Good morning Sifted reader,

It’s now just over a month until the Sifted Summit — our two-day event gathering 3,000 founders, startup operators and investors under one (big) roof in London.

On stage: Arthur Mensch, cofounder and CEO of that Parisian AI startup Mistral; Mikko Salovaara, CFO at mobility giant Bolt; and Eileen Burbidge, recent Sifted podcast guest and long-time partner at VC firm Passion Capital.

Off-stage: dozens of meetups, workshops and roundtables, where experts will be chairing discussions on financial fraud and ESG regulation, and running masterclasses on fundraising, angel investing and crisis management. Our full team of journalists will be steering the conversations — and are around to hear your pitches too.

Don’t miss out — this is the last week to get hold of early bird tickets! I hope to see you there.

— Amy Lewin, editor

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR GREENMAN GROUP

With a total cash prize fund of €100k, Growing Further is calling for Innovators!

The Greenman Group is on the hunt for applications for Growing Further, an awards programme that will identify, recognise and reward companies aiming to redefine the grocery retail supply chain.

Apply now

🇫🇮 Finnish fund Greencode launches with €40m for digital climate tech startups. The fund is targeting a final close of €60-100m and will write cheques of up to €2m for seed and Series A rounds across Europe.

🇺🇸 Which European startups made YC's summer cohort? The fabled US accelerator accepted 108 European founders into its latest class — 21% of the cohort. That's up from 13% in the winter cohort and 18% in the summer of 2022.

👀 Hackers are watching your startup — but are you prepared? It's not just big corporates that suffer from cyber hits — 58% of recorded attacks in 2022 concerned small businesses with fewer than 1k employees, according to a Verizon report. One of the reasons? The basic security controls most SMEs use are leaving the door to their data wide open.

📉 Divestitures in a downturn: Is this the new startup survival trend? As investor cash becomes harder to come by, a number of European startups have begun to look to sell off parts of their business to stay afloat.

🎙️ The Sifted Podcast — Amy and Eleanor settle in to chat to the founder of NatureMetrics, which is working on DNA sampling tech to track species present in different locations and has just raised £10m. They also talk Northvolt's whopping $1.2bn convertible note, Getir's latest staff cuts and startups offering customers weight loss drugs.

A graph showing Switzerland, France and the UK are home to the majority of neurotech investment

🇨🇭 Neurotech startups in Switzerland raised the most cash compared to any other European country between 2015-2022 — but funding in the sector has seen a big dip in 2023.

Just $108.4m has been raised by tech companies building products and solutions around brain health so far this year — compared to a peak of $566.7m in the heady days of 2021.
That's as heavy costs and regulatory requirements prove tricky obstacles for many startups looking to scale.

Sifted's latest briefing unpacks the challenges neurotech companies face, the top investors in the sector and the startups to keep an eye on.

How are climate tech startups securing funding?
Join Sifted’s Freya Pratty and Dr Clea Kolster from Lowercarbon Capital as they discuss the future of climate tech investment and the strategic choices VCs are making.

RSVP here.

The VC slowdown: Is it set to get even worse?

The European startup ecosystem has had a slow — and tricky — summer. As we look ahead, will things finally pick up, or continue on a downhill trajectory? Join Sifted's editor Amy Lewin and Hussein Kanji from Hoxton Ventures on September 7 as they explore what’s next for venture capital.

RSVP here.

Join our early-stage B2B pitch event

We’ll be showcasing the very best early-stage B2B startups at our next pitch event, exclusive to Sifted Pro. Join us virtually on September 5 at 12:30pm BST to meet Legal Nodes, Vespia, Contilio, Bitskout and Matsuko.

RSVP here.

💰 Which European countries tax the least on stock options?

🤔 How much equity should you expect from an early-stage startup?

🔍 We're on the hunt for a meticulous subeditor to be the lynchpin of our newsroom, working to fact-check and enhance newsletters and podcasts to everything we publish on our site. Detail-oriented wordsmiths step this way.

🗞️ We're also looking for a senior reporter to be chief writer for our (soon-to-be) daily newsletter. We're after someone who can scoop stories to cover each day and play a leading role in shaping the tone and format of one of our flagship products. You'll be writing for a readership of 120k and become a very well-known voice in the tech industry. Sound like you? Apply here.