Startup Life 

Taking psychedelics with your boss

Julius Dreyer, chief executive of Barcelona-based startup PlayaMedia, had a great idea. Take all his staff to the Catalan countryside mid-pandemic for a psychedelic Ayahuasca retreat.

Sifted spoke to Dreyer, the staff and the organisers to find out how it went, what they all experienced and if it helped the team bond or not. Warning: this article gets weird. 

So how did it go?

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Discover 150+ sustainable energy technologies and listen to high-profile speakers from companies like ENGIE and Schneider Electric.

10% off for Sifted readers use code: TBBVIP10off. [Sponsored post]

 Startup Life 

The four-day work week experiment

Everyone should switch to a four-day work week.

That’s the unnuanced conclusion that French startup Welcome to the Jungle came to after experimenting with having some of its employees work four days a week (for full pay).

The news has sparked some debate in France. 

What do you think?

🙏🏾 The path to a more equal startup scene 🙏🏾

The startup scene still has structural barriers holding back female entrepreneurship. What can be done to change this and why does it matter?

In the latest episode of the Samsung interview series “The Next Wave,” Samsung’s president and chief strategy officer, Young Sohn, talks to Catherine Bischoff, chief relationship officer at Factory Berlin about what the startup ecosystem can do to become fairer and more diverse.

Read it here. [Sponsored post]

 Deeptech 

The AI watching you browse online

Realeyes is an "Emotional AI" startup which allows brands to watch people watch their content online — and gauge how users react to it on an emotional level via facial recognition software.

It's part of a move to a world where companies may not only know where you are, what you are interested in and who you know but also how you are feeling.

And it's just won new funds from Japanese VC NordicNinja.

What could possibly go wrong?

 VC 

VC investment down 12% in 2020

As the second wave of coronavirus hits, we are just starting to get data on the impact of the first wave on European startups. It's not great.

New figures this week showed that so far this year there has been a 12% decline in venture capital investment compared with 2019, with some badly hit cities such as Madrid seeing as much as a 70% drop.

What's the big picture?

News that matters

💳 SCOOP by Sifted... London fintech Revolut has nominated ex-Standard Chartered chief executive Richard Holmes to oversee its UK bank licence application, according to sources close to the company. It moves the digital bank one step closer on its (long) journey to getting a UK banking licence.

🏫 Brighteye Ventures, Europe’s largest edtech VC, has secured $54m in new funding — and it’s hoping the switch to online learning in the pandemic can help Europe’s edtech sector match the acceleration seen in China and the US.

🍔 A lab-grown meat research program led by a Spanish biotech firm has been awarded a €2.7m grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 R&D funding framework. The consortium project, called “Meat4All”, says it’s the first lab-grown meat research effort to get public investment by the EU. For more on lab-grown meat, see these pieces here and 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.

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Sifted Suggests 

🏩 "Let me explain how having events online is exactly like having sex online," writes Ben Costantini and Dan Taylor in a piece about why remote events are terrible. 

🛒 The latest excellent consumer insights from Heartcore. 

💸 The coronavirus pandemic isn’t keeping investors from pouring billions into venture capital, according to Institutional Investor. 

🤑 Draper Esprit tells us how to raise £110m in 3 days.

In case you missed it 

🔋 Europe is making faster cars and better batteries than Tesla.

🔫 Digital bank ‘mafia’: Monzo and Revolut employees who have become founders.

😇 Meet Ada’s Angels — the investors hoping to diversify funding.