Startup funding news 💸

• Parclick raised €2 million from Capitana Venture Partners, Athos Capital and Inveready
• eSports startup GamersWalk raised €600,000
• Employment app Jobin raised €320,000 from business angels such as Carlos Blanco or Angel Cano, former CEO of BBVA in Spain
• Runnics is looking to raise between €300,000 and €400,000 to expand in Germany and France, according to Kippel01

Startup exits 🎊

• El Pais interviews Stubhub’s CEO. He talks about the Ticketbis acquisition, his opinion on the Spanish startup sector and other topics

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Luis and Jose Cabiedes have created a search fund
• Bloomium is a new €1.2 million investment vehicle that aims to back 12 companies in the next few months
• Conector Galicia is looking for startups to participate in its first batch
• B4Motion, the venture arm and lab associated to automotive company Berge Auto, expects to invest up to €30 million in startups until 2019

Startup news 💡

• Mobile advertising startup Billy Mobile is being investigated by authorities for fraud
• Spotahome says that it has generated €35 million in gross sales (or the total sum of the transactions that have taken place on its platform) since its inception three years ago. The platform also claims to have 30,000 rooms or flats and 10,000 landlords
• Eelp, one of the first startups to come out of Nuclio’s venture builder, has lost its CEO, Nina Alastruey
• La Vanguardia talked to Miguel Vicente and Aquilino Peña about the current state of the Spanish (and Barcelona) startup ecosystem
• Treatwell says that it has increased bookings on its platform by 4X in Q1 2017 in Spain
• Woom Fertility: how two women entrepreneurs created a company without knowing how to code
• How Barcelona startup Trovit is staying on top of the search game
• Beroomers and Universia (Banco Santander) signed an agreement to promote student housing
• Alpify, an app that was created to help safe lives in the mountains, is now available to keep track of your loved ones in cities and other environments
• The former director of Burberry in Spain has left the company to launch a fintech startup: InbestME
• Startup founder interviews: David Fernandez (Letku), Carlos Jimenez (Valeet), David Troya (Glamping)
• Startup profile(s): Tiruleta (fashion e-commerce for kids), Waynabox (travel), Viveon (proptech)

Big company news 🏢

• Amazon forced to pay €2.2 million in fines to Spain’s tax office (Hacienda) following an inspection
• Amazon to shut down BuyVIP seven years after it acquired it for €70 million. Why? Because it’s still not profitable according to the e-commerce giant. Three reasons why Amazon decided to close BuyVI
• Amazon to open its fourth logistics centre in Catalunya. The company leads the Spanish ranking of e-commerce companies, with more than €800 million in sales
• Uber released its first financials in Spain: the company had €1.2 million in revenue in its second year
• Correos Express signed a new agreement with Amazon to deliver up to 150,000 orders per day in late 2017
• Inditex opened Zara’s latest flagship store in Madrid, which combines interesting new digital technologies and a 3,000 square meter basement warehouse to serve online customers
• Telefonica to disconnect ‘TU’ and combine it with Tuenti. TU was one of Telefonica’s initiatives to compete with Skype
• Year two: Pallete’s new challenges as Telefonica’s leader
• BBVA’s president Francisco González says they want to become the Amazon of the banking industry
• Microsoft to hire Wayra’s former boss Mariano Amartino to lead its startup efforts in Latam
• Estrella Galicia has hired the former VP of marketing for Southern Europe at Amazon to lead its digital strategy

Tech and policy 💂🏼

• Spain’s regulator CNMV has given the green light to crowdfunding platform Housers
• Spain’s budget for 2017 includes an increase of 4,1% in R&D, reaching €6 billion. El Confidencial has an article explaining why not everything about the increase should be considered as positive

Interesting reads 🤓

• ISDI published a report analysing the food tech industry
• The biggest enemy of the taxi industry is not Uber or Cabify, but autonomous cars, argues El Confidencial
• Interesting initiative by Javier Martin (Loogic), he’s going to start charging for his weekly newsletter, Futurizable
• Alex Dolara (product manager at Teams): ‘The size of the B matters’
• The reality of junior engineers/programmers in Spain
• El Pais published an interview with Santiago Pina Ros, a Spaniard engineer who currently works at WhatsApp
• 7 tech events and meetups you don’t want to miss this April in Barcelona
• Vozpopuli interviewed Sofia Benjumea, head of Campus Madrid
• Jordi Romero (Itnig): Why hiring for an early stage startup is hard

Podcasts of the week 🎧

• Fran Carreras interviews Luis Cabiedes
• Itnig: How the digital Leads at Kantox, DEXMA and Talent Clue nails digital marketing for startups
• MasQueStartups interviewed Pedro Jimeno, CEO of Spines
• StartUpLeon interviewed Luis Rodrigo, CEO of Ucotrading