After Exiting Markco Media, Mark Pearson Launches New London-Based VC Fund And Startup Studio
Aside from a bout of self-diagnosed “man flu” and being mildly irritated that the exit of one of his portfolio companies wouldn’t now close before the end of the tax year, Mark Pearson was in high spirits during our call a few weeks ago. And perhaps he has every reason to be. After selling Markco Media, the parent company of MyVoucherCodes, last year, the U.K entrepreneur… Read MoreDopay Banks $2M To Launch A Cloud Payroll Service For The Unbanked
Dopay, a London-headquartered startup that offers a payroll service for the unbanked, has closed a $2 million seed. Investors in the round of funding include global private equity firm ACE & Company, plus a syndicate of angels from the banking, private equity and hedge fund industries. Read MoreLVMH’s Groupe Arnault, Accel, More Pour $40M Into Fashion Shopping Aggregator Lyst
On the heels of Farfetch raising $86 million last month, another fashion commerce startup out of London has picked up a significant round of funding. Lyst, a site that lets people shop across some 11,500 different online stores using a single check-out, has picked up $40 million in a Series C round of funding. Investors in this round, which brings the total raised by Lyst to $60 million… Read MoreBerlin’s Jobspotting Gets Some Seed Love From Horizon Ventures
Berlin-based Jobspotting, a site and iOS app which aims to put a tailored search interface algorithm over third-party recruitment sites and your social connections, has raised an undisclosed round of seed funding from Horizon Ventures. Read MoreSimplyCook Is A Recipe-Kit Startup That Avoids Being In The Fresh Food Delivery Business
UK startup SimplyCook is another recipe kit service. However, unlike competitors HelloFresh, Gousto, Marley Spoon, and Shuttlecook, the company doesn’t send you all of the fresh ingredients required to turn its recipes into food on your table. Instead, the subscription service consists of recipe cards and what SimplyCook calls “ingredients kits,” which are herbs, spices… Read MoreCredo Ventures Closes New €34 Million Fund Targeting Central Europe
Credo Ventures, the Prague-based VC targeting the CEE region, has closed its second fund, ‘Credo 2′, which, at €34 million, is more than twice that of the firm’s original €18 million fund launched in 2010. Read MoreHello?! Nokia Releases Official Statement Denying Reports It Will Return To Mobile Handsets
Nokia sold its handset business to Microsoft last year, but since then rumours have bubbled up now and again that the firm is planning to return to the mobile space. Citing anonymous sources, Re/code recently lit the touch-paper on a round of new stories floating this idea. It reported that the firm was plotting more mobile moves, spearheaded by Nokia Technologies, the division which handles… Read MoreSplittable App Makes A Play For Renters Who Have To Split Apartment Costs
We’ve seen how Venmo has taken off in the US for when people want to split things like shared restaurant bills. Now a UK startup has come up with an app which it claims will make it easier to share expenses when sharing an apartment. According to the UK’s Office of National Statistics, the country has over ten million young renters driven into sharing apartments because of… Read MoreFliplet Secures Seed Funding For Its ‘Fast’ Enterprise Apps Building Platform
You’re a business that wants to create a mobile app, but faster than it would take a designer to build something bespoke. UK-based startup Fliplet says it has come up with a simple way to do this which is mainly used by companies to produce internal business apps, such as to support sales, reporting, training, marketing, stuff like that. Existing customers include Marriott, Mars, Xerox… Read More
BlackBerry In Consultation Period To Close Swedish Operations [Updated]
Earlier this week smartphone maker BlackBerry confirmed it acquired Israel’s WatchDox to build out its security software business, but it looks like it may be downsizing elsewhere. According to reports from Swedish news sites, BlackBerry is closing down its software design operations in Sweden — a business that grew out of its acquisition of UI startup The Astonishing… Read MoreFrance To Head Open Government Partnership Only One Year After Joining It
Over the past two years, France has been a leading country when it comes to open data and open government — and it is paying off. Only one year after joining the Open Government Partnership, France has just been elected to head the Partnership starting in October 2016. I’ve been regularly covering France’s effort in this area as I think it’s an interesting take on… Read MoreWith Lydia, Pay For Your Online Purchases Using Your Apple Watch
Step by step, Lydia is unveiling its product strategy to handle all your payments. When I last covered the French startup, it was still mostly focused on growing its user base by providing a Venmo alternative for French users. But now, Lydia also lets you pay on e-commerce websites, starting with PriceMinister. The app is now also available on the Apple Watch so that you can just tap on your… Read MoreCanon Acquires London-Based Family-Photo Sharing Startup Lifecake
London-based startup Lifecake, which offers a photo-sharing app aimed at parents with young children, has been acquired by Canon Europe. Read MoreAfter Raising $25M, U.K. Restaurant Delivery Startup Deliveroo Adds France And Germany To Its Menu
The premium take-out space in Europe continues to heat up as a number of startups target parts of the market that Just Eat, Foodpanda and Delivery Hero aren’t yet catering. Namely, food delivery from premium restaurants that don’t traditionally offer a take-out and delivery service. The best funded is the U.K.’s Deliveroo, which earlier this year raised a $25 million Series… Read MoreP2P Lending Site Funding Circle Raises $150M Led By DST At A $1B+ Valuation
Time to make way for another startup juggernaut out of the financial world. Funding Circle — a London-based peer-to-peer platform for small businesses to get loans, and investors to put up money to finance those loans — is today announcing that it has raised $150 million in venture funding, in a round that we have confirmed values the startup at over $1 billion. While… Read MoreTaxi App Hailo Lays Off More Staff, Preps Another Round Of Funding
Yellow lights ahead for Hailo? We have heard, and now confirmed, that the London-based taxi-hailing startup that competes against the likes of Uber for on-demand car services is laying off staff. As part of a reorganization, 17 people, or about 11 percent of its staff of 150 people, were let go earlier this week — a move that the company’s CEO says is being made to focus more on… Read MoreKano Co-Founder To Talk Building A Coding Kit Business At Disrupt NY
Sales pitches for products that aim to teach a new generation to learn to code arrive thick and fast in the inbox, these days. But one of the most polished entrants in this burgeoning space remains U.K. startup Kano, which Kickstarted its startup coding kit business at the end of 2013 — raising around $1.5 million from geeky parents to get the ball rolling. Read MoreEuropean Rights Body Again Rejects Mass Surveillance
Europe’s top rights body, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), has crystalized its censure of mass surveillance as a threat to fundamental human rights and to democracy itself by adopting a draft resolution in which it reiterates deep concerns over the practice of intelligence agencies systematically harvesting untargeted communications data, without adequate… Read MoreGerman Online Loans Platform Smava Raises $16M
Here comes some more funding for a European financial tech company specialising in online loans. Germany’s Smava — a peer-to-peer lending platform where investors provide the funds to loan money to borrowers — has raised $16 million in funding led by Phenomen Ventures, along with existing investors Earlybird and Neuhaus Partners. Phenomen’s track record in… Read MoreMarley Spoon, The Cook-At-Home Food Delivery Service Backed By GFC, Launches In U.S.
“I think more and more startups will take some portions of the massive billion dollar supermarket industry. And there are many ways into it,” says an upbeat-sounding Fabian Siegel, co-founder Marley Spoon. After debuting in Germany last year, followed by the Netherlands and U.K., the Berlin-headquartered cook-at-home food subscription and delivery service sees its U.S. launch today. Read More
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