La Engineering Manager Academy es una academia cuyo principal objetivo es formar a líderes en ingeniería, tanto managers como tech leads. Es una academia diferente basada en experiencias reales, dónde aprenderás todo aquello que no te enseña la teoría.

Fundada por Félix López, un destacado líder en ingeniería con más de 23 años de experiencia en la industria tecnológica. Su carrera abarca una amplia gama de industrias, aplicaciones de cambio de divisas, videojuegos, sistemas de alto rendimiento o el sistema operativo Android. Durante estos años ha trabajado en startups, scale-ups o empresas como Google, donde ha desempeñado puestos como Tech leader, Engineering Manager, Manager de Managers, Director de ingeniería y VP de Ingeniería. Es precisamente esta experiencia lo que le lleva a crear la Academía para Engineering Managers, por la que han pasado cientos de managers y empresas en los últimos 4 años.

Actualmente cuenta con dos cursos:

Startup funding news 💸

• Integra Therapeutics, a spin-off from the University Pompeu Fabra, will receive €10.5M from the European Commission. The funds include a €2.5M grant and an €8M equity investment from the European Innovation Council Accelerator program. These funds will support the development of a new gene therapy platform to treat pediatric liver diseases
• Palma de Mallorca-based luxury travel tech company Essentialist raised $10M, led by Iris Ventures. More info here
• Barcelona-based Nearby Computing, an edge computing orchestration and automation platform, raised €6.5M, co-led by Walter Ventures and JME. Wayra and Akamai also participated in the deal. More info here
• Unicaja acquired a 5% stake in crypto bank Bit2Me. This investment grants Unicaja a seat on Bit2Me's board. Terms of the deal were not disclosed
• Murcia-based agritech Widhoc raised €2M led by Bongerma, at a valuation of €45M
• Madrid-based Sqrups raised €1.5M from Global Social Impact. Sqrups operates a “red de tiendas especializada en liquidación de stock”
• Other rounds of funding:
• - Coometas: €600k, “tecnología de acción social”
• - Billdin: €430k, cost control software for the construction industry
• - Lawwwing: €360k, legal tech
• - Flamaid: €250k, compact personal safety device designed for protection
• - Ikualo: neobank
• - Trovant Technology: biogas upgrading technology

M&A activity 🎊

• Decathlon is in negotiations to acquire a majority stake in Tradeinn, a leading Spanish e-commerce company specializing in sports equipment. The potential transaction could be valued at around €1B. Currently, Tradeinn is controlled by Didavid Management (70%) and Suma Capital (30%). Tradeinn expects to reach €600M in sales this year and EBITDA of €60M. CEO David Martin said in an interview that Decathlon “es uno de los interesados en la operación. De confirmarse su entrada Decathlon podría ayudarnos a crecer internacionalmente con sus plataformas logísticas y a conseguir más marcas”
• BYTETRAVEL to float on the BME Scaleup exchange at a valuation of €38M
• Francisco Riberas and Gabriel Castellanos have earned millions more through an earn-out clause from the rescue deal of Moove Cars by Uber
• Two deals in the consultancy business:
• Squirrel Media acquired data driven solutions company The Hook
• Rockin acquired Roas Hunter

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Profile of Javier Santiso, founder of Mundi Ventures. Last week Mundi announced that the EIF has comm €350M in Kembara Fund I FCR. The fund has a target size of €1B. Also this week, Mundi announced that it has raised €25M in funding from the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID) to invest in insurtech startups and adjacent sectors in Latin America
• Lanai Ventures announced a first closing of €15M of its most recent fund. It will invest cheques of €100k to €400k
• Cofides announced that it will participate with €5M in the Inveready Venture Finance IV Trainera fund, which has a target size of €33M
• Spanish investors active abroad:
• - Seaya Andromeda co-led a €25M round in Dutch heat pump company Quatt
• Law firm Delvy launched the legaltech accelerator Drag Along Ventures
• At Kfund we published an updated version of our list of active business angels, pre-seed, seed, Series A and Series B VC firms in Spain

Startup news 💡

• Pau Ramon, former CTO and co-founder of Factorial, launched fika bar: “through the RSS protocol it combines three simple tools: A bookmark manager, a feed reader, a blog/newsletter platform”. Also on Product Hunt here
• Clarity AI was recognized as the leader in the Forrester report on ESG Data and Analytics providers
• Interview with Pablo Carro, co-founder of Playtomic. Carro says that Playtomic has more than 1.2M monthly active users
• Voicemod launched a new voice changer and soundboard tool for consoles, called Voicemod Key. It’s a tiny USB-C dongle that turns your regular gaming headset and mobile phone into a voice changer and soundboard
• Holaluz has secured an additional €7M through a new promissory note issuance, as it continues to seek financing. The renewable energy company, which has faced financial challenges, is raising funds to stabilize its operations and support its growth
• Silk, a company that specializes in streamlining rental processes and the payment of rentals, aims to reach 40,000 tenants this year

Big company news 🏦

• Netflix Spain closed 2023 with €690M in sales, +5% YoY
• Profile of German process intelligence company Celonis and its growing Spanish presence. The company has rapidly expanded its Madrid office to 500 employees
• Telefónica and Pontegadea, Amancio Ortega’s family office, received a total of €780M in dividends from Telxius Telecom in late 2023, their submarine cable company

Interesting reads 🤓

• Tinybird wrote a blog post with a behind the scenes look at how they did their “big” frontend refactor
• Interview with Pilar Manchon, Senior Director of Engineering, AI Research Strategy at Google
• Ignacio Arriaga (Acumbamail) published “Cómo conseguí 4000 suscriptores en mi newsletter”
• José Ramón Pérez Agüera (CTO of Mercadona Tech) wrote about how he approaches product discovery

Podcasts 🎧

• Kfund interviewed JJ Velaz, founder of Kosmo Delivery
• Ariel Camus interviewed Pau Sabria, co-founder of Olapic and Remotely Works
• Product Hackers interviewed Pablo Recuenco, CEO of Morrison Shoes
• Historias de Crecimiento interviewed Enrique Dans