Startup Life 

Founder to French President

⚡ Support for SaaS startups  ⚡

Like the sound of equity-free support for your SaaS business?

Look no further than the SAP.iO Foundry's three-month accelerator programme. It offers expert mentoring, exclusive workshops and help engaging with SAP clients across the world.

Find out more here. [Sponsored post]

 Venture Capital 

Welcome to the decade of purpose

🌟 Join us next Friday 🌟

Next week, Sifted and Dealroom is gathering an all-star panel to discuss one of the biggest issues in European tech: how the continent can become a global leader.

Join us and our panellists Roxanne Varza at Station F, Saul Klein at LocalGlobe, Klaus Hommels at Lakestar, Megumi Ikeda at Hearst Ventures and Gerard de Graaf from the European Commission.

Sign up here! 

 Media 

How to pitch to Sifted

🌱 Tech Nation launches its first programme for sustainability scaleups 🌱

This week, Tech Nation kicked off its first programme for sustainable tech companies and is looking for applications.

Called Net Zero, it's searching for scaleups creating electricity, energy, transport, mobility, agriculture, food systems, manufacturing and building technology.

Learn more here. [Sponsored post]

 Startup Life 

Startup government support: Rated

News that matters

🚛 Ontruck raised €17m in Spain’s biggest funding round of 2020. The Madrid-founded startup said it is now set to expand and improve its efficiency-saving logistics technology. Ontruck already has 150 employees and offices in Madrid, Barcelona, London, Paris and Amsterdam. The raise was more good news for the Spanish startup ecosystem, in a week where Madrid-based VC K Fund launched a new €70m fund.

⚗️ Paris-based startup Alkemics, a platform helping brands to launch products with retailers such as E.Leclerc, Tesco and Ocado, raised €21m in a Series C funding round. The company said it had benefited from a jump in demand from suppliers in response to the coronavirus pandemic and a “rapid shift” to omni-channel shopping.

🧐 French AI startup Monk, which claims to have a unique system for car damage detection, has closed a €2.1m seed round led by Iris Capital, alongside Plug and Play and business angels including Patrick Sayer, Yannis Yahiaoui and Arthur Waller.

👶 Peppy, a London-based employee healthcare platform, has raised £1.7m. It focuses on supporting employees through big life transitions — like having a baby, or going through the menopause. 

🖥️ IQM Finland Oy (IQM), a European startup which makes hardware for quantum computers, has raised a €15m equity investment round from the EIC Accelerator program for the development of quantum computers. For more about European quantum computing ambitions, see this piece by Sifted's Maija Palmer here.  

🇫🇷 French startup iBanFirst has raised a €21m Series C round from Elaia and Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund. Previous investors Serena and Breega also participated in today’s funding round. iBanFirst lets you pay suppliers and get paid by clients all around the world in dozens of currencies.

If you're a fan of our 'News that matters' and 'Sifted Suggests' sections, check out our newsfeed here, where we collect all of these gems — and more.

👉 Sponsor our newsletter! 👈

Want to reach founders and decision-makers in the European startup ecosystem? Contact Helen Seidenberg, partnerships director, for advertising and sponsorship opportunities with Sifted.

Sifted Suggests 

😭 iPod inventor Tony Fadell talks to CNBC: "I literally had a decade of failure," he says. For Sifted's previous interview with Fadell, now runs deeptech investor Future Shape out of Paris, see here. 

💳 Venture capitalist and fintech expert Spiros Margaris interviews Georgie Smallwood, chief product officer of German challenger bank N26, as part of his new '@SpirosMargaris & Friends' series. Well worth a watch for fintech fans.

👎👍This great post by the Hustle Fund tries to answer two questions. 1) Why an investor is likely to say "no" to a founder. 2) What you can do to turn that "no" into a "yes". It's a good read.