Accelerators 

Y Combinator doubles European founder intake after going remote

This year there have been twice as many European founders as usual going to the famed US accelerator Y Combinator — which counts Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit among its alumni.

It's thanks at least in part to the programme going remote this year, meaning it was easier for global founders to participate.

Isabel Woodford has more.

 😃 Get your team in tip-top shape 😃 

Building the dream team goes way beyond hiring promising candidates.

Get inspired by words of wisdom from talent experts like Picnic CEO Roline Spijkervet, Slingshot Ventures’ director human capital Constance Scholten and more.

Read the ‘People & Culture Scaleup Guide’. [Sponsored post]

 Venture Capital 

Sir Ronald Cohen: “The VC industry has to wake up”

The 'father of British venture capital' Sir Ronald Cohen says that "impact" is the future of investing.

He says that sustainable investments can be profitable and can deliver measurable results despite what the critics say.

The only problem is that not enough regular VCs have noticed yet.

Sifted's Connor Bilboe meets the living legend.

 Healthtech 

Why telemedicine startups are overvalued

Startups that allow users to talk to their doctor online were some of the most hyped tech businesses in Europe even before coronavirus struck. Now people cannot get enough of them.

But are their fans ignoring some massive questions about their business model? 

 🌱 Tech innovations changing the world 🌱 

Read Sifted's new deep-dive report — produced with the BMW Foundation — about sustainable business models, innovative technologies and responsible leadership.

Download it here.

 Micromobility 

What SoftBank backing Tier means for European micromobility

Japanese mega-investor SoftBank has led a $250m investment round into scooter operator Tier.

Is it game over for the other scooter startups? Or is there more to this than meets the eye?

Amy Lewin finds out. 

 Pet Tech 

Put your fat cat on a diet

For all you fat cat owners out there, there is a new startup called KatKin offering direct-to-consumer cat food that can help your fuzzy friend lose weight (and stay healthy).

Sifted Maija Palmer talks to the team.

🎤 How to pitch to investors 🎤

Looking to land a dream deal with a corporate or woo VCs with the perfect pitch deck? Five top investors share heaps of tips and tricks, with words from Hearst Ventures to Samsung Catalyst Fund.

Brush up here. [Sponsored post]

News that matters

📦 Two brothers from Hamburg have founded a new company in London, Heroes, to buy well-performing Amazon businesses and scale them up — this week saying it had raised $65m in seed funding. This is a similar idea to what Thrasio in the States is doing and Razor and Seller X as well, so it's not an original concept. But it's interesting as there is a long tail of medium-well performing Amazon brands out there just waiting for someone to scoop them up.

🦄 New unicorn alert. Software company Pipedrive, which has a sales CRM tool for small and medium-sized businesses, is the latest European company to reach unicorn status at a $1bn+ valuation. Founded in 2010 in Estonia and with its HQ now in New York, it has the big task of convincing companies not to use market leaders Salesforce, and come to them instead. They have 95,000 users, so they must be doing something right. 

⛱️ Do you want to start your own bank? Well, it's getting easier and easier thanks to companies like Railsbank, the London-headquartered banking-as-a-service platform, which has raised $37m in new growth funding. Railsbank will pretty much do all the actual boring banking stuff for you — leaving you free to waft around Monaco bragging about how you started a bank. (Note: you may need to find some paying customers at some point.)

🛸 Lilium, the Munich-based electric flying taxi company, has announced its first US hub outside Florida’s busiest airport, Orlando, and says it expects to start operating flights from there by 2025. The deal with Orlando comes just two months after Lilium announced deals in Germany with Cologne and Dusseldorf airports, a sign that it is making progress in building a network of hubs to fly from.

🌱 New research has found that San Francisco and London have become two of the world’s leading hubs for VC investment into tech solutions that address one or more of the 17 UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), more commonly referred to as 'impact tech'. They are followed by Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Shanghai and Beijing.

🕺 Cameo is a website that allows people to order personalised video messages from celebrities. It's pretty fun, if you have never checked it out. Anyway, the Swedish version, Memmo, is now launching in the UK. Another one that is out there in Europe is Thrillz.

💰 Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas, angel investor and chief operating officer of GoCardless, is joining Index Ventures as partner. It's a loss for Hiroki Takeuchi, founder of GoCardless. 

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.

 🙏 We're hiring a digital marketing manager  🙏 

We're looking for a digital marketing and membership manager to help us get more of our stories to you good people and grow our reach across all social channels.

Is it you? Is it someone you know? Please share the role.

Sifted Suggests 

🌱 VC investment into European impact startups tripled to €5bn between 2015 and 2020, according to the latest report from Dealroom. From the fastest-growing startups to the most generous investors, Sifted did a thread on everything you need to know here.

🇪🇪 Chasing unicorns: Can smaller European states compete? Here Steven Frigerio looks at how the likes of smaller countries like Estonia and Malta have been able to create great tech companies despite their size.

🇺🇸 What's going to be the impact of the US election on French startups, asks Maddyness. 

💨 It is time to debunk several myths about European tech, writes AllocateGP, making the bull case for Europe.

In case you missed it 

💳 The 'fin-influencer' boom: Why Instagram and TikTok are the new battlegrounds for digital banks.

🔫 Pablo Escobar’s brother is suing Klarna for millions.

💉 BioNTech: the German biotech behind the coronavirus vaccine.