Trouble at Jobandtalent and Eshop Ventures, insurtech startup Coverfy raises €750K and more

March 10, 2019 • Issue #46

Startup funding news

Insurtech startup Coverfy raised €750,000 from K Fund and business angels such as François Derbaix, Marek Fodor, Yago Arbeloa and Albert Armengol
Mind The Byte received €175,000 from ENISA and ICF
Loogic published a report analysing the Spanish startup funding market in 2017

Freelancer.com acquired certain assets belonging to Barcelona-based startup Nubelo
Wegow acquired Nvivo
Habitissimo is apparently looking for a buyer, just a year after its acquisition deal with Schibsted for €30 million fell at the last minute

Liz Fleming (South Summit) is joining Adara Ventures
Wayra to launch a a pre-accelerator program in the UK in 2017
Udekta Capital is a new investment vehicle to back companies that float on the MAB

Another round of layoffs at Jobandtalent, affecting 50% of the company’s engineering team. Some former employees told Hipertextual that the company’s algorithm is not as good as advertised. El Confidencial wrote the most complete article about the incident, surfacing management problems at the Madrid-based startup
El Español wrote an interesting article about the effects that the above could have in the Spanish ecosystem and in the willingness (or not) of investors to pour money into the market
E-commerce company Eshop Ventures is not doing well. According to Moda.es, it needs funding to continue to operate and it’s restructuring its business
The government is looking into real state crowdfunding platform Housers’
Indexa Capital’s first year in numbers
Groupalia could soon file for bankruptcy
Sales of BQ devices are slowing
EyeOS, which got acquired by Telefonica a few months ago, it’s going through tough times inside the telco giant

Uber to launch UberOne in Madrid, its first ever program that exclusively relies on electric vehicles. The company also announced this week that it expects to be profitable in Spain in a short period of time and that it doesn’t plan to launch in Barcelona anytime soon
Telefonica has a new communications director, Jose Luis Gomez-Navarro. Merca2 published a very interesting profile
Amazon Prime Video is now live in Spain, competing against HBO, Netflix and Movistar+
Catalunya’s regional government won’t be able to fine Airbnb for having, supposedly, ilegal listings on its site
Could Telefonica become an acquisition target given its level of debt?
Telefónica gains real-time advantage with big data analytics
Zalando launched its affiliate program in Spain
Telefonica and MasMovil settle legal disputes, the latter will pay the former up to €150 million to access its infrastructure
Banco Popular’s president attacked fintech companies this week
Mercadona spent €1 million on a shitty website
WeblogsSL and El Confidencial have signed an agreement to sell ads together
ING’s payments service Twyp is shutting down in Holland. Could the same happen in Spain?
Pilar Manchon, founder of Indysis (acquired by Intel), is now the head of Amazon’s cognitive interfaces department

Interesting read, by Miguel Arias (Carto) about scaling at hyper growth startups: negligence or honest failure
A glance at the startup ecosystem forming in Valencia
El Confidencial looked into Spain’s incentives to promote electric vehicles. Guess what? We’re far behind the rest of Europe. Not a big surprise
Sales of digital content in Spain reached €8.9 billion in 2015, +16.9 YoY
El Español wrote an interesting article about the technology behind Spain’s national lottery
The best apps ‘made in Spain’ of 2016
Is Spanish media too tough on startups?