Startup Life 

How to step down as a founder

📣 Calling fintech, AI and greentech scaleups 📣

Tech Nation has three free growth programmes for scaling businesses.

Gain exclusive access to an expert support team, pro masterclasses, premium connections and A-class coaching.
 
Find a programme that maches your needs. [Sponsored post]

 Opinion 

Neobank perfection is still far away 

💫 IPOs aren't impossible for startups 💫 

Many founders think that listing on the public market is out of reach, but in fact, you need to have raised just €5m to get listed.

The free pre-IPO programme TechShare, run by the European stock exchange Euronext, is designed to educate entrepreneurs on everything to do with capital markets to prepare them for their IPO journey.

Find out how it could help your startup. [Sponsored post]

 Interview 

The beauty brand that bounced back

 Fintech 

Europe's new most valuable fintech

Sifted Suggests 

🤗 Inclusive workplace 101. This piece shares a framework on how we can easily identify acceptable and unacceptable behaviours in the workplace, to ensure the equality of all groups at work.

🤔 How did Slack grow so quickly: a thread. And how other apps can follow in its footsteps.

💖 VC diversity. Kauffman Fellows, a US-based VC has adopted numerous approaches to diversify its board, and claims that 41% of its investor trainees are women, and 49% are people of colour. Europe’s VCs can take a leaf out of this book too.

🌍 Changing the climate. A new report from the International Energy Agency claims that if we spend $1tn of investment each year for the next three years, global energy-related CO₂ emissions could end up falling in 2023 by 4.5bn metric tons. But how could this work? Bloomberg reports.

🧠 How policymakers can help VCs and SMEs. InvestEurope shares heaps of ways it’s alerting policymakers to the impact of Covid-19 on investors and startups, and proposing initiatives to limit effects. Find out about the events, training and resources here.

In case you missed it

🧟 Be less zombie. Senior executives are too busy trying to survive the day-to-day and have zero incentive to challenge to status quo. How do you change this mentality?

🌌 Life on Mars. This ambitious startup is building a prototype Mars settlement in California to research living on the red planet. Can it work?

💳 Coronavirus changing finance. This is how Diana Biggs, head of innovation at HSBC's global private banking arm, says Covid-19 is changing digital communications tech at banks.

🤩 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.

Events [virtual only]

🇬🇧 Office Hours: Supporting Black women founders in tech | 24 June
Female Founders Offline and accelerateHER join forces, inviting founders to get to know VCs better. Featuring VCs from Impact X, Index and more.

🇬🇧 Femtech Forum | 25 June
Join Women of Wearables for an all-day conference focused on femtech. Catch Sifted's Amy Lewin moderating a panel on fertility tech at 3pm BST — and hear discussions on a broad range of topics, from sexual wellness to the gender gap. 

🇳🇱 A Glimpse into the Future | 10 July
Tune into the first of this deeptech and science webinar series by the VC Ahren and its science partners, as it delves into a range of topics alongside top leaders and experts.

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