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The dog days are here for European tech — layoffs, cost-cutting and hiring freezes are on the agenda after the downturn took hold in 2022. 

But how is that affecting the relationship between startups and their investors?

In our latest community survey we want to hear from all the European founders reading this email. Do you feel more pressure to chase profitability? Where are you being asked to slash spending? Are you being given good advice or a bum steer?

The survey only takes a few minutes and it's completely anonymous. Let us know how you're really getting on! 

From the Sifted newsroom:

• The European Investment Fund's new €3.75bn fund of funds
• Carbon removal gets its own dedicated VC fund
• 11 mental health startups to watch

Third-party cookies are being phased out, so how can startups up their first-party data game to bridge the gap? On March 1, our Sifted Talks will reveal why a cookieless future isn’t the end for data-driven growth — if you prepare now. Hear from Tulipshare, Twilio and more.

🩺 Asabys Partners announces €100m first close for second fund. Its sector focus? Health and biotech. Cheque size? €2m-5m. Geography? 12-15 startups in the UK, Europe, Israel and the US.

🌍 Carbon removal is becoming big business. The sector pulled in $13.8bn in funding last year — nearly a record, despite the downturn. And now it's got its own dedicated VC fund.

💰 The European Investment Fund's got a fresh €3.75bn money pot to play with — it's a fund of funds, a joint venture between the European Investment Bank (EIB) group and the governments of five EU countries and will back 10-15 late-stage VCs. 

❤️ Was love in the air for fictional columnist Rosie Wood's date with Harold Steblings? He wasn't drinking, and was in the middle of a fast — here's what went down.

👉 VC diversity stats are abysmal. 1% of VC money was raised by female-only VC fund teams last year, while 84% went to male-only teams in Europe. 91% of VC capital in Europe is managed by men. Startup funding is just as bad. White, elite-educated men are to blame — and here's what needs to change.

🧠 11 mental health startups to watch.

🤖 The journalist's GenAI toolkit. Generative AI is the newest recruit in the Sifted newsroom — here are the tech tools we think are actually worth having in your back pocket.

🛒 The convenience store of the future — how high street shops are future proofing. (Sponsored by Zabka Future Lab)

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In the quiet quitting phase of your current job? Then check out these roles:

1. Mobile engineer.  SME fintech unicorn SumUp is looking for a dynamic and innovative mobile engineer to help carry out the transformation of one of their core services as it enters a new stage of its development. Sound exciting? Apply here.

2. Head of commercial (partnerships). Home insurance provider Urban Jungle is on the lookout for a new partnerships head with “an entrepreneurial mindset” to lead and formulate partnerships strategy, nurture existing partnerships and identify new opportunities. Sound like you?  Apply here.

3. Senior devops architect. Does redefining software development and delivery processes sound appealing to you? IT security company Mimecast is looking for a senior devops architect to build platforms and frameworks for consistent and automatic management of applications and infrastructure, between non-production and production environments.  Apply here.

💰 Series B+

• London's Skin + Me, a telehealth dermatology service, has raised £10m in Series B funding from investors including Octopus Ventures.
• Landytech, a UK-based platform for tracking investment portfolios, has raised a $12m Series B.

💰 Series A

• German edtech Knowunity, a peer-to-peer learning app for secondary school students, has raised €7m.

💰 Pre-seed + seed

• Y Combinator-backed Crew, a French recruitment startup, has raised $2.3m.
• BiPER Therapeutics, a biotech developing treatment for gastrointestinal cancers, has raised €1.25m.
• UK-based Archangel Lightworks, which is developing laser technology that can transfer information to and from satellites, has raised $4m. 
• UK AI startup Lumai has raised £1.1m in grant funding from Innovate UK for its optical computing tech, which it says will deliver computation speeds faster than anything else out there.

If you've got intel for a story you think needs to be told, let us know — confidentially. 

Kai Nicol-Schwarz

Reporter

Get in touch with him at

kai@sifted.eu

He tweets from 

@NicolSchwarzK

Tom Nugent

Digital Editor

Get in touch with him at

tom@sifted.eu

He tweets from

@TJNugent92

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