Startup Life 

Being the only black person in the room

Our "Secret Columnist" has worked in tech in the UK for over six years, and for five of those was the only black person in the organisation.

For her, this was a challenge that was underappreciated by nearly all her colleagues. “Aren’t you being a little bit sensitive?” they would say.

Read her story.

🥇 Become a legendary leader 🥇

How can you own leadership like a boss? What leadership hacks can help steer you through any crisis?

Get valuable insights and must know how to’s from tech’s biggest founders and leaders, like Elastic cofounder Steven Schuurman, in the ‘People & Culture Scaleup Guide’ by thought leader Techleap.nl. 

Read more here. [Sponsored post]

 SaaS 

The great overlord of European startups

Forget the fun stuff like flying cars, neobanks and ninja robots — the real kings of European tech are the software-as-a-service startups.

Some say the already well-performing sector is about to enter a new golden age.

Sifted's Tim Smith investigates.

 Venture Capital 

Dark clouds for European VC

On the face of it, this is a wonderful time for European Venture Capital. In the second quarter of the year alone, 33 new funds raised almost €3bn in fresh new capital.

But there are reasons to be less than cheerful, writes Nicolas Colin from The Family. 

 Fintech 

Is Open Finance a PR stunt?

Open banking was lauded as the most exciting move for the fintech sector since Monzo launched its hot coral card — but so far, it hasn’t unleashed the revolutionary changes regulators wanted.

Now, ‘open finance’ — extending users' access to financial data into pensions, trading, and other assets — is the hot topic, but will it be another disappointment? Or will Covid-19 help push finance into new frontiers?

Isabel Woodford reports

👉 Get in front of tech founders  👈

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

News that matters

🏹 Popular no-fee trading app Robinhood has scrapped the launch of its investing app in the UK to the disappointment of all those that had signed up to the waitlist. The broker is under pressure from US politicians after one of its customers killed himself. It also suffered a series of operational outages in March and at least one customer is taking the company to court. 

🚕 Ride-hailing app Gett raised another $100m from investors, bringing total funding in the company up to more than $750m. The company, founded in Israel in 2010, said in a press release that it will use the funding to improve its “ground travel platform for corporates.”

👄 AB Tasty has raised a delicious $40m and doubles down on US expansion. The Fench startup builds technology for so-called A/B testing. So in short, it’s a marketing tactic aimed at testing two designs for, say, an e-commerce website, and measuring performance specifics to help pick which one to launch.

👁️ UK cybersecurity company Darktrace is preparing to pick banks for an initial public offering, according to scoop-machine Mark Kleinman at Sky. The company was valued at its last raise at £1.25bn but is expected to go for a valuation of £1.5bn to £2bn.

🚴‍♂️ Soundcloud founders Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung have launched an e-bike subscription service called "Dance". Music streaming to e-bikes is quite the pivot but VCs are loving trendy e-bike startups right now.

👀 Huawei has bought a stake in UK ‘spy’ firm Vision Semantics, according to The Times.

🍗 KFC is partnering with Russian research laboratory 3D Printing Solutions to develop technology for what it calls "meat of the future." By this, it means 3D printed chicken. For more on printing mean, see this Sifted piece here. 

👷 Uber drivers' fight for workers' rights has reached the UK supreme court. What's at stake?

🀢 UK fintech Plum raised another €8.7m to expand its personal finance app further across Europe.

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.

Sifted Suggests 

🌱 Impact investing won’t save capitalism, according to this piece in the Harvard Business Review. For more on impact, these are the investors that startup founders should know according to Sifted. 

📚 These are the 16 books innovators need to read. Most of them aren't business books.

🔪 Proteus becomes the world's first manufactured non-cuttable material. Who can think of a startup using this?

🤖 Kurt Rathmann told his big-name investors he had developed groundbreaking AI to do the books for small businesses. In reality, humans did most of the work. A fantastic tale about ScaleFactor in Forbes.

😞 The stress of leading a start-up through the pandemic, from the BBC.

In case you missed it

❤️ Coronavirus has changed dating apps "irreversibly". Kitty Knowles finds out if virtual dates are here to stay. 

🤫 The secretive figure behind some of the world’s biggest fintechs.

⚰️ Death tech has recently become more popular than ever. But what, exactly, is it?