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News That Matters

💸 The fundraising friend. London-based startup Vauban, which enables VCs and angels to raise funds, create angel syndicates and manage fundraising and investment activities, bagged a $6.3m funding round. Investors like Anthemis, Passion Capital and Octopus Ventures are using the platform, along with 5,000 other LPs.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 ​​One big Scottish exit. When Current Health, a healthtech startup providing software and wearables for patients, was bought by Best Buy last month the financial terms were not disclosed — but now they have been. The deal was worth a whopping £300m, meaning its cofounders are looking at a big payday.

💥 Accel Club raises $170m. Not to be confused with the VC firm, this Dutch Amazon aggregator acquires and operates profitable and fast-growing independent sellers on Amazon, is just nine months old and already boasts offices in Europe, the US and China.

Sifted Suggests

🇬🇧 UK impact startups: the latest data. New research from the UK government has found that impact investment in the country is up 127% from 2018. Non-London unicorn hotspots for impact startups include Bristol, Sheffield and Horsham. Get more data here. 

🤔 Is bootstrapping for you? If you’re not sure, Courier outlines seven things to consider in this piece.

Events

Subscription models: Everyone’s got one, so how do you make a good one? | Online | Dec 1
Our next Sifted Talks is all about subscriptions. Hear from founders across software, food and femtech on what it takes to build and implement one that stands out from the crowd.

Sifted is heading to Slush this week! Catch Amy Lewin, Michael Stothard, Eleanor Warnock, Mimi Billing and Isabel Woodford there. Below are the sessions you can see us at:

Dec 1:
Spotify’s product story, continued. Spotify’s chief R&D officer Gustav Söderström will share what he learnt from launching podcasts — and explain what's next for the audio giant.

First-time founders swapping notes. Find out what Hello Fresh’s Jessica Schultz and Personio’s Hanno Renner learnt about building high-growth businesses as first-time entrepreneurs. 

Dec 2:
Back on track — how to cope with failure. Get ready for a warts-and-all chat with Next47’s Lak Ananth and Sennder’s David Northacker on failure.

NFT — the great equaliser or an empty promise? Can NFTs reduce inequality within an economy where wealth tends to accumulate at the top, or are they merely an attention hack that runs the risk of turning into a bubble?

Breaking investment barriers. We sit down with Bitpanda's cofounder and CEO Eric Demuth to hear how it became one of the fastest growing fintechs in Europe.

Uncapped potential: revenue-based funding. Take a look inside the mind of Piotr Pisarsz, founder of revenue-based financing provider Uncapped, to find out how it invests and where it's heading.

Sifted Opinion