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Hi Sifted Reader,

Happy Friday! Here's today's line up:

📰 The hottest media startups to watch
🚴‍♂️ Spain's new gig economy legislation
💸 What Greensill's downfall means
👩‍💼 How to fix 'leadership debt'

\Consumer

The 21 media startups to watch in 2021

The media industry's having a rough time — public trust in journalism remains low, newsrooms are shrinking and organisations are making cuts.

At the same time, there's a wave of new digital media startups offering some hope and attempting to solve core issues within the industry.

We ran through 21 of the most exciting media startups to follow this year.

See the list.

\A message from our sponsor Mitek

Digital ID verification software is booming — but where is it headed?

In the next Sifted Talks, we’ll be asking the hard questions to our expert panel:

How does facial veriﬁcation work?
What’s the potential for discrimination?
What does the future look like for biometric data fraud?

Register now to find out more on March 18.

\Regulation

Spain cracks down on gig economy

The Spanish government presented a new agreement yesterday on the text for a new 'Riders' Law'.

It establishes the 'presumption of employment' for couriers and it's reported that food delivery platforms — like Glovo, Uber Eats and Deliveroo — will be given three months to employ their riders.

Sifted spoke to Glovo cofounder Sacha Michaud ahead of the announcement, where he described the law as "targeting the tech sector" and potentially making the entire gig economy illegal.

What does it mean for delivery companies?

\For Members Fintech

Greensill's downfall is a warning to European fintechs

Greensill was once heralded the star of UK fintech — a SoftBank-backed startup representing a new era for supply chain finance driven by AI and machine learning.

But things have changed over the last few weeks. The company's entering administration and reports suggest creditors have found that it wasn't run on a first-class AI tech platform, as claimed.

The company's fate raises a serious question — are other fintechs overstating their ‘tech’ abilities?

Here's fintech correspondent Isabel Woodford's take.

\In partnership with Globalisation Partners

6 insights from our panel on remote-first companies

The pandemic's offered a unique opportunity for startups to ditch the office and the hiring restrictions that come with it.

But with the ability to hire from anywhere come other changes, to things like salary, logistics and growth. How do you navigate all the messy bureaucratic red tape from country to country? And how much should we be replicating the IRL office online?

We posed these questions to our panel of remote work experts.

See what they have to say.

\Opinion

Why you really need to fix your startup's 'leadership debt'

Building a competent leadership team is central to becoming a successful tech company.

But leadership debt — accepting shortcomings on the executive level — is normal in any startup affected by financial and time constraints.

It's impossible to avoid, but ignore it at your peril, says Martina van Hettinga.

Here's why.

\Advertising

Disabled representation in advertising is growing and Europe's startups are leading the way

One in five people in Europe lives with a disability, but disabled people are not regularly featured in advertising.

A 2016 census of advertising by Lloyds Banking Group found people with disabilities represented 0.06% of the people in campaigns.

Things are changing and there's a growing movement of people across Europe trying to redress the balance.

Chris Stokel-Walker finds out more.

News that Matters

🏘️ Exclusive: Coliving startup Habyt has acquired global coliving provider Quarters, bringing its total number of rooms to 4,000 across 5 countries. The deal's Habyt's third acquisition since it was launched in 2017.

🇪🇸 Jobandtalent, a Spanish startup that matches workers with temporary roles, has raised €100m from SoftBank and €83m from BlackRock. The company wants to give more security to temporary workers, and it's seen a high level of growth during the pandemic, as the logistics and ecommerce sectors have looked to expand their labour forces.

🚚 Zego, a British startup that provides commercial motor insurance has secured unicorn status after it raised $150m in funding. The company, which provides insurance to gig economy workers, is now valued at $1.1bn.

👨‍🏫 Preply, a Barcelona and Kyiv-based edtech, has secured €29.4m in a round co-led by Owl Ventures and Full In Partners. The company runs an online learning platform connecting bookable tutors with students to learn languages.

📷 Estonian startup Promoty, which runs a marketplace to connect social influencers to retail brands, has raised €1.2m. The platform is currently used by brands including Wolt, Circle K and Orkla.

💰 Taavet Hinrikus, the cofounder of Wise, formerly Transferwise, has teamed up with Teleport cofounder Sten Tamkivi to create a new investment fund. The move will formalise the pair's investment activities and is backed by a team of six employees based in Estonia.

🖥️ A fire has hit the headquarters of French unicorn OVH, which offers web hosting and cloud computing services, in Strasbourg on Wednesday. OVH hosts nearly two-thirds of the French web and hundreds of sites have been made temporarily unavailable as a result of the fire. A few days ago, OVH kicked off the process for its IPO, which will be one of the country's biggest tech transactions of the year.

Sifted Suggests

💰 A flavour of what it's like to work at Revolut. Irina Scarlat, Revolut’s soon-to-depart global head of growth, is leaving after three years in the job, saying she feels completely worn out by the experience. Sifted asked past and current employees of the company about what it's like to work there.

🇫🇷 There's a new Instagram page causing a stir in France's tech and startup scene. The page, @Balancetastartup has only been going for two months, but it’s already amassed 180k followers. It collects testimonies from individuals working in startups, aiming to bring more transparency to the industry. We ran through some of the accusations levelled at the country's most famous startups.

💡 What's next for Bulb, Europe's fastest-growing startup? The clean energy company has been busy: its head count increased from 55 in 2016 to 575 in 2019 and it achieved compound annual revenue growth of 1,159% across the same period. Last year, it made £1.5bn in revenue. Now it wants to give consumers control over their own energy supplies. Sarah Drumm reports for Sifted.

🇬🇧 The UK government has launched a new fellowship to get tech leaders and digital talent into its Civil Service. The scheme, inspired by a counterpart in the US, will see 10 fellows join the programme each year.

\Meet Sarah

Our Sustain newsletter coauthor

Say hello to Sarah. She runs our sustainability-focused newsletter, Sustain, which comes out weekly on Thursdays. So, if you have a burning opinion on ESG or dubious 'green' moves, want to share news about your climate tech or greentech startup, or have spotted a trend you'd like her to investigate, get in touch: sarah@sifted.eu. And sign up to Sustain here!

Sifted Opinion

Do women really want their employers to freeze their eggs?

Want to build deeptech? Throw out the VC playbook

Clubhouse is already dying

We need to talk about the dark side of intrapreneurship

How to pitch an opinion piece to Sifted

Amy Lewin
Deputy Editor

Get in touch with her at amy@sifted.eu
She loves a bit of reader feedback.

Freya Pratty
News Reporter

Send her your news at freya@sifted.eu
Or find her (occasionally) tweeting @FPratty

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Could a new law kill the gig economy? 🇪🇸

\Consumer

The 21 media startups to watch in 2021

\A message from our sponsor Mitek

Digital ID verification software is booming — but where is it headed?

\Regulation

Spain cracks down on gig economy

\For Members Fintech

Greensill's downfall is a warning to European fintechs

\In partnership with Globalisation Partners

6 insights from our panel on remote-first companies

\Opinion

Why you really need to fix your startup's 'leadership debt'

\Advertising

Disabled representation in advertising is growing and Europe's startups are leading the way

News that Matters

Sifted Suggests

\Meet Sarah

Our Sustain newsletter coauthor

Sifted Opinion

Older messages

Top seed and Series A VCs in Europe 🔥

Salaries: what are you worth? 🤔

Your membership discount code is about to expire ⌛

Speedy food delivery frenzy 💨

How to learn from VC rejection ❌

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