Venture Capital 

Our take on the State of European Tech report

VC firm Atomico's annual State of European Tech report is out — and it's a whopper. 

We've picked out the 20 charts you really should see — spoiler: 2020 looks set to be a record year for European startup investment — in case you don't have a spare three hours to read the whole thing.

Here are the top findings.

  🚀 The talent Bible for scaleups 🚀

 Ecommerce 

Amazon: Not So Mighty in Europe

It might be one of the most valuable companies in the world, but Amazon has not dominated quite as much of Europe as many may think. 

Take Poland, which has its own ecommerce giant, Allegro, which is 10x bigger than Amazon on its home turf, has 21m customers and IPO-ed at a $12bn+ valuation this year. 

Kit Gillet and Mimi Billing look at where else — and why — Amazon has failed to take off in Europe.

 Healthtech 

HealthHero: the new healthtech buying its way to the top

At just one year old, London-based startup HealthHero says it is now the largest telemedicine provider in Europe.

How? It's been buying up rivals — most recently, video consultation provider Doctorlink. 

Mimi Billing finds out more about its strategy. 

 Fintech 

Flight of the crypto startups

It's crunch time for crypto startups in the UK: if they're not registered with the country's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) within the next month, they might be forced to cease trading. 

The problem? It's the FCA which is holding things up, with more than 160 businesses waiting for their applications to be approved.

What happens next? Ryan Weeks has more.

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News that matters

⚖️ Facebook faces lawsuit after nabbing a London fintech's name for its crypto project. Diem, a digital pawnbroker, told Sifted it's ready to take legal action against Facebook to protect its brand. Isabel Woodford has more.

🏠 Luko, a French home insurance startup, has raised €50m. EQT Ventures led the round, which was joined by existing investors Accel, Speedinvest and some well-known angels too. Luko now has a team of 85, 100,000 policy holders and has grown 6x since its last round.

🚲 In other insurance news (you lucky readers), Getsafe has closed a $30m Series B round. The German startup, which pitches itself as the digital insurer for millennials, covers home contents and personal possessions for 150,000 customers. It's hoping to get its own insurance licence to help it launch new products faster. Swiss Re, a giant reinsurer, led the round.

🏎️ Online auction platform Catawiki has landed a €150m funding round. The 12-year-old company, chaired by Accel's Martin Gibson, has over 10m users who sell and bid on art, jewellery, watches, classic cars and other collectables on its platform. Private equity firm Permina led the round.

👩‍🎤 Music streaming startup Roxi has raised £13m to expand outside of the UK. It's made headlines in part because Kylie Minogue is fronting its ad campaigns (and has invested in the company). As for the tech itself, it's focusing on music for TV. 

🚸 Kids fintech gohenry has raised $40m. The London-based startup, which has been profitable since March, is on a mission to teach 6-18-year-olds how to be good with money via its app and pre-paid debit cards. In 2018, it launched in the US, where it will continue to invest in expansion. 

💸 Another software startup which helps VCs do their jobs more easily has landed funding. Finnish startup Rundit has raised €1m; its platform helps VCs, accelerators and family offices get regular investment reports from their portfolio. In September Betterfront, a platform which hopes to help VCs raise funds more easily, also picked up seed funding.

💃 Is there a fintech wars musical in the making? Twitter says yes.

Sifted Suggests 

🔬 Meet the world’s largest biotech investor. Novo Holdings has $65bn under management, features on the cap table of just about every biotech startup at some point and has a charitable purpose. Maija Palmer meets the CEO to find out more about the mysterious mega investor.

👎 Only 45% of UK consumers think that neobanks will survive the next 12 months. Accenture polled 3,000 UK consumers earlier this year and found that trust in the upstarts was pretty low.

👍 In a widely-commended move, the Zalando CEO has stepped down to enable his wife to focus on her career. Rubin Ritter has been co-CEO of the Berlin ecommerce giant since 2010.

🐻 This investor wants to bring hedge-fund-style techniques to startup investing. The WSJ reports on Apeira Capital, a New York-based firm planning to 'short' overvalued startups.

🤑 FounderPool, helping founders get rich even if their startup fails. Business Insider has the story.

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