Venture Capital 

La Famiglia raises €50m fund 

Berlin-based VC firm La Famiglia might just have the glitziest list of investors in Europe. 

Its LPs include Swarovski, Mittel and Pictet, alongside super angels Niklas Zennström, Hanno Renner and Alex Chesterman. 

But how do partners Judith Dada and Jeannette zu Fürstenberg help their portfolio make the most of their little black book?

Amy Lewin finds out.

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 Fintech 

Revolut's losses triple

The gods of fintech annual reports just keep giving: yesterday Revolut published its 2019 results — recording post-tax losses of £107.4m. 

Revenues, meanwhile, grew by 180% from 2018.

So is that good news? Bad news? And how does it compare to fellow fintechs Monzo and Starling's results? 

Isabel Woodford breaks it down.

 Opinion 

Why we're still not going to be prepared for the next pandemic

Drug discovery doesn't come cheap, or quickly — which puts off VCs from investing into biotech startups and big pharma from bothering. 

Time for governments to step in, argues Dmitry Kuzmin, before we're done over by the next pandemic that comes along.

What's his proposal? 

🍄 Send us your Nordic news 🍄 

Our Nordic correspondent, Mimi Billing, is back in action after 10 months off on maternity leave. 

Mimi covers news from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland — and she's interested in meeting healthtech and femtech startups too.

Send her your stories.

 Food 

11 winetech startups to watch

In France, the days of stomping on grapes to get a good vintage are long gone.

The business of wine is getting pretty high tech these days. 

From software to analyse taste tests to devices to air the wine, Marie Mawad lists her 'winetech' startups to watch.

News that matters

🚗 Lift off. SKOOT, a newly-launched lift-sharing startup, is hoping to succeed where French carpooling giant BlaBlaCar failed; it wants to get Brits sharing car journeys. The founders reckon that Covid-induced worries about public transport, along with the climate crisis, mean that now is the time for an app like this to boom. 

💉 Pharmacies of the future? Practio, a Danish startup which wants to help local pharmacies fulfil more of our healthcare needs, has raised €8.2m. It now plans to roll out its platform, which enables people to book vaccinations and tests (including Covid-19 antibody tests) at pharmacies, in Germany (it is already live in Denmark and the UK). 

🛒 Lithuania takes on Amazon Go. Pixevia, a Vilnius-based startup which has developed a smart retail store, has just raised €1m. Its tech could let retailers operate contactless shops — which sounds like a very Covid-era idea — but we're wondering how it's cracked a problem that even Amazon has been wrestling with for a while...

🥡 Hejdå founder! One of Swedish food waste app Karma's founders and CTO, Mattis Larsson, is leaving. Nothing gossip-worthy though, he says.

⚽ Score! Bundesliga football star Robert Lewandowski has invested in a Polish e-sports startup, Movie Games. Another sign that e-sports is where it's at.

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 

🗳️ Why Covid-19 might set digital government back. Via the people in the know at Apolitical.

🖐️ 5 requirements for investing in AI startups, from Sifted reader Omar Ismail.

🚖 Could Uber lose its London licence? And if it does, who will step into the number one spot? Wired reports.