Policy 

What Biden means for European tech

Joe Biden's election means many things for many people. But what does it mean for European tech and startups?

Potentially, writes Nicolas Colin, fewer regulatory barriers, an easier route to scale, an end to Brexit (!?) and a chance for the western world to unite behind a shared vision of technological progress.

Sounds great! But will it happen?

💁‍♀️ Helping female founders flourish 💁‍♀️

This International Women Entrepreneurship Day, Google for Startups invites you to meet its latest cohort of women founders to share how they are leading their industries into the future — from proptech to femtech to legaltech.
 

Get your free ticket here. [Sponsored post]

 SaaS 

Paddle raises $68m as SaaS soars

The past nine months have been big for European software-as-a-service companies; when everything went remote, their services were suddenly in high demand. 

That was also good news for the sassiest SaaS company of them all, Paddle, which helps other SaaS companies sell their services and scale faster. It has just raised $68m from Kindred, Notion and 83 North.

Cofounder Christian Owens speaks to Sifted's Freya Pratty about where the $100bn SaaS market heads from here.

🌵 Sifted Talks: Accelerating tech for good – can tech innovations have a real impact? 🌵

'Impact tech' and 'tech for good' are the buzz words du jour — but is the movement here to stay, can impact startups ever raise serious capital and will the sector ever shrug off its connotations with charity?

Sifted's Mimi Billing will quiz a virtual panel on that and more on November 20, 1pm CET.

Sign up here.

 Fintech 

22 French fintechs to watch post-Brexit 

London currently has three times as many fintechs as Paris — but is that all about to change? 

Probably not, say investors (despite what politicians proclaim). But there are plenty of fintech niches for French startups to explore, from teen banking to mobile payments. 

Here's our pick of French fintechs to keep tabs on. 

 Sustainability 

Smart energy startup Tibber raises €55m

Four-year-old Swedish-Norwegian company Tibber wants to reduce the electricity consumption of European households by 20% — no small task.  

Still, it's already live in Sweden, Norway and Germany, will soon launch in the Netherlands and is backed by the likes of Founders Fund, Eight Roads and Balderton. 

So, can Tibber lead the great green energy revolution we need? Mimi Billing finds out more.

🇪🇺 A 5-year UK tech visa for EU citizens 🇪🇺

From January next year, the Tech Nation Visa will be opening up applications to exceptional tech talent from the EU hoping to work in the UK for up to five years. That’s the longest working visa on offer in Europe — and recipients can move jobs in that time.

 
Intrigued? Find out more here. [Sponsored post]

News that matters

💁 A European social media success story? Europe has not exactly smashed the competition in the social media sphere — but one app, France's Yubo, has taken on the US — and won! It's also just raised a new €40m round to expand into more countries, including some in Asia. Marie Mawad finds out what investors see in the app.

📤 Monzo's chief risk officer leaves — after just one year. Lisa Nowell, who joined the digital bank in 2019, has stepped down. She is not the first senior executive to head out of the door this year.

🛴 Scooters are coming for London! Transport for London has announced that it will select three operators to trial scooters in the city in spring 2021. The trial will last for a year. Question is how many boroughs actually join the party...

🚛 Logistics double whammy. Barcelona-headquartered delivery firm Paack has raised €44m to speed up geographic expansion and build more warehouses. It already offers a 2-hour package delivery for big customers, like department store El Corte Inglés, and is live in Spain, Portugal, France and the UK. Also announcing a wedge of capital is Berlin-based digital freight forwarder Forto (formerly called FreightHub) which has raised $50m. One of its backers is, notably, shipping giant Maersk.

Sifted Suggests 

🇪🇪 Baltic startups, in data. When Pipedrive hit a $1.5bn valuation last week, it became the fifth unicorn to be born in Estonia. But what else do you need to know about the wider Baltic startup ecosystem? See this Sifted Twitter thread.

👩‍🔬 Inside the Institut Curie's biotech factory. Maddyness finds out how the organisation's innovation department works. (In French.)

🙅‍♀️ Double standards. "We hold our female CEOs to impossible standards while not holding their male counterparts to high enough ones," writes Charlie O'Donnell in a thought-provoking post. Why are female founders' actions scrutinised so much more intensely than male founders' — and far less easily forgiven?

👼 How to raise funds with a super angel: An interview with prominent investor Fabrice Grinda, who walks through his one-hour assessment process.

👰 Questions to ask a potential investor. If you haven't heard the line that the VC-founder relationship is kind of like a marriage, you clearly haven't spent more than 15 minutes talking to a VC. It's important to ensure your interests are aligned, is the point, which you can judge by asking these questions.

💖 A dating app that matches you based on your... voice. Tempting?