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Used car marketplace Cazoo was one of Europe's highest-valued startups when it floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021. But since then its share price has plummeted 99%, it's withdrawn from the EU altogether and its market cap now stands at just $83m.

So what happened?

"They raised huge amounts of money at an extremely aggressive valuation, which forced them to try for hypergrowth,” one source close to the company tells Sifted. "Cazoo didn’t know how to effectively invest the money they were given."

One investor close to the company when it floated also tells Sifted the timing of the IPO "was the worst in history".

Freya Pratty digs into what went wrong.

Also from the Sifted newsroom: 

• A corruption scandal leaves over 100 EU-grant winning startups on the brink of bankruptcy
• The mental health crisis at VC firms
• Founders: are you accepting dirty money from VCs? 

From onboarding FAQs to sales battlecards, Sana's AI-powered learning platform puts the right information right at everyone’s fingertips. No more bottlenecks.

— the amount of money more than 100 Polish startups are still waiting for in EU grants, as the institution in charge of distributing them has been embroiled in a corruption scandal. 

🤝 First-time founders need not apply. As if raising wasn't hard enough right now, more VCs are looking to back entrepreneurs with a success streak rather than taking a chance on newbies.

🥱 “If you’re not set up for the rat race personality-wise, it must be hell.” Europe's VCs are burnt out and struggling with their mental health — here's why, and how it could affect founders.

🪴 PlantGPT: the startup that speaks to your succulents... well, kind of. Hortiya uses generative AI to predict plant behaviour, so food production companies can optimise growing conditions — and its CEO reckons its about to drastically reduce the energy used in agriculture supply chains.

💰 Show me the dirty money — it's not always obvious where VC money comes from, and that means founders need to be more inquisitive about their investors' cash, thinks Olio's Tessa Clarke. 

🇷🇴 10 Romanian startups to watch, according to VCs. 

🍄 Trip of a lifetime. From LSD-enhanced hikes to microdosing for productivity, here's why the digital nomad lifestyle often goes hand in hand with psychedelics.

• Signal AI, a software company based in London, is looking for a hybrid senior site reliability engineer.
• Lilium, a startup building a VTOL aircraft, is after an embedded software engineer in Munich.

• Together, a financial services company based in Manchester, is on the hunt for a  senior technical product owner.

💰 M&As

• Remember Angry Birds? Well its maker, Finnish gaming company Rovio, has been acquired by Sega for $775m. 

💰 Series A+ 

• Dexter Energy, an AI-powered company that forecasts renewable power generation for energy companies, has raised a €10.5m Series B.
• The UK's Yonder, a credit card with a rewards programme, has raised £62.5m in Series A funding from investors including Northzone. £50m of the raise was debt.
• Ariceum Therapeutics, a company developing treatments for hard-to-treat cancers, has raised an additional €22.75m in Series A funding.

💰 Pre-seed & seed

• Dublin-based Oblivious, which develops software to process confidential data, has secured a €5.35m seed round.

• Perci Health, a digital cancer support platform based in the UK, has raised a £3.4m seed round led by Octopus Ventures. 
• UK techbio startup Zetta Genomics, which is developing a genomic analysis tool for precision medicine, has raised £1.9m in seed funding.
• Loopin, a UK employee support and incentive platform, has raised a £1.6m seed round. 

💰 Undisclosed

• Dutch startup Factris, which finances unpaid business invoices, has drummed up €50m. 
• Challenger mobile network Honest Mobile has raised £3m.
• Minagro, which makes sustainable products for crops, has raised €1.2m.

Sadia Nowshin

Editorial Assistant

Get in touch with her at

sadia@sifted.eu

She tweets from 

@sadianowshin_

Tom Nugent

Digital Editor

Get in touch with him at

tom@sifted.eu

He tweets from

@TJNugent92

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