Startup funding news

• The size of Vilynx’s latest financing was revealed. Kibo Ventures, Caixa Capital Risc, Ridgewood Capital and others invested $6.1 million in the company. That figure includes $3.5 million in new equity, the rest belongs to the conversion of previously signed convertible notes
• 21buttons raised €3 million, in a round led by Samaipata Ventures
• Real estate crowdfunding platform Housers raised €2.5 million
• Mobile fashion app Chicisimo raised €1 million in fresh funding, in a round led by Ticketbis co-founder Jon Uriarte
• Coowry raised €1 million from Swanlaab Venture Factory and Breega Capital. If I’m not mistaken, this is Swanlaab’s first deal as a venture fund in Spain to date
• SaaS startup Kompyte raised an undisclosed round of funding from Adara Venture Partners and Gaesco Venturcap
• RACC invested in P2P car renting company Socialcar

Investor & accelerator news

• Santander InnoVentures invested in two artificial intelligence startups: Personetics Technologies and Gridspace
• Tetuan Valley is getting ready for its new Startup School edition
• Valencia-based accelerator and fund Bbooster Ventures reached a partnership with Draper Venture Network to have a presence in Silicon Valley
• Demium is looking for more entrepreneurs for the new edition of its gaming accelerator
• Pablo Ventura (K Fund) published the second entry of a series explaining how convertible notes work
• Rodrigo Martínez (Point Nine Capital): 7 DOs and DONTs for seed-stage SaaS pricing
• Ian Noel (K Fund): Too much capital can kill your startup
• Is CDTI throwing away €240 million?

Startup news

• How Typeform became the world’s most popular online form creator
• Meller, a Barcelona-based startup that sells glasses and watches online, announced that it reached €6 million in sales in 2016
• Various Spanish music artists want to ban marketplaces that allow consumers and companies to sell second hand concert tickets. Ticketbis (StubHub) is not in favour of such a thing
• Some Cabify drivers in Barcelona and Madrid are not too happy about their working conditions
• ReviewPro boss, RJ Nielmander, talks strategy after selling his SaaS company to Shiji for $28 million
• German fintech startup N26 has more than 10,000 users in Spain
• Why media startup Tviso chose UK as its first international market
• Uvinum closed 2016 with more than €10 million in sales
• Digital marketing agency Antevenio saw a 10% jump in net revenues in 2016
• Influencer marketing platform SamyRoad reached its break even point in 2016 and is set to continue its international expansion. The company has offices in New York, Lisbon, Puerto Rico and Madrid
• Mobile traffic data consumed by using Privalia’s app won’t count towards users’ limits, as the e-commerce company has signed an agreement with Orange
• La Voz de Galicia profiled local security startup Legalpin
• Interview with Fernando Cabello-Astolfi, founder and CEO of fintech startup Aplazame
• Interview with Iker Gutiérrez and Toni García, co-founders of edtech startup Skoolpoint

Big company news

• In an effort to reduce debt, Telefonica sold 40% of Telxius to KKR for €1.2 billion. El Español profiled KKR
• Telefonica introduced at Mobile World Congress what they call ‘the fourth platform’. It supposedly allows clients of the telco to manage their private data and decide who they sell it to
• El Confidencial has a very interesting profile on PcComponentes, the Spanish e-commerce electronics site that sold €271 million worth of products in 2016. The company also recently announced the launch of its new marketplace model
• The CEO of supermarket chain DIA admits that their online strategy has not been very good so far
• Indra’s profit in 2016 was €70 million, up from losses of more than €600 million in the previous year
• Spotify has 16 employees in Spain and revenues of €44 million in 2016

Interesting reads

• Very interesting post by Diego Mariño (Abiquo, Ducksboard, New Relic) about product management
• Another superb post, this time by Carto’s CTO Javier Santana, about scaling engineering and product teams
• El Confidencial profiled a few Spanish former bankers that have created, joined or invested in technology startups in recent times
• Idealista published an interesting post about the correlation between housing rents and activity from companies such as Airbnb, HomeAway and others
• 10 Spanish startups to look out for in 2017
• Hemerotek looked at the density of technology companies in Madrid, Barcelona and other Spanish cities
• Tomas Santoro (SumaCRM) has some interesting tips about blogging and inbound marketing
• Jaime Mesa: Selling online is… not easy