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Happy Wednesday Sifted Reader!

Boy do we have some excellent resources for you today:

A guide to fintech equity packages
The startups VCs are looking for
The Big Idea: our third instalment
The French deeptechs you need to know

\Fintech

Which fintechs offer the best — and worst — equity packages to employees?

Ever been tempted to join a startup for the equity? Getting shares in a company can be a 'get rich slow' strategy. But that's not always the case.

Startups vary in how much of the pie they offer, and the clauses attached to it — so how do Europe's top fintechs (Revolut, Monzo, Curve, N26, Wise and more) rank when it comes to the all-important equity question?

Isabel Woodford found out who gives the best equity compensation.

\A message from our sponsor AWS

Building and testing your business is a challenge for any startup

Join Amazon’s AWS Activate programme to build and scale your business with AWS while optimising performance, managing risk and keeping costs under control.

Get started here.

\For Members Venture Capital

The next big startup idea — according to Europe's top seed investors

VCs spend their careers hearing thousands of pitches, investing in just a select few.

Sifted turned the tables — what would they like to see more of? What do they see as a gap in the market right now?

From activist investments to open law, Kai Nicol-Schwarz found out.

Want to read more in-depth articles like this and attend exclusive member events? Sign up to Sifted Membership to get full access.

\Healthtech

The Big Idea: injectable health monitoring implants

For the third instalment of our Big Idea series, we've taken a look at another company with a weird, wacky and gamechanging concept: DSRuptive.

The startup has been developing injectable implants: small, glass capsules, the size of a grain of rice, inserted into the body with sensors in them to capture health data.

What could this mean for healthtech?

\For Members Deeptech

France’s deeptech startups to watch, according to investors

When it comes to deeptech, France has big ambitions, talent and funding.

Paris-Saclay University competes with Princeton for the title of world's best mathematics school, while Bpifrance, the nation's public investment arm, has €2bn to invest in deeptechs.

So which French deeptechs have the most promise?

Cecile Bussy surveys the nation's investors.

If you're not yet a Sifted member, subscribe here for as little as £19 per month.

\Sifted Talks

How Lithuania became the EU’s fastest-growing fintech hub

During tomorrow's Sifted Talk, our expert panel will discuss why Lithuania is set to take Europe's fintech crown.

Register now!

News that Matters

⏭️ Sennder raises — again. The German freight forwarder raised a $80m Series D, adding to its $160m first close in January which earned the company unicorn status. Freya Pratty reports.

🌎 Belvo: Plaid for Latin America. The Barcelona-founded open finance startup has raised the largest ever Series A for a fintech operating in Latin America — a cool $43m from Kibo Ventures, Future Positive and angels like Wise CTO Harsh Sinha. Find out why they're differentiating themselves from open banking.

🦄 Europe's latest unicorn is Bought By Many, a pet insurtech which provides its services to almost 500k pets worldwide. After a $350m round led by EQT Growth, it's now worth $2bn. Sifted members can find the details here — as well as the full list of unicorns.

🦊 Another insurtech megaround. Berlin-based Wefox has raised $650m, jumping from a $2bn valuation to $3bn — and threefold since 2019. According to Reuters, Wefox agents sell nine of every 10 policies in Europe.

👨‍💻 Freelance platform Malt scores an €80m raise as corporates continue to seek more freelance talent. The company now services 40k business clients and 250k freelancers. Chris O'Brien has the details.

🌳 Stripe is spending $2.75m on carbon removal. Back in 2019, the payments processor committed to spend at least $1m per year — in 2020 they announced Swiss cleantech Climeworks won the first round. This year, the list includes UK-based Mission Zero and Future Forest Company.

Sifted Suggests

❌ Fintech needs more software, not more banking apps, says Balderton partner Rob Moffat. The enterprise software market is the same size as the SME sector — and, he argues, simplification, integration and transparency are more critical than ever.

💸 In case you missed it, OpenVC is tracking every venture capital firm worldwide. You can search by vertical, country, investment stage and first cheque size — and even submit your pitch deck in-app.

🐕 The ABCs of Dogecoin. The Washington Post have written this introduction to the 'meme' cryptocurrency, which was valued at almost $90bn in early April.

🛵 Ocado cofounder dismisses speedy delivery rivals in an interview with the FT. He questioned whether startups like Getir and Gorillas are sustainable post-pandemic, while giving the latest on Ocado's own one-hour-delivery service, Zoom.

Europe's top startups

🇫🇷 In France 🇫🇷

🇬🇧 In the UK 🇬🇧

🇪🇸 In Spain 🇪🇸

🇩🇪 In Germany 🇩🇪

🇸🇪 In the Nordics 🇮🇸

🇱🇹 In the Baltics 🇪🇪

🌍 And the rest... 🌍

Michael Stothard
Editor

Get in touch with him at michael@sifted.eu
Or find him tweeting @MStothard

Isabella Pojuner
Editorial Intern

Get in touch with her at isabella@sifted.eu
She tweets climate and crypto @ipojuner

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Sifted - The fintechs making their staff rich 💰

\Fintech

Which fintechs offer the best — and worst — equity packages to employees?

\A message from our sponsor AWS

Building and testing your business is a challenge for any startup

\For Members Venture Capital

The next big startup idea — according to Europe's top seed investors

\Healthtech

The Big Idea: injectable health monitoring implants

\For Members Deeptech

France’s deeptech startups to watch, according to investors

\Sifted Talks

How Lithuania became the EU’s fastest-growing fintech hub

News that Matters

Sifted Suggests

Europe's top startups

Older messages

Klarna strikes back 🥊

Klarna's in trouble 👀

Update: 240+ female VC partners 👍

Fintech C-suite salaries 👀

The big university tech transfer overhaul 🎓

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