Accelerate your growth with AWS Startup Loft Accelerator, a virtual, equity-free, 10-week accelerator program focused on supporting early stage startups in Europe, the Middle East and Africa with technology, product development, go-to-market advice and guidance to get you funding ready.

Benefits include:

- Custom made agenda of virtual sessions - Up to $25k in AWS Activate Credits - Global network of mentors and alumni - Technology and business guidance

Apply now to take your startup to the next level.

Startup funding news 💸

• Barcelona-based Dental Residency raised €2.1m from Lavanda Ventures, Ship2B and Clínicas Cleardent,
• Tilebox, a space data startup co-founded by Spaniard Laura Costa, raised $1.7m. Cocoa Ventures, also led by Spaniard Carmen Alfonso Rico, participated in the deal
• Mallorca-based travel tech startup Hotelverse raised €1.2m
• Four Spanish startups raised a combined €500k from Antler: Nolemon, Quacks.ai, Uptiq and Meerchat
• Other rounds of funding: Funos, Candam Tech, IberianTax, Verso

M&A activity 🎊

• According to reports, Suma Capital, one of the largest shareholders of Tradeinn, is interested in selling its 30% share in the company. Tradeinn expects to reach €500m in sales this year
• Iesa, one of the leading Spanish companies selling software for administradores de fincas, was acquired by Aeron. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but a few months ago it was rumoured that Iesa was looking to sell for around €180m
• Securitize, the crypto firm co-founded by Carlos Domingo, announced the acquisition of digital asset wealth platform Onramp Invest, to extend its offering to registered investment advisors (RIAs)

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• JME Ventures launched a new ealy stage fund, with the goal of raising €70m
• BME (Bolsas y Mercados Españoles) announced BME Scale, a new stock exchange for startups and scaleups. The idea is to offer tech companies a new source of funding and with lower requirements than the BME Growth and other stock exchanges. This article has the requirements that startups must meet to be able to float on the stock exchange: "En línea con la iniciativa europea “Listing Act” se ha simplificado el documento informativo, así como los informes de ampliación de capital o las due diligence legal y financiera. Esto y el hecho de que no necesitarán un proveedor de liquidez permitirá abaratar en al menos un tercio los costes de incorporación y mantenimiento. A diferencia de lo que sucede en el Growth, las empresas que quieran cotizar en este mercado no tendrán que cumplir un requisito mínimo de free float (capital que cotiza libremente en Bolsa). A cambio deberán estar constituidas como sociedades anónimas, contar con un consejo de administración, estar acompañadas de un asesor registrado en el mercado y publicar las cuentas anuales auditadas."
• Telefonica invested in Singapore-based eSIM company Airalo. The investment was done via Telefonica Ventures. Airalo raised a $60m Series B round
• Cardumen Capital led a $3m round in Israeli dev tools startup Configu. Cardumen also participated in the €11m round of also Israeli startup IVIX
• Barcelona-based Nina Capital published a report on gender diversity across its portfolio

Startup news 💡

• idealista revealed its 2022 financials: €218m (+22% YoY) and EBITDA of €79m (+31% YoY)
• Cabify did €625m in sales in 2022, an increase of 32% vs. 2021. The company also said that net profit was negative, gross profit reached €72m and that it reached break even from an EBITDA standpoint. Trips on its platform increased by 28% vs. 2021, to 91m
• Wikiloc was featured in a couple of articles: first, a profile of the company that stated that it did €5m in revenue and €2m of profit in 2021 with just 13 employees (on top of 12m users), and second, an interview with co-founder and CEO Jordi Ramot
• Social media analytics startup Metricool reached $8.5m in ARR. Metricool mostly grew bootstrapped, until it raised a €5m round in 2022
• Three Factorial managers participated in an episode of the podcast 'Charlas con Managers' to talk about the recent changes at the company and the people that had been recently laid off. The comments they made on the podcast were, apparently, quite controversial and the episode was taken down. I did not listen to the episode. You can read more about this situation here
• Spanish and Italian corporate travel startup Bizaway plans to increase the size of its Barcelona office by 50%, to 60 employees. The company raised a €10m debt round in July
• Real estate crowdfunding platform Urbanitae expects to reach €150m in GMV this year and €300m in 2024. Urbanitae is a Kfund portfolio co.
• The EU has put together an initiative for the verification of digital documents using blockchain technologies. Four Spanish companies w ill participate in the European project: Izertis, Gataca, Validated ID y Logalty
• International education experience platform GrowPro said that in the first six months of 2023 it reached €20m in sales, the same amount as in the entire previous year. GrowPro is a Kfund portfolio co.
• Huw Slater, former COO of TravelPerk, joined mental health platform Oliva as COO and co-founder
• Long interview with Juan Luis Hortelano, president of Startup Valencia, about the local ecosystem, specific needs it might have (he talks about having its own startup law in Valencia) and other topics
• Profile of MarsBased, the tech consultancy firm born 10 years ago. The company expects to reach €2.5m in sales this year, 60% of which comes from the US
• Interview with Julian Fernandez, co-founder of satellite company FOSSA Systems
• Overview of the Malaga startup ecosystem, "el hub de moda en España"
• Analia Plaza wrote about one of the hottest topics in the Spanish ecosystem this summer: the fact that some companies are asking employees to spend more time in the office
• Startup profiles:
• Coinscrap: fintech
• Bike-tech: an article featuring various startups operating in the bicycle space
• Genially: creative platform

Big company news 🏦

• Amazon to increase the size of its Sevilla distribution centre
• NTT Data is looking to hire 400 additional employees in Barcelona until 2024

Interesting reads 🤓

• Pilar Manchon, current Senior Director of Engineering, AI Research Strategy at Google and previously founder of Indisys (Sevilla-based startup acquired by Intel), was appointed as board member of public company Eventbrite. Pilar was also interviewed in recent weeks to chat about AI and Google's role
• RevenueCat, the subscription platform for mobile apps co-founded by Spaniard Miguel Carranza, published a post on how their hiring processes work: "How we hire at RevenueCat"
• Daniel Lopez, founder of Bitnami (acquired by VMware) announced that he's leaving the company. Daniel founded Bitnami in 2011
• Simon Muñoz, platform PM at Voicemod, published "El Product Manager no es el CEO del producto"
• Iñaki Arriaga, co-founder of Acumbamail, published "El canal indirecto: cómo hacer que otros vendan tu producto"

Podcasts 🎧

• Magistral interviewed Iñaki Arrola and Jose del Barrio
• Enginears interviewed Thomas Bernard, senior director of engineering at Typeform
• Seedrocket interviewed Enric Gabarró and David Baratech
• Product Hackers interviewed Jesus Monleon, to chat about the evolution of Trendier and marketplaces