Event space and offices available for startup teams up to 10 people at The Foundery, Barcelona’s coolest space for startups and freelances. Located in a unique building in Plaza Real, only a 5 minutes walk from Pier One, one of the city’s most lively startups hub, we offer an open coworking space, completely equipped offices of 40 and 20 sq meters, and a beautiful rooftop with 360 views to Barcelona for your Christma’s corporate events (free access for all coworkers during weekdays). Ask for information now and get a 20% discount the first month!

Startup funding news 💸

• Barcelona-based ForceManager raised $12 million for its mobile sales assistant app. The round was led by AXA Strategic Ventures
• Andalucia startup Mission Box closes investment with Grupo Zeta for 1% of company

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Encomenda VC has €19 million in commitments for its first fund
• Interview with Javier Cortés of Gate93
• SeedRocket 4Founders moved its fiscal headquarters from Barcelona to Valencia
• La Voz de Galicia interviewed Diego Mariño, who just moved to A Coruña and expects to make one or two investments per year in local startups

Startup news 💡

• Barcelona’s local government to limit the number of VTC licensed cars that can operate in the city, thus affecting the activity of Cabify. Are these limitations legal? In the meantime, the number of licenses in the market continues to increase and to attract investors
• Last week Cabify announced it would start to apply surge pricing to certain rides in high demand periods. El Confidencial has an analysis of whether Cabify remains the cheaper option after this
• The creator of Times New Roman (Monotype) has laid off 80 employees at Olapic
• Spain to digitize Agtech sector with John Deere, VisualNACert collaboration
• El Español looks at Take Two’s plans with Social Point, the Barcelona-based mobile gaming studio it acquired last year for more than $250 million. The parent company has apparently decided to cancel one of Social Point’s games in the making
• Startup profiles: Woom (health/fertility), SamyRoad (influencer marketing)

Big (local) company news 🏢

• Spanish bank CaixaBank launches DayOne, a financial services entity catering to technology companies
• Interview with Dorothee Honegger, vibbo’s General Manager, the company that competes with Wallapop and other mobile marketplaces in the Spanish market

Big (foreign) company news 🏦

• The world’s largest tech companies have created 1,500 jobs in Spain in the past 5 years, according to El Español

Interesting reads 🤓

• Spanish talent in the world’s largest companies: an overview of some key Spaniard employees that work for Amazon, Google or Microsoft around the world
• How the EU’s PSD2 regulation might affect technology companies across a wide variety of sectors
• Albert Romeu (Carto): ’Working from home as a software developer’

Podcasts of the week 🎧

• El Valle de los Tercos interviewed Pedro Castillo, founder of Logtrust
• NexoFM interviewed Seedtag’s founding team
• MQS interviewed the founding team of Rated Power