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Hi Sifted Reader,

Here's your Wednesday lineup:

🇫🇷 France's startup champions
🇪🇸 Spain's startup underdogs
😓 How to prevent burnout
🎓 And why Oxford Uni wants to build sustainability startups

\France

France's top startups, according to La French Tech

The government agency has released its annual report, with new entrants like Snapchat-esque Yubo and insect farming startup Innovafeed making the list.

Our French correspondent Marie Mawad's got you covered with all the visualisations you could wish for — plus a full breakdown of the Next40 (the top 40 to watch) and the FT120.

For an ever deeper dive, read the just-released Sifted Intelligence report on the French tech revolution.

\A message from our sponsor Zendesk

A startup podcast all about growing pains

Starting a business is hard. Sit Down Startup Podcast by Zendesk is a new series all about the nitty gritty of the startup journey. Hear from founders, CEOs and makers about their trials and tribulations, sleepless nights and the excitement of funding rounds.

Listen now.

\Spain

**And... Spain’s most undervalued startups**

Spain's startup ecosystem is pretty young — but local unicorns like Glovo and Cabify are proving that it's possible to build big Spanish tech businesses.

VCs have noticed, and so, a region historically short of local VC money is now seeing funds pouring into startups.

But which startups are still flying under the radar?

Tim Smith asks five of the top local investors.

\Wellbeing

How to identify, prevent and cure burnout in your team

Startup life can be a lot, and with virtual work a reality for most of us, it's even harder for employers to identify who's struggling.

Calvin Benton, founder of mental health support startup Spill, schools us on how to identify the psychological basis of burnout and the small changes a workplace can make.

Take some notes.

\Sustainability

Oxford University set to launch up to 20 sustainability startups in two years

Not content with creating one of the world’s first Covid-19 vaccines, Oxford University also wants to tackle another huge global problem: climate change.

This week it launched the Conservation Venture Studio, which plans to create a bunch of startups to look into food security, cleantech and biodiversity loss over the next two years.

But university spinouts often struggle to scale up — is this programme any different?

Sarah Drumm finds out all you need to know.

News that matters

🐩 Exclusive pet tech news. Pet Media Group, the Swedish startup attempting to build Europe’s largest online marketplace for pets, has added another geography to its empire with the purchase of Italy’s AnnunciAnimali.it. Maija Palmer sniffs out the details.

🇵🇱 A record €477m was invested into Polish startups in 2020, which one VC partner called "undoubtedly the best year in the Polish startup scene." Get the full breakdown.

💳 Monzo's going in for a third funding round since the start of Covid-19, finalising a £50m funding extension from Octahedron Capital to support its "strong revenue growth and performance." Truthfully, it's not had the best year.

🛰️ Antenna check. Satellites are pretty cheap — if you exclude the uber-expensive cost of their antennas. But UK startup Isotropic Systems just raised $40m in a Series B round led by SES, Boeing and the UK Government's Future Fund — money it will use to bring its low-cost antennas to commercial production.

💰 Rishi Sunak's considering a tax on Amazon. Treasury sources confirmed the UK Chancellor is thinking of targeting companies who've done well out of the pandemic to pay back government debts. Amazon, ASOS and Deliveroo have been named in leaked emails.

🚗 Tesla invested a whopping $1.5bn in bitcoin in January, rocketing the price of the cryptocurrency to a new all-time high — a week after Elon Musk endorsed dogecoin on social app Clubhouse. The currency is now valued at just $5bn less than Tesla itself, which also states its plans to accept the currency for its EV cars "in the near future".

🧐 Elusive tech startup Nothing has announced its first raise of $15m in a Series A round led by GV. We're not sure what else there is to say.

👛 Klarna's encouraging the unemployed to keep spending. Wait, what? The Times reports that during an undercover shopping exercise the buy-now-pay-later app's online clerks 'encouraged' customers they knew were unemployed to continue spending.

Sifted Suggests

🌐 Speaking of, The Times interviewed Alice Tapper, who started the social media campaign which is partly responsible for prompting regulation against Klarna.

👂 "Clubhouse is a club so exclusive, it excludes disabled people by design." Forbes contributor Steven Aquino details his experience with the audio-only social app.

🛴 What challenges does micromobility face? Cofounder of Wind Mobility, Eric Wang, Sifted's own Amy Lewin and others discuss sustainability and profitability on this panel.

\Globalisation Partners Webinar

Who needs an HQ anymore?

For many startups, 2020 was the year their teams discovered remote working. Some employees love it, others hate it, but one thing’s for sure — it’s here to stay.

On February 12, we’ll be joined by an expert panel to discuss what the new world of work means for startups and how they can take advantage of it.

Is there really any need to limit your hiring to places where you have a physical presence? Just how far afield does it make sense to look for hires? And what does it take to build a fully remote workforce?

Find out in the next Sifted Talks.