Sevilla its largest solar panel installation on top of one of its distribution centres, with more than 13,000 solar panels
• Vodafone to increase prices by an average of €4 in 2023. Follows the move announced by Movistar a few weeks ago
• Red.es, the organism partly responsible for the allocation and distribution of EU funds, hired the services of EY for €8M to help with the workload. These funds include the Kit Digital and other SMB and tech-focused budgets
• The conversations around the possibility of splitting Indra into several divisions, including spinning off Minsai, continue
• The European Investment Bank (EIB), in collaboration with Goldman Sachs Bank Europe, Santander and Société Générale, launched Project Venus, their second euro-denominated digitally native bond issue and first using private blockchain technology
• Internet Para Todos (ITP), an initiative launched by Telefonica and Meta (Facebook) in Peru, to bring internet to rural areas, has reached 3M users
• Mutua Madrileña launched Voltio, a carsharing service made of electric vehicles

Interesting reads 🤓

• Javi Santana, co-founder of Tinybird, published "the end-to-end developer"
• Elena Gómez del Pozuelo, CEO of Baby Friendly Companies, published "Investing in women entrepreneurs is a safer bet"
• David Bonilla wrote "Magic, masturbation, Spanish money and Elon"
• Iñaki Arriaga, co-founder of Acumbamail, published "One subscription to rule them all"
• Sergio García, Senior Product Manager at Cabify, published "Never adopt a zombie"

Podcasts 🎧

• Historias de Crecimiento interviewed Yassir Raïs of Syra Coffee
• SesameHR interviewed Quique Garcia, co-founder of fintech startup Taxdown
• K Fund interviewed Antonio Molins, co-founder of Brazilian insurtech company Justos
• Itnig interviewed Iñigo Valenzuela, CEO and co-founder of Smartvel
• Product Hackers interviewed Sergio Noguerol of Nutritienda