Venture Capital 

A (deluxe) brunch with Sequoia

One of the world’s top VC firms, Sequoia, has opened its first European office and hired its first partner, Luciana Lixandru (formerly at Accel).

Cue an opportunity for a brunch with Sifted.

So what are her plans? How did she end up here? And what did she order to eat?

Find out.

🔮 The future of work: what's next? 🔮

 Fintech 

Checkout.com CEO snubs Accel's latest £14m venture

London-based fintech Primer, which plans to offer businesses a way to seemlessly integrate with numerous payments providers, is announcing a new £14m funding round led by Accel.

However, it hasn't yet won over payments giant Checkout.com — which could somewhat scupper its plans. CEO Guillaume Pousaz says he’s not sure he’ll collaborate with the startup.

Isabel Woodford finds out why.

 Tech for good 

Behind the scenes at a tech for good competition

A couple of weeks ago, Sifted helped judge promising social impact startups at the Super Connect for Good competition, but boy was it agonisingly hard.

The concept of tech for good is so broad that you get a wide field of finalists, all entirely unlike. So what criteria did the judges look at? And who won the £90,000 prize?

Maija Palmer shares her experience.

 News 

European armies look for digital sovereignty

Most Europeans don’t mind using WhatsApp, but those in the military don't feel quite the same way.

Enter Matrix, an open software solution which allows them to have more control and privacy over their communications. It's landed Germany's Bundeswehr — and 50,000 of its military personnel — as a customer.

So how does it all work?

Freya Pratty talks to Matrix’s founding team.

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Sifted Suggests 

🚀 How did Europe’s most successful tech businesses build their teams? From seed to Series C, find out here.

🌾 From autonomous tractors to weed-stomping robots, the agtech sector has come a long way. Grist highlights some of the bots revolutionising farming here, while Sifted recently asked if vertical farming can really be more than herbs and leaves in this piece.

🇬🇧 Is Deliveroo in for some IPO luck? Pitchbook explains what going public in the UK might look like going forward in light of the British government’s recent announcement to review the rules around initial public offerings. The potential new rules could work in Deliveroo's favour, which is gearing up for an IPO in 2021.

💚 Impact best practice for investors. How can you optimise decision-making as an impact investor? What are the essential impact metrics to report and consider in managing impact investments? Nicolas Andreou, investor at Big Society Capital writes.

💡 Greener lithium. Lithium is crucial for the transition to renewables, but mining it has been environmentally costly. Now a more sustainable source of lithium has been found in Cornwall that could change the game, writes BBC Future Planet. Check out more lithium news here and here.

🎮 The rise of gaming revenue visualised. Gaming is estimated to be the biggest-earning media sector in 2020 at $165bn global revenue. Visual Capitalist shares a cool infographic of the trends and revenues of the gaming industry over the past 50 years and analyses each by decade.

📣 Apologies: Last week we published an article about the arrest of entrepreneur Alberto Genovese and its impact on the Italian tech scene. We struck entirely the wrong tone in the article and have deleted it. Sorry to all. [Roma Startup, a local startup association, had this response.]

Events [digital only]
 

🌍 EIT Awards 2020 | Discover Europe’s top innovators | 8-9 Dec
EIT is back with its annual awards show, which celebrates top entrepreneurs’ cutting-edge solutions to global challenges, from healthtech to transport. [Sponsored post]

🎅 Santa's Christmas Pitch | Online | 15-16 Dec
Calling Finnish startups, ArcticStartup invites you to connect with Finnish startups and international investors for two days of pitching, networking and festive celebrations.