Dealflow.es #447: 10 years of Dealflow.
A weekly summary of everything that happened in the Spanish startup and tech investing ecosystem.
A few days ago I was looking at some of the early versions of this newsletter, when it used to be called Novobrief and “This week in Spain”, and all of a sudden I realized that this side project of mine is about to turn 10 years old!
This was the first edition I sent on January 10th, 2015.
Dealflow started as a side project of mine to complement what I was doing at the time -writing full time about Spanish tech, in English- with news articles from other media publications. My thinking was that I couldn’t cover every single thing that was happening and that there was an opportunity to aggregate and curate all of Spain’s startup and VC news in a weekly newsletter.
To say that this side project has beaten my expectations would be a total understatement! In a way it has helped me find my current job and the one that I’ve been doing for 8.5 years (investing in startups at Kfund), it has allowed me to find and meet a ton of interesting people, it has become a relevant source of income and a nice business and, to make things even better, I think the content that I publish is useful to many of you, whether it’s from a professional standpoint or to fulfill your curiosity about our small but growing tech ecosystem.
2024 and 2025 could also be an inflection point for Dealflow, because now it’s not just me working on it and we’ve started our international expansion with our Dealflow France 🇫🇷 and Dealflow LatAm editions. And there’s more to come.
But before we get into all of that, let me say… THANK YOU! 😊 Thank you for being a 🙏🏼 and for the support you’ve given me over the years. I truly truly appreciate it.
As you might have noticed, I don’t ask for any kind of personal info when you subscribe to Dealflow. But I’d love to know a bit better who you are and what you like and dislike about this newsletter. I would really appreciate it if you could reply -in Spanish or English- to this very quick survey that I’ve put together. It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes!
Graciñas e bo nadal! 🙏🏼
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Startup funding news 💸
Barcelona-based startups raised €1.4B in 2024, almost 2X compared to 2023. This is according to Expansion. Here’s a list of the top funding rounds. The list hast a mix of equity, debt and even capital raising activity from public companies (Wallbox)…
Continuing with overview of local ecosystems and Spanish cities, here’s a summary of the main news coming out of Valencia’s startup ecosystem in 2024
M&A activity 🎊
List of some of the more notable exits in Spain in the last 5 years
Investor & accelerator news 🚀
CriteriaCaixa plans to invest €100M in Kembara Fund I, a €1B VC fund managed by Mundi Ventures. The fund has also received support in the form of €350M from the European Investment Fund and €300M from Spain’s Sepi Digital
AXIS, the VC arm of Spain’s Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO), launched the 17th call for Fond-ICO Global, aiming to channel €900 million into PE and VC funds
Zubi Group is preparing a healthcare investment fund, aiming to launch in 2025 pending CNMV approval
Samaipata invested over €20M in European startups in 2024. It led 4 funding rounds, including €3M for Imperia (supply chain platform) and €6M for Dcycle (sustainability data SaaS). The firm anticipates progressive recovery in 2025, driven by AI and policy focus on tech
Profile of David Broncano’s tech investment activity. He’s made deals directly (Heura Foods) and also invested as an LP in Enzo Ventures
Startup news 💡
Profile of Balance Phone, a Barcelona-based startup that has developed a mobile device designed to provide a safer digital experience for children by eliminating addictive content. In collaboration with Samsung, the Balance Phone is currently available on the Samsung A16 5G model. The device restricts access to social media, games, streaming platforms, and sites related to pornography and gambling, allowing only essential apps
Profile of Barkibu, the pet health startup co-led by Pablo Pazos and Alvaro Gutierrez. Pablo shares in the interview that they’ll close the year with 65k customers and €24M in sales. Barkibu is a Kfund portfolio co
Profile of Vivla, a startup that offers a fractional ownership model for luxury vacation homes, allowing customers to buy shares (from 12.5% to 50%) for €75k to €290k per share
Interview with Pablo Fernandez, co-founder of Clicars, Clidrive (among many companies) and also an active investor. He said that he invested €4M of his personal money to start Clidrive and that the company generated €10.6 million in revenue within its first year
Jorge Lana, co-founder of Modulor Ventures, published the financials of the various companies that are part of the holding.
mendesaltaren: €3.8M in 2023 to €4.5M in 2024 (18% YoY growth)
Minimum.run: 800k to €1.1M (~37.5% YoY growth)
Tailor Hub: €800k to €1.9M (~137.5% YoY growth)
Nocodehackers: €199k to €352k (77% YoY growth)
Ariel Camus, co-founder of companies such as TouristEye (Lonely Planet) or Microverse (Edtech), announced the launch of Leap in Jan 2025, a new company that aims to be “a new version of our English school for software engineers”
Jorge Serna, CPTO at Securitize, predicts that tokenized funds will surpass traditional funds in volume by 2027
Christopher Gehlen, CEO of Neutroon, reflects on the company’s achievements in 2024 and outlines plans for 2025. Neutroon is based in Barcelona and has developed a cloud-based management and orchestration platform designed to simplify the deployment and operation of private wireless networks, including LTE, 5G, and Wi-Fi
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Big company & policy news 🤓
Colombian energy utility Interconexión Eléctrica (Grupo ISA) has launched Inndigo, a corporate VC arm aiming to invest up to $130M by 2030 in energy transition startups. Inndigo is supported by Wayra along with Telefónica Movistar Group’s open innovation group and corporate fund
Uber Eats faces €136M in legal and fiscal contingencies in Spain, primarily due to disputes over classifying its couriers as self-employed. This includes €104M in potential fines and €20M in unpaid Social Security contributions
The Spanish financial regulator CNMV has opened a sanctioning process against Twitter (now X) for allegedly allowing paid ads from unauthorized financial entities
How Decathlon is transforming its business in Spain by focusing on circular economy initiatives, including second-hand sales, rentals, and in-store repair services. The company has dedicated spaces in 70 large-format stores for these activities and partnered with Wallapop to expand online sales
Interesting reads 🤓
Article about the AESIA, the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence: “España no es en absoluto puntera en IA, pero ya tenemos una agencia regulatoria con 80 empleados. No sabemos muy bien qué van a regular”. Javilop (Magnific, Freepik) published a series of tweets on the story
Miguel Arias (Kfund) published “Reflexiones sobre Inteligencia Artificial para cerrar el año“
Simon Muñoz published “Retrospectiva de 2024: El año de la Inteligencia Artificial Generativa“
Jose Ramon Perez Agüera, CTO of Mercadona Tech, published “Lecciones de productos físicos para profesionales de producto digital“
Congratulations, Jaime! Being consistent for more than 10 years is amazing!
¡A por los próximos diez! Gracias, Jaime. ¡Bo nadal!