• Index Ventures' new funds, worth $2.9bn 
• Europe's fastest growing scaleups
• How startups need to think about parental leave
• The hottest Spanish startups to watch

\Venture Capital 

Early-stage founders are missing out on the European tech boom

European tech is enjoying a record year — but not all founders are sharing the spoils.

While later stage deals grow, it's actually getting harder to raise early rounds. In 2020, there were half the number of pre-seed deals in Europe than in 2016. 

We look at what's going on, and what could help.

\Reports 

Inside Europe’s €24.3bn restaurant industry — and where it’s heading 

\Venture Capital

Index Ventures raises two new funds, totalling $2.9bn (no typo)

\For Members Startup Life  

Europe’s fastest growing scaleups so far this year

2021 has been marked by some enormous rounds in European tech, but which companies are scaling fastest?

Sifted has analysed the speediest scaleups in Europe so far this year, based on headcount growth across the last six months. 

See the list.

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

\Startup Life 

Parental leave: The ultimate L&D exercise?

\Spain 

The Spanish startups and scaleups to watch

For Spain's startups, 2021 is proving to be a much better year than 2020. So far this year, they’ve raised a record €1.9bn from VC firms across 230 deals — double the €950m raised in all of 2020. 

We've curated a list of up-and-coming — and well-known-but-still-exciting — startups from Spain. 

Here are some of the most interesting. 

Alternatively, see the full list of 150ish Spanish startups to watch here. 

News that Matters

💸 London-based VC firm Dawn has raised a new $120m fund to invest in the best-performing companies in its portfolio. The firm is focused on B2B companies and has backed businesses like Dataiku and Collibra. 

💰 Starling has posted a £31.5m pre-tax loss in its latest financial results, nearly halving its losses from its last accounts. We run through five takeaways from the results.

🇬🇧 The UK Government has announced a new £375m scheme aimed at helping high-growth, R&D intensive companies bring their tech to market. But should it really be focusing on scaleups rather than earlier-stage companies? Investors are divided.

🥖 French investment group Eurazeo has closed a new growth fund worth more than €1.6bn to back European tech companies at Series C and beyond. Eleanor Warnock has more.

🌎 Worldr has raised $3m from Playfair and IQ Capital. The company works on protecting remote conversations between teams. The team at Playfair explain why they made the investment.

🇫🇷 French startup Spendesk, has raised a $118m round led by General Atlantic. It brings the company's total funding to $189m.

🤑 Yapily, a fintech working on open banking APIs, has raised a $51m Series B round led by Sapphire Ventures.

📱 Sololearn, which has built a mobile-first education platform similar to Duolingo but for learning to code, has raised a $24m round led by Drive Capital.

\Sifted Talks 

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