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News that Matters

🙋 The EU's new Startup Nations Standard launches today. But, er, what is it?

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 European VC is making progress on diversity, but it's still a long way from being anywhere near a reflection of society at large. That's according to a new report from the BVCA and Level 20, which has collected data on ethnicity at VC firms for the first time.

🦄 A third of UK unicorns are founded by ethnic minorities. But there are no women or Black people among them. So finds a new report from business diversity non-profit MSDUK. 

🏫 Wingman Ventures, a Swiss VC firm, has just launched a new fund, the Wingman Campus Fund, run by students at three universities in Switzerland. The fund, which models itself on the Dorm Room scheme in the US, will invest in student startups at the universities. 

💰 PayFit, a Paris-based startup which aims to digitise HR and payroll processes for SMEs, has raised a €90m Series D round and announced plans to raise its headcount by 50% across 2021. It comes amid a surge in SaaS for SMEs. 

🐱 Barkibu, a Spanish pet telemedicine startup, has raised $5.6m to advance its plans to become 'the Apple Health of petcare'. Founded in 2015, it offers pet owners a range of pet health services, from a free AI-powered triage service that allows pet owners to figure out if their pet needs medical attention or not.

🛍️ London-based delivery startup Dija has acquired Genie, a fellow delivery startup based in Cambridge. Dija was founded by former Deliveroo execs and promises to deliver groceries within 10 minutes. It has four hubs in London, each holding around 2k products. 

🚴‍♂️Meanwhile online grocery delivery 'dark store' Jiffy, based in London, has raised £2.6m in seed funding as it readies for its launch. The company aims to get groceries to people's doors within 15 minutes.

🥡 And in other speedy grocery news, London-based Weezy, which also promises to deliver items within 15 minutes, has expanded to Bristol. 

🚚 Cubyn, a Paris-based on-demand fulfilment startup has raised €35m in a round led by Eurazeo and Bpifrance Large Venture. The startup wants to use the funds to double its team of 85 by the end of 2021 and deploy its services internationally.

🏘️ Casavo, an Italian proptech business which wants to revolutionise the way individuals buy and sell homes in Europe, has raised €200m in new funding. 

📽️ Video meeting startup Whereby, which is based in Norway, has raised €10m. The company wants to pioneer human-centric video meetings, and to be doing so for 1bn people by 2024.

Sifted Suggests

👨‍🏫 How to keep your team learning. Carl Martin, head of people development and engagement at deathtech startup Farewill, thinks it's possible to make every meeting and 1-1 an opportunity for learning and development. Here's how.

🇫🇷 As part of our deep-dive into the French tech ecosystem, we asked eight French entrepreneurs what they think 2021 has in store for the tech world. Read the eight trends they picked out here.

📊 Tracking the right data is critical to a startup's success. But how do you decide what exactly to track? Here's what our expert panel from our latest Sifted Talks on the topic had to say. 

⭐ Who are the most influential people in European tech? Check out this thread to see who people think are having the biggest impact on the continent's tech scene. 

🤖 The technological revolution is unstoppable. In this piece, Sam Altman from OpenAI discusses what the next decade will look like in terms of tech advancement, and how we can make sure we use it to improve the standard of living for more people than ever before. 

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Sifted Opinion