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Hi Sifted Reader,

We're back with another Baltic special ahead of our first ever Sifted Sessions event in Tallinn, Estonia next Tuesday. If you don't have your ticket yet, there's still time!

Today we take a look at the fastest growing startups in Estonia and meet one of the region's best-known investors: Taavet+Sten. We also get the lowdown on Riga's TechChill conference as our editor Amy joins the latest episode of the Sifted podcast from afar. Listen on Apple or Spotify. Plus: 

• Another alternative to VC funding
• How to save the rainforest? Trade trees on the market
• Aerones raises $9m to fix the world's wind turbines

— Amy, fintech reporter & Tom, digital editor

Last year, Wise cofounder Taavet Hinrikus and Teleport cofounder Sten Tamkivi — both super prominent angel investors — teamed up to invest together. Their fund, which has no external LPs, has backed many of the most significant startups in Estonia, including Bolt, Veriff and Skeleton Technologies. 

Now, the duo have their eyes on everything from Web3 and crypto to climate tech — and they also want to figure out how other founders can follow in their footsteps and help the next generation of startups.

Amy Lewin sat down with Sten Tamkivi to find out how it's going. 

Developers: do you want more live hands-on training? Do you want to learn how to use engagement tools to create a better customer experience? Do you want to learn by actually writing code?

Sign up for Twilio's superclass on May 12.

It may only have 1.3m people, but Estonia is punching above its weight when it comes to startups. It already boasts unicorns like Veriff, Bolt and Pipedrive, and VC funding into the country has exploded in 2022. 

We're talking $921m raised this year — just short of investment for the whole of 2021. 

So which startups do you need to have your eye on?

There's another alternative to VC appearing: asset-backed lending. It's been around for centuries, but new European and established US debt firms are increasingly offering this kind of capital to startups.

The latest firm to enter the game is London-based Avellinia Capital, or AvCap, and it has just raised $50m of a $150m fund.

But how does it work?

When we think of a business, our minds often drift to massive warehouses, tall office buildings and millions of euros. But the backbone of Europe’s economy isn’t your Klarnas, Deliveroos and Revoluts — it’s the small and medium-sized businesses/enterprises (SMBs/SMEs) that don’t often make headlines.

But the pandemic hit them hard. How can they recover? 

Find out here.  

When you travel abroad you typically come back with a souvenir you can place on the mantelpiece, right?

But that wasn't the case for Kjell Clarysse, who's just brought a 70k hectare chunk of the Amazon rainforest back from Brazil. 

It's part of a plan to save the rainforest with his new startup Forestbase. 

But what's he up to, and will it work?

 🌬️ Aerones, a YC-backed Latvian company, raised $9m in seed funding. The company builds robots to automate and scale wind turbine inspection and maintenance. It says the robots can make inspections up to six times faster and 40% more cost efficient than humans.

💰 Eurora Solutions raised a $40m Series A, one of the largest to come out of Estonia, as it attempts to tackle ecommerce shipping issues caused by EU regulation changes. Kit Gillet finds out about its plans. 

🇩🇪 Berlin at the double. Two notable deals caught our eye coming out of Berlin. First is Apryl, which bagged $4.4m in a funding round led by Breega to scale its fertility and family planning platform, designed to be offered as an employee perk. It offers everything from family planning consultations to reimbursements for treatment. Berlin-based robo-tax provider Taxfix also won big. It has just raised a $220m Series D, bringing the company's total funding to $330m and its valuation to over $1bn. It plans to expand its tax-filing services beyond its current markets of Germany, Spain and Italy. 

💸 Paris-based Reveal has raised a $50m Series A round from investors including Insight Partners, Eight Roads, Chalfen Ventures and Dig Ventures. Its platform allows companies to share their customer relationship management data with other businesses easily — in lieu of lengthy meetings and spreadsheet sharing. The deal is also in the top 10 Series A rounds France has ever seen, according to Dealroom.

🚗 Spotawheel, an Athens-based used-car platform, has raised €100m in equity and debt funding. VentureFriends led the equity round, with participation from Adevinta Ventures, UNIQA Ventures and Rockaway Ventures, among others. The company is on a mission to fix the used cars market with its circular economy for pre-owned cars.

🌍 Electric cars are good news for the planet — but mining the minerals for their batteries is not. In the latest interview from our Sustain newsletter, Freya Pratty spoke to Sarah Montgomery, the cofounder of Infyos — a startup which helps battery manufacturers improve their supply chain resilience and sustainability — about how it's trying to help EV suppliers overcome the battery industry's mining problem.

💻  There's a tech talent crunch and developers are high on the startup hiring wish list. But how to stand out and become the go-to place for the best candidates? Cofounder and CEO of Bitmovin, Stefan Lederer, thinks he has the answer.

Amy O'Brien
Fintech Reporter

Get in touch with her at amyobrien@sifted.eu
Or @Amy_EOBrien

Tom Nugent

Digital Editor

Get in touch with him at tomnugent@sifted.eu 
Or @TJNugent92

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