Healthtech 

Reasons to be Estonian

 Coliving 

The coliving crunch?

🤩 The ultimate guide to innovation consultancies 🤩

If you're at a corporate and want to work with startups more, or if you're a startup looking for ways to land more corporate clients, have a good ol' browse of our brand spanking new innovation consultancy guide.
 

Have a snoop.

 Coronavirus 

Covid vs European startups

 Fintech 

The next fintech unicorns

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If you enjoyed reading our recent Fintech Unwrapped report, get in touch with Chris Sisserian to commission our next one. 

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News that matters

🤺 PQShield raises £5.5m for effort to secure computers against quantum threat. The Oxford University spinout has just come out of stealth mode, landed Bosch as its first customer and picked up seed funding from VC firms Kindred and Crane. Maija Palmer has more.

⚰️ Online wills, probate and cremations provider Farewill has raised £20m. The UK-based 'death tech' startup saw demand shoot up fourfold during the worst days of the pandemic, cofounder Dan Garrett told Sifted. VC firm Highland Europe has led the round, with previous investors Kindred, Augmentum and Taavet Hinrikus pitching in.

🤖 And, making it a hat-trick from Kindred, autonomous robots startup BotsAndUs has raised $2.5m from the VC firm, along with Capnamic Ventures. Its first robot, 'Bo', is already at work in Heathrow Airport, where it can speak to customers in numerous languages and help them find their way around.

👷 Building 1,700 startups a day. Rainmaking, which runs accelerator programmes, wants to train one million people to start their own businesses. How on earth will it manage that? Maija Palmer finds out.

✋ Business bank startup Tide has paused lending. In an open letter to customers yesterday, CEO Oliver Prill said that Tide has been unable to secure the funding it needs to lend money to its small business customers under the UK government's Bounce Back Loans scheme. 

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.

👉 Jobs ahoy! 👈

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We're a friendly bunch, promise, and building a new media brand is a whole lot of fun.

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Sifted Suggests 

🚴 It's boom time for bikes in Europe's cities. New cycle lanes have been promised, governments are encouraging greener ways to get around and bike subscriptions are seeing demand surge.

💡 A great idea for a podcast. The Secret Leaders podcast has launched a new mini series, Represented, in which black founders (and founders from other underrepresented groups) pitch for investment.

🤝 How to run female founder office hours virtually. Playfair Capital shares its learnings from hosting 800 meetings with 200 female founders with 60+ VCs — and it has a playbook to share with others.

🧐 Hunting for gigacorns. For what? Gigacorn (noun) def: a company that has achieved lowering CO2 emissions by 1 gigaton/year while being commercially viable. A compelling post from Christian Hernandez. 

🍻 Big ideas for beer tech. A night in the pub just isn't what it used to be; from takeaway pint schemes to the app alternative to bar service, Maija Palmer hears what tech is keeping boozeries going in tough times.

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