Fintech 

Neobank N26 battles its own employees

Berlin-based digital bank N26 is in a stand-off with employees who are trying to organise a ‘works council’ to voice their discontent with management.

Around 30 employees are saying that trust and confidence in management is “at an all-time low”, and that an organised effort is needed to “improv[e] working life”.

N26 has been trying to stop the works council from happening.

What's going on?

🇸🇪 The place to be for sustainable energy startups 🇸🇪

 Skellefteå, Sweden is at the cusp of an accelerated green transition and is open to all innovative startups in sustainable energy looking for endless business opportunities.

Check out the Accelerate Skellefteå programme here. [Sponsored post]

 Future of work 

Europe's Slack?

It was 2008, a global financial crisis was raging and Matthieu Beucher had quit his job to become an entrepreneur.

He had just €4,000 in his pocket and investors were not at all impressed by his business idea around helping teams brainstorm smarter, which had come to him at a car parts factory.

So how did Beucher end up creating one of France’s most promising startups, Klaxoon?

Find out here.

🌽 Solving Earth’s big food problem 🌽

The global food supply chain currently leaves 1bn people undernourished and a third of all food going to waste.

But SPRK.global, a Berlin-based startup, plans to break this vicious cycle by revamping the circular economy. But how?

Learn more about its ambitious mission here. [Sponsored post]

 Investing 

Siri, find me a startup to invest in

Forget about scouring the media, getting warm introductions and building a pan-European scout network to find investments.

Nokia’s venture capital arm NGP Capital has created a machine learning system to find promising startups — and has made some parts of it open source for others to try as well.

What's the catch? 

🙏 Come work for Sifted 🙏

We’re looking for a research analyst to join our growing team at Sifted and help us do smarter things with data. You should apply — we're really nice.

Read the full job description here. 

 VR/AR 

Virtual reality is back in fashion

VR was the hype technology of 2018 but since then has fallen out of favour among consumers and investors.

But Finnish startup Varjo has just raised $54m in fresh funding for its virtual and mixed reality headset, in a sign that there are still investors willing to back this sector.

 🧑‍💼 The lowdown on corporate innovation 🧑‍💼

Love this newsletter? Fascinated (or frustrated) by the world of corporate innovation?

Then check out our sister newsletter Future Proof — a weekly round-up of everything you need to know about big business innovation.

Sign up here.

News that matters

😡 Finnish fintech Holvi is pulling out of the UK less than six months after launching, citing increased uncertainty over coronavirus and Brexit. The departure comes after N26, the German challenger bank, pulled out of the UK in February, also citing Brexit (although also likely motivated by low customer traction and regulatory problems). What does this tell us?

🏠 Digital mortgage company Habito has raised £35m in Series C financing, bringing the total amount of investment to more than £63m since its launch to market in 2016. Habito mainly organises mortgages from other banks but last year started offering its own mortgages. It also has some good advice on advertising, as we found out here. 

🌱 Berlin-based climate app Klima secured €4.9m in seed funding to help grow the team and the product. The app allows users to calculate their carbon emissions and then pay to offset the emissions via a personalised monthly subscription. Ultimately, they want to turn this in a "social community". 

🏦 UK high street bank NatWest is closing its London tech hub in Regents House as well as cutting at least 500 jobs from its retail business and as part of a cost-cutting Covid recovery programme. Closing the tech hub is a prime example of how big corporates pull back from supporting new tech and startups in tough times.

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 

🇹🇷 Local shops in Turkey have been speedily delivering groceries to local customers for centuries. Turkish startup Getir is now taking them on — it promises to bring them to your doorstep in 13 minutes or less. Read this excellent profile on the company from The Rest of the World — and see what we have to say about Getir and its competitors in our Food Delivery Report from earlier this year.

⚛️ Physicists accelerate the hunt for revolutionary artificial atomic materials.

🥗 Why every brand now needs to behave like a health and wellness brand. 

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