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Greetings Reader,

What a year, eh? Time to review it some more. Up today:

• The 10 charts that tell the tale of 2021 in tech
• What was hot — and what was decidedly not — in fintech this year
• The best nuggets of advice we learnt from startup operators

$113bn raised. 247 $100m+ rounds. 78 new unicorns. 

It's been a record-breaking year in European tech, and there are a whole bunch of impressive — and some not so impressive — numbers flying around. 

Here are 10 datasets you should pay attention to.

Who runs the world? Wealthtech apps 

Gone are the days when people put their capital into the hands of wealth managers and waited patiently for a quarterly report. We now live in a brave new app-driven world — and we're harnessing the power of trading platforms to manage our wealth. But will this lead to democratised wealth for the masses?

Read Sifted’s wealthtech report to find out. 

Waves of funding rounds, huge valuations and a smorgasbord of IPOs have marked European fintech this year. 

But it's not all self-congratulatory pats on the back — Greensill's downfall and the Lanistar wage scandal also made the headlines. 

Here's what was hot and what was not.

Missed our fintech focused Sifted Talk in partnership with Mastercard at the beginning of December? Don't panic... we've got you covered.

Find out where the low hanging fruit in fintech is, what every fintech founder should know before launching their startup and much more in this handy roundup article.

Here's what we learnt.

Every week in our Startup Life newsletter, we bring you top tips from a startup leaders who's been there, made the mistakes and learnt things the hard way. 

From budgeting to mentoring and changing roles to hosting offsites, here are the best bits.

Amy Lewin and Anisah Osman Britton share their highlights.

Not yet a subscriber?

2021 is (nearly) over. 2022 is just about to start. But what does it have in store for UK tech?

We asked a few movers and shakers to stare into the crystal ball and tell us what they see. 

Here's what 2022 has in store (maybe).

Our reports had a little something for everyone this year — from the newest pet tech and wealth management apps to the must-watch ecommerce, construction tech, virtual restaurant and video game trends. Catch up on the pile here. 

🥐 How the French cracked tech. Less than a decade ago, you’d probably call France a tech backwater; a place where VC was scarce and foreign investors came for Fashion Week or to sip rosé along the French Riviera — certainly not to invest in startups. Now, all’s changed: read how the country shed its tech laggard status.  

🤖 Want to create Europe’s next hit video game? Be yourself. How do you pick yourself up after making “the worst Playstation 4 game”? Not our words, but those of Piotr Babieno, the head of Poland’s Bloober Team game dev studio. In our gaming report, he talks about mining Polish history to score a hit Xbox release: “It’s much more powerful if we tell a story about ourselves and what we really know.”

🎄 The year secondhand markets soared. Europe’s online markets found a real sustainability groove in 2021. In our ecommerce report, we talked to the heads of Back Market and Wallapop, as well as one of the top execs at Vestiaire Collective, about the huge demand their companies have seen over the pandemic.

Copyright © 2021 SIFTED (EU) LTD, All rights reserved.

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