Fintech 

"We're not perfect, we’re learning," says Klarna CEO

Klarna is a fintech juggernaut with 85m customers across 17 countries, an $11bn valuation and an upcoming IPO. But it is also facing a backlash from politicians, media and consumer watchdogs against its buy-now-pay-later services.

Sifted spoke to a (hoarse) CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski about what the fintech has got right and wrong and his worries about customer debt traps.

Why is he concerned? And what was up with his voice?

🤔 Are startup office days over? 🤔

In our new report with Globalization Partners, we analyse what’s next for the startup workplace.

Is WFH here to stay? Where is Europe’s freelance economy heading? Can startups operate with fully remote teams?

Read the report to find out.

 Startup Life 

5 myths you shouldn’t believe about fundraising

This year it took Natasha Foster 193 days, 217 hours of calls and 886 emails to put together the seed investment for her startup Paid.

On the way, she realised that a lot of what people tell you about fundraising at seed is complete nonsense. 

What are these 5 myths of fundraising? And why do they persist? 

 Fintech 

20 European fintechs taking on LatAm

Latin America is a huge opportunity for Europe’s fintech startups, with 70% of the population estimated to be without a traditional bank account.

Opportunities in Latin America have already contributed to the success of some big names like iZettle, Tink, PayU and Adyen, which have all either exited or IPOed.

So which are the next fintechs muscling into the market? Tim Smith in Barcelona finds out.

🧑‍🏫 What you really learn on a pre-accelerator programme 🧑‍🏫

Earlier this year 36 teams from all over Europe entered the EIT Jumpstarter pre-accelerator programme where they were given the space and mentorship to develop their startup concepts into actual businesses.

But what did they actually learn? 

Find out here. [Sponsored content]

 SaaS 

The end of email?: The startup developing an alternative

“The way we manage work, principally through email, needs to change,” says Bill Dobie, the founder of workplace communications startup and Slack rival Sedna.

The company, which has just raised a $10m Series A round, works by putting all of a company's emails into one stream and then using an API to channel them to the right people. 

Clever! Tell me more...

News that matters

📰 Romanian startup Deepstash has raised €3m to connect people around curated, ideas-based content. While not a massive round, it highlights an appetite for platforms that try to effectively curate what we read, while offering a bit of inspiration. “We started to realise that the way we spend our attention is kind of how we spend our lives, and I think there is a deep need for more meaningful interactions with good information,” Deepstash chief executive and cofounder Vladimir Oane tells Sifted.

🚀 The European Investment Bank (EIB) is to make its first direct investment into the space sector, with €20m in funding for Spire Global, the world’s largest constellation of multi-purpose satellites. It's a big deal firstly because it's another sign that the EU is doing more and more direct investment into startups in a bid to support the new economy. But it also shows that they are betting on space, an area where many policymakers feel that Europe has been left behind by the category-defining US company Space X. 

🎉 Bizzabo, an Israeli-born events platform, raised a mega $138m Series E funding round led by Insight Partners. That's one big number, highlighting the super-excitement in VC land for everything to do with digital events. Remember that the events platform Hopin raised at a $2.1bn valuation 8 months after launch just the other week and there are more raises like this to come.

📟 Finnish diabetes startup Virta Health, which aims to help people manage diabetes with frequent monitoring and dietary counselling, has raised $65m from investors including Sequoia Capital Global Equities. The new funding round values the six-year-old company, which is now based in San Francisco, at about $1.1bn.

🪒 Estrid, a Swedish 'female-first' razor brand that has been around just three years, is raising money at a €100m valuation, according to Di Digital.

🚗 Planet42, an Estonian car subscription company that helps individuals ignored by banks to get access to a personal vehicle, has announced a $10m raise from US-based Lendable, an institutional debt investor. To date, Planet42 has bought and delivered over 2,000 second-hand cars in South Africa, its primary market.

🤦‍♂️ A VC-backed startup to make the lives of VCs easier... Floww — a data-driven marketplace designed to allow founders to pitch investors, with the whole investment relationship managed online — says it has raised £5m to date in seed funding from angels and family offices.

📇 Bizay, a marketplace to allow small businesses to create customisable products like merchandise, has raised a €32m funding round led by Indico Capital and the European Investment Bank. This is a very big round for the Portuguese startup ecosystem. On the downside for the company, the TrustPilot reviews are grim reading. 

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 

👯‍♂️ Mapping the creator economy, by Hugo Amsellem. A serious piece of work this, which is well worth reading. 

🤳 Have you thought of using Instagram to expand your professional network? Look no further than this Sifted video on the subject (it's our first ever video, so feedback even more welcome than usual).

🇫🇷 Only 8% of Parisians would want to work remotely all day everyday, according to a study by Paris Workplace.

💪 21 most influential women in French tech (based on a 100-person ranking by PR agency TytoPR).

💉 Read about this French startup making sensors used to ensure medication and vaccines are stored and moved at the right temperature.