Startup Life 

Free beer out, mental health support in

Beer fridges, ping pong tables, free meals, sleep pods: none of these things really contribute meaningfully to your employees’ wellbeing.

It's time for startup employees to be given the perks they really need.

Our secret columnist explains.

🌍 Start Local, Scale Global 🌍

Dreaming of global expansion? This September, discover how to at Tech Nation’s event ‘Unlocking Global Tech’. Speakers include founders, investors and leaders from the likes of TransferWise, BlaBlaCar and many more.

Grab your ticket here. [Sponsored post]

 Investment 

Crowdcube launches “IPO-alternative”

Startup shareholders will soon have a new way to cash out early, with Crowdcube announcing the launch of its ‘liquidity’ platform.

The platform will try to create a market for existing shareholders — including employees with stock options — to sell their shares on the secondary market to interested retail buyers.

Sounds clever. Will it work?

 Travel 

Omio raises $100m with zero revenues

German travel startup Omio has raised a chunky round of funding despite seeing revenues drop to almost zero in March.

It's also kept its coveted "unicorn" status.

Amy Lewin finds out how.

💪 How to triumph with top talent 💪

Building and growing teams is easy to mess up and hard to master — many startups fail because of poor talent.

That’s why talent thought leader Techleap.nl launched the ‘People & Culture Scaleup Guide’, a goldmine of tips on all things talent from global tech gurus like Netflix’s former CTO, Patty McCord and more.

 
Learn how to become failure-proof here. [Sponsored post]

 AI 

Our children aren't prepared for the AI revolution

While you are almost certain to run into AI today, it's likely to be around something inconsequential like a Netflix recommendation.

But after 2030, AI will be everywhere and affect major parts of our lives. Our children need to be educated in a way that prepares them for this.

And at the moment, they're not, argues Priya Lakhani, founder and CEO of AI education company Century.

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News that matters

🌟 Exclusive: Wirecard UK to be bought by Railsbank. After the downfall of its parent company, card payment firm Wirecard Card Solutions is being snapped up by its competitor, Isabel Woodford reports.

🎤 Riff, a London-based startup developing what it describes as a “voice-first” chat tool for remote working, has raised $1.5m in seed funding ahead of its full launch next year. Balderton Capital — a VC firm better known as a Series A investor — led the round.

🧭 Russia's Yandex is launching Yandex Go, Europe’s first so-called "superapp" to combine all key aspects of on-demand transportation and delivery. While superapps such as Grab, Rappi and Gojek, may be common in Asia and South America, they are new to western Europe and the United States.

🍣 UK/Danish food tech startup Too Good To Go is now live in the US. The app puts consumers in touch with retailers to stop food ending up in landfill, and has been pretty successful in Europe so far.

👩 The games company Paradox Interactive in Stockholm is helping women learn how to code games. A cool initiative. 

👩‍🍳 Sweden's Gastrofy, which is behind the Northfork platform making it easier for customers to buy recipes in one click at online supermarkets, is raising about $1m from J12 Ventures.

⚰️ The video startup Bambuser was close to death about two years ago, but after finding its new niche “live-shopping” it has been doing pretty well with revenue growth of 436% in the first six months of the year.

👶 Swedish e-commerce startup Babyshop buys France's Melijoe in a deal worth approximately €16m.

🍄 Mushlabs has raised $10m for sustainable mycelium production. The company uses liquid fermentation tech and agrifood "sidestreams" to grow mycelia for use in alt-protein and meat replacement products. It's just one startup making alternative meats. Here are seven more here. 

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 

🧳 Inside Google's feud with the battered online travel industry, by CNBC. 

🎮 Covid-19 crisis accelerates UK military’s push into virtual war gaming, according to the Financial Times. 

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